The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue - Horror Book Review
The novel follows Jack Peter Keenan, a 10-year-old-boy with Asperger’s syndrome, as his imagination turns reality through his series of creepy drawings.
At a trim 273 pages, Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters is surprisingly cumbersome. Reading it was like swimming across Crystal Lake while carrying a rock. A big rock wrapped in chains that had failed to keep Jason Vorhees pinned under the water. While this book is light in the hand, it’s dense with wordy thickets, awkward phrasing, and unreadable dialogue.
The premise is straightforward enough. Jack, an already troubled child, nearly drowned in the ocean when he was seven. Three years later he refuses to leave the house (which is on the ocean) and has retreated so deeply into himself that his parents despair of ever drawing him back out. Oh, and speaking of drawing, Jack likes to do that. It’s a recent thing and his parents support it because maybe it’ll fix him.
Jack and his only friend Nick get together and draw stuff because drawing is something that can be done indoors. Nick is getting tired of being the strange kid’s solo buddy and is hoping to ditch him. Jack’s parents are holding desperately onto the children’s friendship because, hey, maybe it’ll fix Jack.
Unsurprisingly, considering the title, the things Jack draws start to pop up in real life. Unfortunately, considering the title, they’re not really monsters. There’s an albino hermit, and a big ass dog, and some odd babies that crawl around all freaky-like. Despite Jack living with two people who encourage his artistic endeavors, and frequently pursuing those endeavors with another kid right next to him, it takes a remarkably long time for anyone to connect the dots.
The story wandered around and never really solidified. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. But that’s okay, right? Plot isn’t everything; it’s the characters that really drive a book. Bring em on.
Donohue’s characters are clunky, obtuse, unlikable things and I was cheering for the vague monsters to get them all. I found it wholly impossible to identify with any of the shallow, transparent people and their badly-handled troubles. The parents alternate between enjoying a decent relationship and kind of hating most things about each other. Both of them find it easy to dislike their son, which is understandable, because he’s a little shit. Donohue does no work whatsoever to make the reader feel any affection for Jack. The boy’s apparent Asperger syndrome does nothing to soften him, nothing to make him vulnerable and sympathetic. Instead, I felt increasingly distant from him. Fine. Maybe I’m not supposed to relate to Jack. Maybe I’m supposed to get wicked into the supporting cast.
Except the rest of the characters interact like maybe they’ve never seen other people before today. And none of them have Asperger’s. They’re just 700 pages of maladroit wedged into a 270 page book.
It doesn’t help that Donohue seems pathologically afraid of trusting his readers to get what’s happening. We aren’t shown anything; we’re told outright. The characters don’t develop so we can learn their behaviors and understand their motives. Everything is painstakingly explained in careful language so we don’t get lost. This is probably my biggest complaint with any author and Donohue is an egregious offender.
He also doubles down with painful, limping dialogue that ensures anything said out loud is just as awkward as everything else. It would have made more sense if the characters had communicated only in Morse code.
On top of it all, this book just isn’t scary. It grinds monotonously at the “monsters” and Jack’s psychological issues but neither one came close to the heebies, much less the jeebies. Go ahead and skip this one.
Reviewed by Brent R. Oliver
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