Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #839636 in Books
• Published on: 1994-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Fairly convincing,but (like life) doesn't always make sense.
So far I have read only three of Little's novels - "The Store", "The Mailman", and "The Ignored" - but I think I'm beginning to see a pattern to his work: a community of some sort that, to begin with, appears quite cosy and friendly, and some entity from outside - the chain store or the new mailman, in two of these two novels - intrudes, and gradually begins to subvert the people's way of life and destroy their sense of community. ("The Ignored" doesn't quite fit this pattern.)

Things start to go wrong. It's only little things to begin with, which hardly attract anyone's attention; but, as time goes on, these little things that are not quite right get bigger and bigger. People increasingly show signs of unease and anger, but they seem to partly acclimatize to the new order of things, a little like the proverbial frog that, if heated in water slowly enough, boils to death instead of leaping out of the warming water.

This may account for why people don't take the action one would normally expect, such as going to higher authorities about obviously wrong things, if the local authorities won't act - or, if they do try to appeal to higher authority, they seem to give up quickly after hitting the first bureaucratic obstacles. This lack of action in the face of trouble is a point that this and other books by Little may be criticized for. Indeed, characters seem to rationalize the events, thinking up reasons why things are not so wrong after all, and saying the strange events are just a coincidence - but they can't accept this entirely, and seem to dissipate their fear by lashing out at each other, instead of following up with higher authorities; this gets bad enough to rip the entire community to warring pieces. Little does mention the malaise that sweeps over the entire town of Willis, so the possible criticism about not doing enough about things does not seem entirely justified; I think Little was aware of this, and made it an intrinsic part of the plot. He appears to depict characters as accepting this as part of the new status quo and not doing as much about it as you might expect, as if the very fabric of reality has changed, and perhaps he deliberately used this to create a surreal atmosphere as the society he's writing about gradually decays.

Little seems to construct his whole story around a very specialized situation - the sinister mailman - and builds up as much as possible on aspects of the mailman's work or attributes. The mail service (in its increasingly twisted manifestation) seems to be a microcosm around which the whole story revolves - quite effectively, I think. The whole weird scenario is on the whole fairly convincing, although perhaps some of the more bizarre elements towards the end of the novel creak a little, as if the limits of the edifice are strained a little too far.

I think the elements that hint at a supernatural influence - that is, unexplained strange events which definitely violate laws of nature - sometimes seem a little less convincing, but it didn't stop me reading on with interest. It is probably far more difficult to write a story where the supernatural mingles with the ordinary, than to write a story which right from the start is frankly based on supernatural premises. But I couldn't help wondering if the story might have been a little better if the author had left out events of this sort, but developed every possible horrific aspect of the mailman's activities to the hilt...I think it is just brilliant when someone like Dean Koontz is able to build up a truly weird situation (see "The House of Thunder", "Sole Survivor", or "Lightning"), and milks every drop of suspense and fear out of it - but at the end he is able to give a completely satisfactory and convincing explanation for everything that's happened.

In this I feel that Little is a bit behind Koontz - but that is perhaps only a matter of taste. With a few reservations, I think Little has portrayed his basically improbable situation quite convincingly, and the book certainly keeps you reading, which is a fairly stiff test for a good novel.

JUNK MAIL...
Bentley Little is one of the most ingenious authors in the horror genre. His ability to take the ordinary and make it into a fearsome thing is his signature hook. In this early work, we see him take one of the mundane chores in life, getting the mail, and turn it into something to be feared. There is a new mailman in town, and with his carrot red hair and his pale, pasty looks, he is just enough to give one the heebie-jeebies.

Doug Albin, a school teacher getting set to enjoy his summer vacation with his family, notices that the mail delivery is starting to get a bit weird in his small Arizona town. Moreover, the new mailman is getting progressively creepier, and there is something about the mail and its delivery that just isn't right. As everyday people and everyday activities seem to go haywire with the arrival of the new mailman and his delivery of the mail, Doug starts putting two and two together. The only question is whether what he discovers will be too little and too late.

This early work by the author gives a promise of what is to come. It has the idea but not yet the finesse or execution of his later works. The author just sets in place the concept of making the ordinary and commonplace a vehicle for the horrific without pulling out all the stops, as he does in his later works. Still, it is a worthy and original effort that fans of the author should read, if only to see the progress that the author has made over the years.