The Hollower

The Hollower by Mary SanGiovanni is a truly creepy and even at times scary novel. The premise is that there is a small community that is being haunted by an otherworldly creature known as the Hollower. At first as I was reading this I thought of the Slender Man mythos. The Hollower is a tall figure with no face, like Slender Man. Unlike Slender Man, the Hollower doesn't even have a real physical presence. Many of the characters describe how his glove floats at his wrist/hand area like it was real, but there is no actual arm in the sleeve/wrist. So there are similarities but the Hollower is a separate monster with its own powers and agenda.

The story revolves around a handful of characters who have all been haunted by the Hollower for some time, each of them is dealing with the visions of the monster in their own way that go from drug addiction, alcoholism, and outright denial to insanity. The Hollower seems to take great pleasure from causing the main characters emotional and psychological pain and that is where the creepy/scary factor comes in.

What I loved about this book is that SanGiovanni really sets the mood. I was pretty creeped out and a few times outright scared by the monster. The fact that the monster is committed to causing mental anguish rather than physical violence or death is what really drove home the horror for me.

What set the book back a bit is that the characters weren't very well rounded and there was not a lot of character development. I liked the characters and even really cared about a few of them, but I never grew very attached to them or became super invested in them because they were kind of flat and lacked development.

All in all this is a good book and if you like horror books that are more creepy and have a more psychological horror vibe rather than violence or gore then you should definitely give this a read.