Article contributed by Jena Brown
Chuck Wendig weaves a spell-binding horror story in his latest novel, The Book of Accidents.
Nathan and Maddie grew up keeping secrets. But when they move back to Nathan’s childhood home, things they both wanted to forget bubble to the surface. Strange things start happening, and they seem to centre around their son Oliver. A new friend with his own secrets, including a penchant for dark magic, draws Oliver into a plan to destroy the family—and then the world.
The Book of Accidents starts with a literal bang as we witness the almost execution of Edmund Walker Reese. He’s a serial killer obsessed with numbers, believing his life’s purpose was interrupted with his arrest. And perhaps something agrees, as he disappears when they pull the switch. From there, we move into a second prologue where a child survives getting trapped in a mine but brings something else out with him.
And then the story starts.
At this point, the fact that we are face-diving into a horror story should be obvious. Even the way the initial chapters are structured serves to maintain a sense of disorientation and dread. Oliver is in the middle of an intense school shooter drill, Nathan is fighting with his dying abusive father, and Maddie is having a strange experience with one of her pieces of art. And then there’s the house. The one Nathan wants nothing to do with and Maddie thinks is the answer to their problems. It’s a flash bang succession of chapters, one segueing into the next, each one making clear that something isn’t quite right but creating the frantic urgency that we must plunge forward all the same.
The book is divided into seven sections, and while Wendig allows us moments to catch our breath, each chapter is taut with tension and foreboding that keeps escalating. We are constantly on the edge of learning just enough to feel satisfying progression but never enough to know exactly what’s coming next. Wendig’s skill as a storyteller shines bright through every nuanced layer, whether it’s weaving the psychological drama through emotional family dynamics or drawing out supernatural terrors meant to crawl into our nightmares. We are haunted and tormented and shocked throughout the book, and just like the characters, we are so busy picking up the clues that we forget to look for the hits we should know are coming.
Part of what makes this story feel so alive are the characters within it. Nathan, Maddie, and Oliver are so tenderly rendered that they rise off the page and hang out as we read. They are complex and complicated in their humanity, just like we are. Their personalities are unique, and each of them has attributes that both invites doom and promises to be their only salvation. While there’s a supernatural twist to their traits, Wendig uses them to highlight the essence of what it means to be human. We’re flawed, and often the things that make us strong, can also be the things that cause us to struggle. This internal fight makes the characters understandable. Even when we don’t want to understand them.
Horror stories are rarely just about the monster; they’re largely about us. Wendig understands this and while he gives us monsters aplenty, each character has their own inner demons that they must face in order to survive. On the surface, this is about good versus evil, but woven in the pages are all the complicated shades of grey that make most of the issues we face terribly difficult to address. We see how keeping things from each other can splinter a strong family bond. How regret and guilt and anger can muddy our moral compass. How pain can be both necessary and monstrous. All of these issues are things most of us have to tackle at some point in our lives, and by stretching them into pointed and terrifying experiences fictionally, perhaps they become more manageable in our own reality.
While there are supernatural and fantastical elements that play a hefty role in the plot, this book is largely about the horrors we create. What happens when we feed the demons inside of us? When we let them overtake and control us? Of course, this isn’t just existential pondering. In this world, there’s a sense of destiny entwined with the enormity of endless possibility that is both horrifying and beautiful. It’s a terrible combination of freewill and inevitability that serves to remind us that while this is a story about actual monsters, it’s also about the monstrosities within ourselves; the ones we can become if we’re able to glimpse into another life, another universe, another timeline. Often these lie dormant, but when we feed them, when we let them overtake and control us, they end up being the hardest to slay.
The Book of Accidents is both epic in scope and intimate in nature, making this a story that readers will want to return to again and again. It is rich in details and explosive in action, escalating between quiet moments meant to draw us in and heart-pounding sequences where life hangs in the balance. There are a lot of threads to hold onto, but Wendig never lets us drop them, drawing them closer together as we reach the explosive end. The result is a book readers will struggle to tear themselves away from, while desperately wanting to savour every textured moment. Horror fans will be delighted and readers who enjoy venturing into the darker side of fiction will be swept away. It’s full of heart and challenges the reader to face both the good and not so good inside themselves. It’s a horror story. But it’s also so much more.
The Book of Accidents is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A family returns to their hometown—and to the dark past that haunts them still—in this masterpiece of literary horror by the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers
Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there.
Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures.
Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania.
Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver.
And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.
This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.
