MARCH 2017 - AudioFile
What begins as a creepy horror story evolves into a melancholy meditation on loss and grief as delivered by author/narrator John Darnielle. Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. Several customers report “something else” on their tapes, so Jeremy takes them home to watch and finds eerie black-and-white footage spliced between scenes. When he realizes a farmhouse pictured in the scenes is not far from town, he and the store’s owner are drawn to investigate. Musical interludes can sometimes feel intrusive but ultimately help guide the listener between sections, and Darnielle’s understated narration is a perfect match for the quiet story. His restrained delivery highlights the steady Midwestern attitude of his characters, making the story’s pensive strangeness that much more unsettling. E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 12/12/2016
Beginning on the cusp of the 2000s and spanning more than 25 years, the second novel from Darnielle (Wolf in White Van) is a slow-burn mystery/thriller whose characters are drawn together by an eerie discovery. In his early 20s, Jeremy Heldt lives with his father, Steve—Jeremy’s mother was killed in a car accident six years before—and bides his time clerking at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa, waiting for better prospects to arise. It’s a steady job that keeps him out of the house, though things turn weird when customers begin to report dark, disjointed, unnerving movies-within-the-movies on their rented VHS tapes. At first reluctant to become involved in tracking down the origin of the clips, Jeremy, at the urging of his acquaintance Stephanie Parsons, uncovers the tragic decades-long story behind the videos and experiences an unsavory side of Iowa that he never imagined could exist. Powerfully evoking the boredom and salt-of-the-earth determination of Jeremy, his friends, and a haunted survivor determined to redress a great loss, Darnielle adeptly juggles multiple stories that collide with chaotic consequences somewhere in the middle of nowhere. With a nod to urban legends and friend-of-a-friend tales, the author prepares readers for the surreal truth, the improbable events that “have form, and shape, and weight, and meaning.” Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, the Gernert Company. (Feb.)
NPR
Darnielle’s prose is lucid and precise. . . . Horror tropes abound but quickly fall away. . . . The dread the pulses through the early pages is replaced with a different kind of anguish: the dimensions of human loneliness and grief.
the Oprah Magazine O
This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. A page-tuning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring.
Washington Post
A stellar encore after the success of [Darnielle’s] debut novel, Wolf in White Van . . . Beneath the eerie gauze of this book, I felt an undercurrent of humanity and hope.
Mashable
Haunting and unforgettable. . . . Packed with unsettling twists and turns, Universal Harvester explores we all leave, intentional or not . . .
The Globe and Mail
Universal Harvester is a novel of fragments, a collection of broken pieces that slowly coalesce into a larger meditation on grief and small-scale survival. It is a story about loss, splintered across generations, much like the altered videotapes at the heart of the book.
Nylon Magazine
It only makes sense that a lyricist as profound and masterful as Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle would also be a brilliant prose stylist. . . . Jeremy’s narrative journey is eerie and unsettling; it’s one you won’t soon forget, that will haunt you in the best possible ways.
AV Club
A quiet tale of absences and what they render in the lives of those left behind. . . . Darnielle displays a big heart and a strong sense of place.
GQ
[Universal Harvester is] constantly unnerving, wrapped in a depressed dread that haunts every passage. But it all pays off with surprising emotionality.
The Wall Street Journal
Universal Harvester is a novel about noticing hidden things, particularly the hurt and desperation that people bear under their exterior of polite reserve . . . Mr. Darnielle possesses the clairvoyant’s gift for looking beneath the surface.
Raleigh News & Observer
Darnielle writes beautifully . . . He builds a deep sense of foreboding by giving pieces of the puzzle in such a way that you really can’t see the solution until that final piece is in place.
Exclaim
At the heart of Universal Harvester are the same complex, nuanced individuals Darnielle has been bringing to life lyrically for decades.
Spin
An unsettling, gripping meditation on grief. . . . The unreliable narrator with potentially sinister motivations is a new wrinkle within Darnielle’s work.
Paste Magazine
Universal Harvester pivots around what Darnielle calls the ‘sad/frightening axis,’ relaying some stylistic aspects that will be familiar to readers of Wolf in White Van and his records as The Mountain Goats.
Slate
[Universal Harvester] is like an extended X-Files episode that turns into a moving meditation on loss.
Los Angeles Times
Brilliant . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it’s nearly impossible to stop reading . . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it’s a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.
Winnipeg Free Press
A harrowing midwestern mystery. . . . Taut, unsettling. . . . what lingers long after the final pages of Universal Harvester is a haunting sense of the timeless power of grief and absence.
MTV
[Universal Harvester is] so wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy . . .
National Post
A meditation on loss, faith and the nature of family, threaded through with mysteries. . . . The novel is better than scary: Universal Harvester is genuinely haunting.
Slate
[Universal Harvester] is like an extended X-Files episode that turns into a moving meditation on loss.
|Los Angeles Times
Brilliant . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it’s nearly impossible to stop reading . . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it’s a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.
Washington Post
A stellar encore after the success of [Darnielle’s] debut novel, Wolf in White Van . . . Beneath the eerie gauze of this book, I felt an undercurrent of humanity and hope.
From the Publisher
"Brilliant…Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it's nearly impossible to stop reading. . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it's a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction."
—Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times
“Grows in menace as the pages stack up . . . [But] more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread.”
—Joe Hill, New York Times Book Review
“The most unsettling book I’ve read since House of Leaves.”
—Adam Morgan, Electric Literature
"This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. A page-tuning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring."
—O: The Oprah Magazine
“A stellar encore after the success of [Darnielle's] debut novel, Wolf in White Van . . . Beneath the eerie gauze of this book, I felt an undercurrent of humanity and hope.”
—Manuel Roig-Franzia, The Washington Post
“[Universal Harvester is] so wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle . . . [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book’s quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down.”
—Abram Scharf, MTV News
"Few books in recent memory have mastered the Midwestern uncanny as well as John Darnielle’s strange and lyrical Universal Harvester...Like Midwestern cornfields, this book haunts in many ways."
—Chicago Review of Books
“Universal Harvester is a novel about noticing hidden things, particularly the hurt and desperation that people bear under their exterior of polite reserve . . . Mr. Darnielle possesses the clairvoyant’s gift for looking beneath the surface.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“[Universal Harvester is] constantly unnerving, wrapped in a depressed dread that haunts every passage. But it all pays off with surprising emotionality.”
—Kevin Nguyen, GQ.com
"Truly excellent...In an age of puffed up literary doorstops, it feels vaguely miraculous that Darnielle manages to pack this haunting novel...into less than 300 pages."
—Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman
“Darnielle writes beautifully . . . He builds a deep sense of foreboding by giving pieces of the puzzle in such a way that you really can’t see the solution until that final piece is in place.”
—Salem Macknee, News & Observer
"Eerie . . . unnerving . . . Darnielle adeptly juggles multiple stories that collide with chaotic consequences somewhere in the middle of nowhere. With a nod to urban legends and friend-of-a-friend tales, the author prepares readers for the surreal truth, the improbable events that 'have form, and shape, and weight, and meaning" —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Darnielle’s masterfully disturbing follow-up to the National Book Award-nominated Wolf in White Van reads like several Twilight Zone scripts cut together by a poet . . . All the while, [Darnielle’s] grasp of the Iowan composure-above-all mindset instills the book with agonizing heartbreak.” —Daniel Kraus, Booklist (starred review)
“Darnielle’s second novel opens like a dark suspense story . . . but he ultimately pursues a softer and more nuanced exploration of family and loss . . . Darnielle’s prose is consistently graceful and empathetic . . . [Universal Harvester is] a smart and rangy yarn.” —Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
12/01/2016
Far from a midcareer side project, this unsettling second novel from the frontman of indie folk band The Mountain Goats confirms the promise of his National Book Award-nominated debut, Wolf in White Van. Jeremy Heldt is working at the Video Hut in small-town Iowa during the late 1990s when a customer returns her VHS rental, complaining that another movie appears to have been spliced in—not much action, just some faint breathing. Soon after, another customer reports something similar, this one involving a figure in a chair with a bag tied around its head. Jeremy's boss Sarah Jane recognizes the barn in this second video and ultimately gives up the video store trying to find answers. From this spooky premise, Darnielle goes further into an oblique, moving meditation on grief: Jeremy's mother was killed in a car accident when he was younger, and the woman whose barn Sarah Jane identifies lost her mother to a religious sect more than 20 years earlier. Their losses haunt the novel, as does the foreboding Iowa landscape. VERDICT Darnielle's contemporary ghost story may confound with its elusiveness (who is the mysterious "I" narrator?), but its impact will stick with readers. [See Prepub Alert, 8/15/16.]—Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
MARCH 2017 - AudioFile
What begins as a creepy horror story evolves into a melancholy meditation on loss and grief as delivered by author/narrator John Darnielle. Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. Several customers report “something else” on their tapes, so Jeremy takes them home to watch and finds eerie black-and-white footage spliced between scenes. When he realizes a farmhouse pictured in the scenes is not far from town, he and the store’s owner are drawn to investigate. Musical interludes can sometimes feel intrusive but ultimately help guide the listener between sections, and Darnielle’s understated narration is a perfect match for the quiet story. His restrained delivery highlights the steady Midwestern attitude of his characters, making the story’s pensive strangeness that much more unsettling. E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
