Book Review: Paul Tremblay, The Pallbearers Club

If Massachusetts-bred horror novelist Paul Tremblay’s latest offering was an album, it’d be Therapy?’s Infernal Love. Bleak, bruised, strangely beautiful and owning every second of it, the macabre and intentionally messy The Pallbearers Club is his darkest book to date and driven by that dusty old proverb-don’t believe everything you read (unless it’s in Hot Press, of course, *cough*)

Mostly written during the height of the pandemic, the scribe, whose famous fans include Grady Hendrix and plucky young newcomer Stephen King, presents his new novel as a memoir of sorts, penned by a perennial square peg in a round hole called Art Barbara. It also features extensive liner notes (if you will) by his frenemy and possible vampire Mercy Brown, who regularly corrects his recollections of his youth, puts him in his place if he’s getting too maudlin and generally tries to convince the reader she’s not a fang-sporting creature of the night.

The kind of book our own Bram Stoker might’ve written if he grew up in Reagan-era America and was weaned on a diet of D.I.Y. punk rather than dodgy pea soup, The Pallbearers Club also has a little Carmilla by (another Irishman) Sheridan Le Fanu in its DNA and it’s an unsettling walk on the weird side.

In the thrall of Hüsker Dü throughout, the title of each chapter is named after a song by that seminal band and this decades spanning tale about troubled teenage years and the slow realisation that most people don’t want to know if you are lonely (yes, we can reference The Dü too!) is a feast for fans and loaded with Easter eggs and WTAF moments.

Very much a slow burn, that heart stopping ending will haunt you for months…

The Pallbearers Club is published by Titan Books and released on July 15.

News also reaches us that a GoFundMe campaign has been set up for former Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton, after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. You can help pay for his treatment here.