Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Time for a book review! A few days ago, I finished Hex, written by Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt, who is award-winning and award-nominated and critically acclaimed and soundly endorsed by other authors. So I had high hopes. I mean, if Stephen King is tweeting out “hey, this book is awesome” (I’m paraphrasing, that’s not actually what Stephen King tweeted, although he did tweet favorably about this book), then I’m going to take note and expect awesomeness when I read the book.

If you aren’t familiar with the book, here’s the official blurb (per Barnes & Noble website):

Title: Hex, Author: Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay ’til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

I bought it on my Nook and had it in my queue of things to read. It was going to be awesome; everyone else seemed to think so, and who was I to disagree? It sounded interesting, it involved a witch from centuries ago who had supposedly cursed the town (with a hex that lasted for centuries), there were GoPro cameras and websites and YouTube . . . quite a culture clash between the two “sides”.  Even the cover looks a little ominous – a single house surrounded by fog and doom and gloom and birds. As a side note, why do groups of birds almost always mean bad things are about to happen?

When my husband went on a golf trip I thought, “okay, time to knock this out”. And I did. Unfortunately, I literally felt like I was having to knock it out at times – banging my mental hammer against my brain to pay attention.

In short, the book delivers what it promises. Somewhere in New York, a small town with a few thousand people rely heavily on the latest technology to contain and protect their traditions and fears, all of which stem from a single woman who’s approximately 350 years old: Katherine van Wyler. Katherine wonders the town – seemingly going wherever she wants and whatever time she wants, except for particular habits where she walks the same route on the same day each week, and randomly appearing all over town. And she happens to do these things while wrapped in chains and and with her eyes and mouth sewn shut. In response, the town has elaborate witch festivals, unlimited volunteers who pose as park staff or set up traffic barriers to deter “outsiders” from getting too close to Katherine, and a variety of large props to hide or disguise Katherine if she happens to show up at a public event. Ultimately, the town has learned to ignore and hide their presumed problem and the people try desperately to live an unaffected life amidst the strange circumstances.

So . . . does that sound familiar? Something confusing, and therefore scary, hiding openly in society but unresolved and taboo? It took me a few chapters to really get the sense that this book could be a parallel to almost anything, especially in the days where we must all be politically correct and sometimes keep our mouths shut to avoid insulting anyone. Where people try their hardest to hide and ignore things they are ashamed of, that they cannot explain, that they do not understand. Then maybe one day someone (or a group of someones) comes along with well-meaning intentions to get things out in the open, to start discussions, and maybe change the norm; and maybe some people are more open-minded than others and fear, it turns out, can be a more powerful motivator than almost anything else?

Don’t you think that could apply to almost any social issue facing humanity over the last 100 years)?

Hmm; it does to me, which was a little disappointing because that pretty much sums up about 80% of the book. Which means I felt like I was getting a very subtle lecture about how society should not be afraid of what hides in the shadows, of what it’s like to be an outcast from normal society and yearning to get out of that situation, of how important it is to not look at things with fear if we do not understand them, and how the fear of the unknown can be detrimental to society if left unchecked. All of this shrouded in a story about an old witch, who was probably treated as she was because people feared what they did not understand.

Don’t get me wrong; that’s an important lesson. What would society be like if we openly discussed concerns or issues and were all open to learning about them rather than fearing them? Probably, I would venture to guess, things might be a little better.

The remaining 20% of the book really did fit the horror genre: there was superstition, pretense of religion, odd things happening that could not be explained, a variety of characters who worked together for survival, a supernatural oddity, an old hex (curse) that nobody fully understood, etc. But the 80% that really, to me, seemed a lecture on societal behavior, was a little off-putting. Maybe that’s your thing, and that’s fine. For me, if I want to read and philosophize on the behavior of groups of people and how it can be impacted by fear, then I’m sure my library has a number of books in their philosophy or sociology sections. But, when I want to read good horror fiction, I want to be lost in the story, completely absorbed in it, and that was hard for me to get in this book. I didn’t think any moments were truly scary, or too graphic, or unnerving . . . I finished this book in the evening, went to bed, and slept fine.

I should point out – when the book was translated to English (which is the version I read), the author decided to do his own little bit of witchcraft and gave the book its own little hex: a brand new ending. He re-wrote the last few chapters, so the English book does not have the same ending as the original Dutch version. (On a related note, if anybody reads Dutch and wants to read the last few chapters and then tell me how it originally ended, I’d be really appreciative!) He also changed the setting (the original takes place in Holland, which I know is super shocking <sarcasm!>) and the character names and generally Americanized things. My Dutch leaves much to be desired, but I would be really curious to see how the changes impact the book.

So, overall, the book was fine. I liked the writing style, even though the use of “we” and “us”, which included me (the reader) in its context, was confusing and unnecessary. There were plenty of characters, giving readers choices for protagonists and antagonists depending on which view you felt was right or wrong, but there is definite herd mentality in this book which made it hard for my preferred protagonist to have any real success. The character I was most interested in was Katherine herself, but we only learn about her from the experiences and legends of supporting characters. It might have been interesting to have a few chapters or snippets from her point of view.

Unfortunately, for this book, I wanted more than “fine”. I even let things percolate in my brain for a few days – thinking maybe I missed something, maybe I was over-thinking it, or maybe I had set my expectations too high. I wanted awesomeness – I really wanted awesomeness – but just couldn’t find it in this.

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