Saturday, October 21, 2023
I had no trouble racing through Seven Roses by L.L. Tremblay, even though I found myself frustrated with many aspects of the story. It's a good "ghost" story full of so much potential, which I think only needed more work to become a novel that would haunt its readers in more ways than one.
Having had recent first hand experiences with signs from the "other side," I was instantly attracted to this novel of a little girl who can contact the dead. Ellen Taylor, however, doesn't stay little for long, as this 200-page book spans the first three decades of her paranormal life.
Tremblay clearly has the gift for rich, yet lean prose. Sadly, the gift is employed erratically. Some scenes are pregnant with layers of detail, with lines like we see on page one:
"I dragged my chair back from the table as I got up. It scratched the floor, which was already covered in scars from years of endless abuse. The shrill noise reminded me of my mother and her immeasurable aggravation whenever she heard this noise."
Sadly, many of the scenes in the novel don't make use of the author's descriptive talent, and read like anemic plot outlines, as if they were to be fleshed out later, but a deadline denied them the feeding-time they needed. Sections often felt rushed, and what dialogue was inserted lacked the context to make it flow.
Seven Roses is a romantic horror that certainly spooked me out at certain points. You'll never play around with Ouija boards after reading this book. Yet, many of the darker storylines never seemed to come together to a fulfilling or clear end.
Nonetheless, the last two chapters of the novel offer a satisfying series of twists — even if I felt like I was being rushed through one's dessert at the end of a short meal.
Like the prose, the plot feels as if it needed more time under the blow of the wordsmith's hammer. Much of it reads like an autobiography, lacking the overall cohesion one expects from a fictional story. Possibly, the sequel resolves some of these issues.
One such example was the rather psychotic behaviour of the father of the protagonist's childhood friend. About three-quarters of the way through the novel, her friend makes the obvious remark that her father "wasn't a nice man" and "was abusive to me and my mother for years." To which the protagonist responds, "I knew something wasn't right when I saw him running after your mother with a knife..."
The disappointment of never having this particular sub-plot go anywhere, was relieved by the hilarity of that line, which had my son and me laughing so hard we could barely sit up (which, in some ways, is a compliment to the author's ability to build tension).
For such a short novel, it may have suffered from having too many characters, ideas and plot threads. I suspect that doubling the word count and halving the content would have offered Stephen King some serious competition.
For example, I would have preferred reducing the protagonist's four romantic interests (two of whom didn't add much to the story) down to two — with far more time given to the shockingly clever storyline with her first fiancé, while giving her eventual husband a far more active role (rather than that of a supporting bystander).
This is one of those works where I would love to see the author produce a second edition, much like Lee Harper did with To Kill a Mockingbird (originally So Set a Watchman). Nonetheless, as I said, it was enough of a page turner that I eagerly bulldozed my way to the unexpected ending.
You can order Seven Roses through your local bookstore or online.
John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/
