Universal Harvester by John Darnielle (9781925321937)

Description - Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

From the author of the acclaimed Wolf in White Van comes a horror-infused thriller set in a tiny Midwestern town.

Jeremy works at the counter of Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It's the 1990s, pre-DVD, and the work is predictable and familiar; he likes his boss, Sarah Jane, and it gets him out of the house, which has felt desolate and empty since his mother died six years before.

But when Stephanie Parsons, a local schoolteacher, comes in to return her copy of Targets, she has an odd complaint- 'There's something on it,' she says. Two days later, Lindsey Redinius brings back She's All That and complains that something is wrong- 'There's another movie on this tape.'

Curious, Jeremy takes a look. And what he sees on the videos is so strange and disturbing that it propels him out of his comfortable routine and into a search for the tapes' creator. As the once-peaceful fields and barns surrounding Nevada begin to seem sinister and threatening, Jeremy must come to terms with a truth that is as devastatingly sad as it is shocking.

Creepy and poignant by turns, Universal Harvester is a deep dive into damaged lives and the different ways people try to escape grief, loss, and darkness.
'An eerie but lovingly detailed delineation of a landscape that, like all landscapes, is part external reality and part memory ... Darnielle understands that there are things writing can approach but must pass over in silence. He risks those silences; listen.'
-Colin Barett, The Guardian

'A bewitching and eerily still piece of fiction. Darnielle has a gift for domestic detail and a nimble way of capturing large feelings without dwelling on them.'
-Ben Jeffrey, TLS

' Universal Harvester starts like a spooky thriller, then opens out into a moving, beautifully etched picture of America's lost and profoundly lonely.'
-Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian

Buy Universal Harvester by John Darnielle from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.