Oh, Grow Up!
by Tony Fonseca
02/02/2006
Moore, James A. Rabid Growth. New York: Leisure, 2005. 323 p.
“James A. Moore’s work brings to mind early Stephen King.”—cnn.com
“Moore’s work stands toe-to-toe with the best of King, Koontz, or McCammon.”—Cemetery Dance
“James A. Moore is one of the best new horror writers of the twenty first century as he can hold his own with the greats including Clive Barker, Bentley Little, Stephen King and Robert McCammon.”—Harriet Klausner, Baryon Online1
I am always suspicious of such silly hyperbole when reading the publisher blurbs on the back of mass paperback novels, and in the case of James A. Moore’s Rabid Growth, my suspicions turned out to be correct. Let me go on record right away here—so that I am not misquoted—James A. Moore is no Stephen King. Moore is no Bentley Little either. He may be on par with Dean Koontz, but only when Koontz writes one of those novels using his horror template. Neither Rabid Growth nor its prequel, Possessions, possesses the power or technique of early Stephen King (think Carrie and The Shining). In fact, to even think such things, much less put them in print, is nothing short of blasphemous to a thinking horror fan.
While Moore does indeed have his place in the genre, I think his novels can be rightfully placed between Young Adult horror and adult horror—and unfortunately there is no such tweener characterization in the genre. Perhaps this is for good reason, a point I will get to shortly. Don’t get me wrong here. I would not thusly categorize Moore’s series simply because its characters are teenagers and pre-teens. Carrie is populated with high school students, but the novel would be done a terrible disservice if it were placed in any library’s YA section.2 What makes a YA novel suitable for a teenager is its vision, not its characters. While some may disagree with this, arguing that there is intelligent, or at least thoughtful YA literature out there, my own experience has taught me that YA literature that actually crosses over the realm of literature for adults is rare. Teenagers, in general, see the world in black and white terms. With adulthood comes complexity and flexibility, the ability to see that there are degrees, not absolutes.
Case in point—your main character is watching his best friend slowly evolve into a sea creature of some sort, he is being chased by violent homeless men who are covered with sores and puss, he must constantly fight off attacks from these men, and fight against his evil grandmother’s desire to take his kid sister out of his custody…. And this nineteen year old stops the narrative constantly to remark that he is sexually attracted to his fifteen-year-old sister’s school friends? Such a character is either disingenuous or badly conceived, and is—at any rate—entirely too annoying. Yet Rabid Growth is full of characters like this. Granted, no one can argue that nineteen-year-old boys don’t think about sex often. However, most writers would recognize the fact that even an average young man of this age, which Chris Corin is not (we are always told how “mature” and “responsible” he is), would be focused on the horror in front of him with every brain cell, rather than having side thoughts about sex. Only in a very narrow world vision, a vision that is based on absolutes, in other words, a teen’s vision, would a nineteen-year-old boy ALWAYS be interested in sex, no matter what.
In short, if one could say to a novel, “oh grow up for Chistssake,” this would be the novel to say it to. But like Possessions, Rabid Growth is at the gangly stage between being YA literature and being adult horror. Young adult readers would find it too “old.” After all, its main character is nineteen, not fifteen. Adult readers would find it, to put it bluntly, too immature.
Continuing the story begun in Possessions, Rabid Growth answers the questions left by that novel. Chris Corin, the legal guardian of his sister Brittany since the death of his mother at the hands of a demon, is still waiting for the money from his winning lottery ticket. In the meantime, he is beginning to notice that homeless people in his hometown are becoming extremely violent, and they are changing physically. Their eyes look different and their skin becomes covered with weeping sores. After a while, Chris realizes that some of these homeless people are humans he rescued from the evil house in Possessions—and they are none too grateful for his act. Worse yet, his best friend Jerry is also turning into a creature, since he too was infected in the evil house. And then there’s Brittany. She is rebellious, and cannot stay out of trouble with the law, which leads to a potential custody battle between Chris and his maternal grandmother, a woman neither has seen in years, and who seems, for all practical purposes, to be trying out for a villain’s role in a Disney movie.
If there is any good news for me to report to you, dear reader, it is that if you haven’t read Possessions, you may still be able to follow Rabid Growth. It contains enough background information to catch you up on how the action got to its current stage, and the characters aren’t so complex that you need a whole lot of background on them. In fact, it would hardly seem necessary since none of them are allowed to be consistent in the space of just a few chapters. While it might be okay for Bart and Lisa to always wear the same clothes and to never seem to learn from their mistakes, thereby never achieving a sense of continuity which we come to expect with a rounded character, it is unacceptable for a novelist to forget that he just allowed a character—even if it’s a teenaged girl—to have an epiphany, only to drag her back to the place she was before she came to her senses.
So would I give this novel two thumbs down? In all honesty,
I’d have to say yes. In fact, I would not recommend this even if you happen to
be a teenager or have a teenager who is looking for transitional fiction between
YA horror and adult horror, what is often called a crossover novel.3
Rather, I would suggest that you risk being a little uncool and pick up
something Old School by this guy named King. He wrote some novels with high
school characters way back in the 1970s. His novels would better serve as
crossovers, as transition pieces into the world of well-written grown-up horror.
1Accessed Jan. 29, 2006. < http://www.baryon-online.com/baryon99/rg.html>
2I have no intention on getting into a dissertation here on what types of literature libraries routinely place in the section labeled YA, nor why that literature seems to be, generally, of a lesser quality, viewed from an adult’s perspective. The simple truth is if you send average intelligent adult readers into a YA section of any public library, they will find very few books that appeal to them, certainly a much smaller percentage than they would in the regular Fiction section. This is not merely because these YA books contain mainly teenaged characters. Many an author has written novels for adults that contain children, pre-teens, and teens. But these novels do not read like children’s books or YA novels, and are therefore not placed in those areas, and adults routinely enjoy reading them. Our esteemed Managing Editor would be the first to tell you that there are some excellent YA novels, many of which she has reviewed for this zine, but I would argue that they are the exception, not the rule. This leads to another argument, from a librarian’s perspective, that if this is so, are we dumbing down literature for young adults? That is yet another dissertation topic for another person. I am only commenting on the current state of the issue, as I see it.
3No, I am not saying that Rapid Growth is YA horror. I am saying that it sits between YA and adult horror, in some nebulous space where few novels and collections reside. In that regard, it is by default a “crossover” novel. But only by default.