Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

How do you like your horror novels? Are you someone who likes a spooky story, perhaps a little romance? Or do you like it horrific? A book that is uncomfortable, throwing images into your brain that you did not want to consider but cannot stop thinking about. Baby eating rats, killer clowns in the sewer, your own parents turned by the voices on the TV to kill. It may only be January, but Clay McLeod Chapman may have already defined the year with Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. 

Noah Fairchild does not worry about his parents and tries not to think about them too much, he left them for a new life in the big city and they can have their small town ways. The messages from his Mother are getting a little too much in the build up towards Christmas. Thanksgiving did not go well and now his phone is full of messages from his Mum where she has gone fully down the conspiracy wormhole. Noah has to get off his comfy bum and drive down to check on his parents. What he finds is far worse than even he could imagine, Fax News has finally brainwashed them. 

Wake Up is an uncomfortable read. Impressively, this is not on just one level. The book has horror, specifically body horror. There are scenes of flesh tearing and bodily fluids abound. The type of sequences that are disturbing and icky at the same time. An added layer of uncomfort comes in who is in these scenes. Many of the brainwashed are family of Noah. He must fight against his loved ones to survive and witness things he never could have imagined. 

Chapman does a fantastic job of writing a truly everyman piece. Noah is just a man, liberal in his viewpoint and not someone who has kept in touch with any survival techniques. Therefore, when the apocalypse erupts, all his pithy remarks and intelligent conversation is not much help when your mother is trying to dry hump you as she bites your ear off. 

There are moments in the book that capture one of the things I find most horrifying in this type of fiction. When does a character admit that the thing in front of them is no longer the loved one they remember and are now something else. In zombie films, a character shoots the undead in the head, left, right and centre, but what if that was your mother, father, child? What if they were fine five minutes ago but are now suddenly different. It may take you too long to switch to survival mode, you may already be dead by then. 

The way in which the characters are turned is also uncomfortable. The book is a dark satire on modern technology. Cable news gets a bashing, but so does online help gurus and social media platforms. The book could be a sneering inditement of politics on the right of America, but Chapman also turns their ire on the liberal mindset. Noah admits to himself that he is useless in most situations that are not behind a desk or the dinner table.  

Politics plays a key role in Wake Up, but I like to think it should get most people's backs up, no matter their political persuasion, no one is left unscathed. The gulf between generations, states, and families in modern America (and the rest of the world) makes for a good base for horror. Chapman does a great job of never trying to overexplain what the evil is, instead using modern techniques of disinformation to enhance the story further. 

The style in which the book is written adds to the horror. Told in three parts, all feature the Fairchild family. Act I sees Noah confront his parents and then then Act II changes the pace. Now we follow Noah’s brother and that family as they descend into madness. This section is the most horrific as the smaller child, Marcus, witnesses the slow decay of his family over the weeks. I found his story compelling and scary. Will he survive? It is a sad story and one of neglect, heartbreaking. 

Act III leads to the finale by opening the story wider. We witness what has become of America when 50% of the population Wake Up, the answer is carnage. The concluding section reiterates once more that this is a horror novel and not Urban Fantasy or one of those light spooky tales. In horror it does not always work out quite like you would want. 

Using the word enjoy about Wake Up is not quite right as it is not enjoyable as such. What it is, is an excellent horror book. The type of story that stays with you days after reading it. I had to power through sections because I was so worried about the fate of some characters. That is powerful story telling. Dark comedy and satire, Wake Up is these, but never forgets to remain at its core a horror story – a nasty, compelling, exploitative, schlock horror knockout.