Book Review : The Dreadful Revenge of Ernest Gallen : a confusing way to question whether certain murders are either justified or not

 

Author : James Lincoln Collier

Year : 2008

It started with something intriguing taking from paranormal's perspective and as usual, an addition of a child's point of view is a nice way to enlighten things, it has comedic essence and I did blurt out some laughs from few sentences that this protagonist (yewgene) said and his friends too, I could imagine things clearly in this book. The ending of it however.. feels sad but in a good way, but not exactly finished. 

"Gene Richards is being haunted by a voice from the past and gene does not like what it is saying gene tries to ignore it but it will not go away until it gets his revenge"

Taking the timing background from the depression era is interesting as I haven't read any fictions related to that era, so it's good to know about how it went back then even though this was written in the 21st century but I could say that the author, Collier has elaborated a really detailed way about the town of Magnolia, filled with bunch of hypocritic family men who I am still not sure whether they're at wrong or right.

Not all of the detailed elaboration are interesting, that's why I'm giving a good score for its 'jumping on to the next part', as in Collier didn't hesitate to just jump from A to D, to get to the point of what we should know, not much blabbering about small details of the weather, furnitures, moods for example that I personally don't feel like necessary to read.

Spoilers ahead..

Words are easy to read! since it is a mystery paranormal book for kids too, and I love it even though some important things were left out without further closure, you see.. the voice (the specter) is a vengeful spirit from a businessman who is a swindler, but not exactly a swindler, he believed the land that he bought has oil underneath but not enough evidence to show more about what's in it, the people who had invested to his project are not rich fellows, they had given up their fortune just for that investment, so at the same time the businessman kind of took advantage of that, bad move of course but I still think he doesn't deserve the lynching, but at the same time .. he shouldn't target the judge, which is yewgene's grampa, or mr. Samuels, both of them may have it covered up but they had no other choice otherwise I bet those mob are gonna target those two fellows aswell if they charge the mob for lynching the businessman (specter).

What I think is that Collier has described well enough about the state of a vengeful spirit's head, the judge and Mr. Samuels may not be the ones at full blame, but it makes sense especially if you had died a horrible way and the murderers were set free purely because they're good family men, it is a selfish reason so I understand why the specter would target anyone involved even though they weren't the ones taking his life directly at the moment. Collier made me, as a reader tried to take two perspectives into my sympathetic mind! it was confusing but worth the time, questioning whether which one is at fault. What's kind of great is that Collier is giving an ending's explanation that is heavily up to us readers, how we want to perceive it and relieve ourselves about whether the lynching was ok or was it really necessary to kill those who are not directly involved? especially smashing your own grampa's with a bat given by him, that's some mental torment right there, as if the specter also needed someone else innocent to suffer for killing their loved one, and their loved one wasn't even involved directly!, but at the same time I could understand the specter's reason, how vengeful he is, he might have actually believed that there's some oil, but he is also so wrong at making yewgene's father as a front to face the angry frauded investors. 

So many mixed up feelings and everything is almost unpredictable in this book, I could say this a really good light mystery book, along with its paranormal essence which however I didn't applaud much because it got no explanation about how the vengeful specter got into everybody's mind so easy, was he part of a witch club or something? no explaination! The ending is good, yeah it gives us readers freedom to how we would want to finish it in our head but feels a little bit unfinished, and so sad in a good way but it's giving me an uneasy feeling, instead of feeling relieved, I feel even more sad and tragic about how it should end, yewgene didn't get to see his father and I don't like how selfish his mother is by keeping him away from the father, but I guess that's just one of Collier's ways to mix up readers' feelings and head and honestly that means it's a good book if you get stressed out a little bit, but not too much, I personally still need a good ending! and you can't expect every literature works to be happy.