A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain

November 25, 2013
This slick, if overstuffed, first novel from short story writer Harun (The King of Limbo) is an exploration of evils both supernatural and temporal. It seems things couldn’t get any bleaker for teenagers Leo Kreutzer and his friends Bryan, Ursie, Tessa, and Jackie. Drug abuse, poverty, and prejudice hem in their lives in a tiny unnamed Canadian logging town; escape consists of trips to shoot rats at the town dump. But the devil himself appears to have tests in mind for Leo and his friends. One day Kevin Seven, a mysterious musician, and Hana Swann, his girlfriend, come to town; the pair quickly works its way into the friends’ lives. Because the town is terrorized already by Gerald Flacker, a local meth baron, and his henchmen, the Nagle brothers, no one notices the newcomers’ insidious influence until it’s almost too late. Interspersed with the plot are bits of folklore Leo has cribbed from a dying uncle, recounting ominous stories of the devil and his handmaiden. Harun creates a masterfully bleak and spooky mood, and succinctly captures the desperation of the young people’s lives, such as when she describes the “daily weight of disregard” that made them “vibrate with the dual desire to both shake and embrace” everyone they met. While stylishness abounds, the impact of this promising debut is diluted by a too-busy plot and a too-long cast of characters.

January 15, 2014
The devil is alive and well and living in British Columbia. In a remote section of western Canada, girls have started disappearing, and it's unclear why or who's responsible. Admittedly, there are some egregiously nasty types around, most notably the Nagle brothers, Markus and GF, who tool around in their orange Matador intimidating the local population. And intimidating they are--while they're involved in unseemly activities, they mainly just like being badasses. As Uncle Jud tells it, "[e]verybody's got a mean bone. Some have a full set." Jud is uncle to Leo, one of the narrators of the novel, who likes to hang out with his friends Jackie, Bryan, Ursula ("Ursie") and Tessa, but they're all getting more and more disturbed by the way girls are vanishing near what has become known as the Highway of Tears. All of the friends are in late adolescence and trying to make sense of life in their remote logging town. And then a number of strangers appear, bringing mystery and allure to their lives: Kevin Seven does dazzling card tricks and starts to mentor Ursie, who'd never before even shuffled a deck, while fragile and self-possessed Hana Swann, with preternaturally white skin, calmly tries to convince Bryan of the rationality of getting revenge on Gerald Flacker, a local drug dealer seemingly in league with the devil. Through a complex narrative structure, Harun manages to invest all of her action--slow as it sometimes is--with an aura of myth and folk legend that raises it above the lurid and sensational.

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January 1, 2014

In British Columbia, there are still places so remote that the isolation can be suffocating, with few strangers to break the patterns of rural life. Poverty hangs on residents like a mantle, and personal relationships run deep and long. But one simple summer day, things begin to change in a remote logging town. Young women have been disappearing off the highway, and intriguing strangers have come to stay: a man with a magician's touch with cards and a mysterious young woman with pale alabaster skin. Leo Kreutzer and his friends, fresh from school and feeling the new weight of adulthood pressing down, don't quite know what to make of all this. But one thing is sure: by season's end, the small town's population will be even smaller, and those who remain will be forever changed. VERDICT Harun's mastery clearly lies in establishing atmosphere and mood. Much as it does to the novel's characters, the gothic ambiance wraps around the reader and won't let go. Laced with local color, this debut will please fans of the macabre.--Leigh Wright, Bridgewater, NJ

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2014
Teenage Leo and his friends live in an angry, desolate logging town in British Columbia surrounded by mountains and switchback roads where nearly anyone can just disappear. Burdened by missing parents, dead-end work, abuse, and abject poverty, they manage as well as they can, but desperation like theirs is easy to poke at, and when the devil gets in their headsin many shapes, in many waysa torrent of vicious mayhem is unleashed in the tinderbox forests one sweltering July. First, an enigmatic girl swishes into their group and plants dangerous thoughts of revenge; then a charismatic, card-wielding magician capitalizes on one girl's quick eye and even quicker hands. Gradually, with a choking, sinister smoke slowly encroaching on their stoops and windowsills, Leo and his friends commit acts destructive, vengeful, and fueled by hatred, but at the same time full of arresting, awful beauty. And yet, as in the best stories about the devil, the darkness that wisps in sooty tendrils around them is not so easy to classify. In mesmerizing prose, debut novelist Harun spins a chilling tale shot through with both aching realism and age-old folktales, melding them together to capture a landscape lush with possibility and imagination and terrifying in its vast emptiness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)