By: mkortman From Inside Cover:
Once there was a girl who ran away and joined a traveling carnival. She married a man she grew to hate - and gave birth to a child she could never love. A child so monstrous that she killed it with her own hands. Twenty five years later, Ellen Harper has a new life, a new husband, and two normal children - Joey loves monster movies and Amy is about to graduate from high school. But their mother drowns her secret guilt in alcohol and prayer. The time has come for Amy and Joey to pay for her sins.
A fast read When I saw the movie, "The Funhouse", I wanted to read the bookto see if the story went deeper with the characters.The book started out great: Creepy, fast and very intense...but, then it gets slow and the characters are boring and you don't get to know them individually. The mother is a lonley, scared, paranoid alcoholic.The father is a lawyer who never seems to take an interest in his family, and there is Amy and Joey having to deal with the stress and religious poundings inflicted by their mother.The story centers around the carnival life.The reader finds interesting things abour carnies: their lifestyles and rules of life.The ending is such a letdown that I couldn't help but think that Mr. Koontz got bored with writing the book that he just finished a sentence and stopped.It would have been awsome if the reader could have known what became of Amy, Joey, and their parents after the horrible events at the carnival.I have often wandered what Ellen Harper thought when she discovered that her two children were almost murdered by the man who almost killed her back in 1955.I wish that Mr. Koontz would have had an "Afterward" chapter with the surviving characters.I would like see a part 2 to this book:Was Conrad really dead?Was the reason the father was never close to his family was because when Ellen was drunk and in bed, she started talking in her sleep about how she was married to "Evil" and killed Victor, "Evils" child?Did Amy carry the gene that holds an ugly evil that will be born to kill?Did Conrad get other women pregnant and they have given birth to Victor-type babies.There are so many questions that the reader will ask when finishing the Funhouse.What's with all the bad reviews? Just another great Dean Koontz book as far as I'm concerned. A woman named Ellen gives birth to a deformed, monstrous child with claws and she kills it, even though her husband, who's a barker at a carnival, loves it and doesn't understand how dangerous it is. He nearly kills her when he finds out and tosses her out of the house. Fast forward several years and Ellen has two new children of her own and a new life. But she's turned into a religious fanatic, like Carrie's mother from Stephen King's first novel, and her children, espescially her son, are afraid of her. And now her old husband Conrad is tracking down her children in an effort to destroy them as revenge. Ellen's 17 year old daughter Amy and a few other dope-smoking rebels head out to the carnival for some fun and when they enter the Funhouse, where Conrad works, they get more than they bargained for. Much more.Another great Koontz novel One of the main subplots of the novel, if not THE main subplot, is that guilt can be our worst enemy.
The characters are the real assets of "The Funhouse." They make this story work, they make it what it is - unique, memorable, and exciting. It all plays out like a fun ride until the bodies begin to pop up, innocents begin to die and people are changed into monsters of their own by their past mistakes. This novel stays true to life and because of that it works. "The Funhouse" starts out with a bang and keeps on kicking, the beginning fumes getting you high off its strength.
To close this carnival down, I have to say it truly shines. The ending is a slight let down after having such an impressive build up, but this can be overlooked when it’s all clumped together. When the last door of the carnival is locked, every last mark has gone home and is now safely snug in their beds, "The Funhouse" gets the rating of an event akin to sitting on an intense roller coaster that delivers all it originally promised.
