Book Review – Good Boy

I pre-ordered Neil McRobert‘s Good Boy from Wild Hunt Books and apparently they take the “pre” part very seriously, because I got it quite a while before it was officially published.

I’ve been a fan of McRobert’s horror-focused podcast, Talking Scared, for a while now and one of the biggest reasons is the host’s sincere passion for his subject. He matches it with insight and damned good questions to create simply one of the best interview shows around.

So, when he announced he was finally taking the plunge into authorship, I was there for it.

I am pleased to say that it was the right choice.

Good Boy is a novella/short novel about a man and his dog who team up to keep a small northern English village safe from an ancient evil that feeds on local children. There are obvious touches of classic Stephen King, especially It but also a touch of non-horror work like The Body, but the voice is pure McRobert and above all, it is so obviously rooted in love.

I cannot overstate what a relief that is. Horror as a genre is going through what they call a “moment,” with a flood of lauded authors and works getting big all over the place. But a major element of that is a glut of stories centered around trauma and grief. Not simply in the the obvious way—horror has always been about people experiencing traumatic events—but in ways that center traumatized people experiencing horrific events that seem to grow from that trauma. This is a perfectly fine trope, but as it becomes dominant I find myself wondering, what about people who are live their lives without being haunted by the gaping spiritual holes of lost children/horrific accidents/guilt over terrible mistakes etc.? Don’t they get horror stories anymore? Isn’t there some other emotion we can ground our stories in besides grief?

Of course there is, as McRobert shows us. Love is also a fundamental part of the human condition, and it can also serve as a foundation for horror stories. This is a story about love saving people, despite the frustrations and stresses and doubts that assail all our choices, even when made out of love and the desire to do good. And it feels so genuine. Anyone who listens to Talking Scared knows how much McRobert loves his dog, Ted, and the honesty of that emotion comes through crystal clear in the work.

And the horror is still real. The antagonist in Good Boy is a nasty thing indeed, and well worth Jim, the protagonist, making the difficult choices he does.

I read Good Boy in a single sitting and enjoyed every last page of it. Thanks for bringing the love back to horror, Neil.

Five stars. No notes.