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Peter Straub
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A Dark Matter Hardcover – February 9, 2010

by Peter Straub (Author)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 519 ratings
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The incomparable master of horror and suspense returns with a powerful, brilliantly terrifying novel that redefines the genre in original and unexpected ways.

The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favors of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body—and the shattered souls of all who were present.

Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. Unfolding through the individual stories of the fated group’s members, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that will satisfy Peter Straub's many ardent fans, and win him legions more.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Doubleday
  4. Publication date
    February 9, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    038551638X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0385516389
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this tour de force from bestseller Straub (In the Night Room), four high school friends in 1966 Madison, Wis.—Hootie Bly, Dilly Olson, Jason Boatman, and Lee Truax—fall under the spell of charismatic wandering guru Spencer Mallon. During an occult ceremony in which Mallon attempts to break through to a higher reality, something goes horribly awry leaving one participant dead. Decades later, Lee's writer husband interviews the quartet to find out what happened. In Roshomon-like fashion, each relates a slightly different account of the trauma they experienced. Straub masterfully shows how the disappointments, downturns, and failed promise of the four friends' lives may have stemmed from this youthful experience, and suggests, by extension, that the malignant evil they helped unleash into the world has tainted all hope ever since. Brilliant in its orchestration and provocative in its speculations, this novel ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Six book critics venture into a new novel by a best-selling horror writer. The writer is said to have magical abilities to blend horror conventions with literary fiction to keep the pages turning. He is even said to have touched Stephen King! Four of the critics come away convinced that a transcendent supernatural event has occurred, which may have something to do with the nature of evil. But two are horribly scarred by the event--unbearably bored, convinced they have just read a rejected script from Lost. Whose version of events is true? We may never know. All critics agree on is that the only possible way to describe such a plot structure is to reference Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon--so readers may just have to investigate for themselves.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday; 1st edition (February 9, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 038551638X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385516389
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 519 ratings

About the author

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Peter Straub

Peter Straub

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Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. They include Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room, and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He has written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction, and he edited the Library of America’s edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s Tales and the forthcoming Library of America’s 2-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and three World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. In 2006, he was given the HWA’s Life Achievement Award. In 2008, he was given the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award by Poets & Writers. At the World Fantasy Convention in 2010, he was given the WFC’s Life Achievement Award.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
519 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

javamonster
5.0 out of 5 stars Spinning Intersecting Realities
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2023
Verified Purchase
There are a lot of reviews that go into detail about their commenter’s feelings about this book. As with any Straub book, there are layers of reality covering the surface of multi sided dice with every throw. Er, chapter and paragraph.

Contrary to what I thought would happen, the book sucked me in, and while the ending felt as important or unimportant as the other viewpoints of what happened That Night and afterward, it didn’t exactly disappoint me. Compared to the other stories, The Eel’s felt humdrum, I guess.

Straub’s never been great at writing women, and indeed, tends to use them as cyphers and enigmas within his stories. This is a very guy-oriented book, with two female characters who of course hate each other (over a man, naturally). The Eel was elusive in the book not only as a character but as the character who Had All the Answers.

All in all, to me, at the end, there’s only one true mystery, while all the other experiences were a shared LSD trip and flashbacks. But boy, it was a whole lot of fun getting there to the end of the book.
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ugonaut
4.0 out of 5 stars hmmm...
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2014
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I have read much Straub, I think, and over an expanse of time that finds me, 25 years later, writing a short note , (my god, for Amazon? Really?) about this novel - where I suppose a more heartfelt note could have been written much earlier, on his novel Shadowland.
Several of his books involve a youth who is either more perceptive or just more observant than the norm, and in so perceiving begins to sense some abnormality that intrudes into daily life, haunting the young person who saw or felt the intrusion. But the abnormality is always light. It never weighs so heavily that the rest of the world need notice it. If there are deaths, and they are inexplicable, then they dissolve into the noise of other unexplained events, events which though unexplained are also perfectly explicable. There is always some doubt that anything at all was seen, and that perhaps it was all something dreamed (day) and imagined, concocted by the character wittingly though perhaps unwillingly.
A Dark Matter is an example of this, Straubs own trope. Here there are multiple children each perceptive, and each seeing things that are , largely, agreed upon by all. We do not spend much time with them as children but as adults, acid-washed like jeans, as they come together again to talk about their strange consensus reality for the last time.
What is interesting to me about Straub, as seen in this book, is how he largely avoids the jibble-jabble that lesser writers would misuse their words on. He describes a Summoning, an archetypal supernatural witchy magic demon thing, which one would think to be instantly and unforgivably trite, but somehow he puts no importance on it. It is there, I can find the sentences in the text, but the reader is gently pushed away from having to consider them.
That is a slight of hand that is perfected here, and is one of several reasons that if you were to a writer be, you should spend some time with Straub, here in his genre of one.
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TMStyles
3.0 out of 5 stars Great Premise--Disappointing Delivery
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2010
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Having long been a Peter Straub fan, I immediately bought and dug into "A Dark Matter" with great expectations arising from the marketing comments and jacket blurbs about its premise. Tales of high schoolers coming together in a bonding experience that follows them throughout the rest of their lives are a fertile field of endeavor, especially in the horror genre. I had powerful expectations of how Straub would handle this tale of 4 life long high school age friends who, along with 3 outsiders, come under the sway of a guru/spiritualist/exploiter/magician (Spencer Mallon) who leads them in an occult ceremony to pierce another reality or dimension. Mistakes occur, the ceremony goes horribly wrong, one participant is horribly mutilated and another disappears, and, of course, the others remain scarred for life. Thirty years later, Lee Harwell, the one member of the band of friends who did not participate, becomes so haunted by what happened that he interviews 5 of the 6 remaining participants in an effort to both write a book and put nagging ghosts to rest. What an interesting and fertile premise for a master like Straub.

Unfortunately, for this reader, this great potential was never fully developed or realized. The Roshomon-like approach with each participant contributing his/her perspectives and memories to form the whole as bigger than the sum of its parts never came together for me in any significant way. The promised terror, spookiness, and horror never quite materialized for me; indeed, there is evil and supernaturalness throughout "A Dark Matter" but the evil is often more philosophical that physical. Additionally, there are too many unanswered questions about motivations and obsessions that leave the reader feeling unfulfilled.

Straub is not a writer that one reads in a quick finish-the book-at-all-costs setting, nor baking in the sun at the beach. One has to enjoy being challenged by vocabulary and syntax, by inference rather than the obvious, by atmospheric and character development over action, and by filling in the gaps with one's own imagination. This formula has paid dividends for Straub over the course of an impressive career. For me, this effort fell short of what I expected from one of the masters of the genre. Still, I would recommend the book to Straub fans as well as those fans of the genre since there seems to be a definite split in opinion by his readers.
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Top reviews from other countries

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fan mysteries
4.0 out of 5 stars histoire riche mais narration pesante.
Reviewed in France on October 11, 2019
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Les faits dramatiques sont reconstitués des années plus tard par les récits , présentés en succession, des protagonistes..
Avec, certes, une tension croissante, plus l'intérêt de points de vue et d'évolutions ultérieures qui diffèrent radicalement, mais une lourdeur tout de même.
Thèmes abordés : l'addiction aux gourous, l'occultisme et les expériences extra-sensorielles,, la violence et sa rédemption (éventuelle ; le récit ne "tranche" pas).
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Arindam Moulick
1.0 out of 5 stars Boring tosh!
Reviewed in India on May 5, 2018
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Last week I swam through a deluge of boring tosh! I somehow forced myself to read the book "A Dark Matter" by Peter Straub in full, which came across to me as a mere flotsam of a story that simply doesn't soak! Full of hokey-dokey stuff that doesn't make sense. My advice: Stay away from it. Just do.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars His best since GHOST STORY
Reviewed in Canada on October 9, 2016
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His best since GHOST STORY. Such an original novel. Terror without the gore. I think it belongs in its own genre. Unforgettable.
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Daniel Alejandro Vélez Palos
3.0 out of 5 stars Pudo ser mejor
Reviewed in Mexico on September 16, 2016
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Un libro con una buena historia que no termina de explotar pudo ser mejor por ratos esta tedioso y revoltoso.
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Mrs. E. A. Molloy
5.0 out of 5 stars Love love LOVE this book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2011
Verified Purchase
As an avid reader of everything from literature to comics, I devour good authors - and Straub is one of the best. My other favourite contemporary novel-writers are Geoff Ryman and Graham Joyce, so I'm working in a horror/fantasy vein here.
The characters truly took root in my imagination, and I think I'm going to be carrying them around with me for a while (especially the adorable Hooty).
Straub's style can sometimes be rather labyrinthine sometimes (previos novel, 'The Throat' for instance, should have been a couple of hundred pages shorter) but it works well in this story of a husband working backwards from what he knows in the present day, to discover what happened to his wife and their best friends in High School in 1966.
Very supernatural in nature (more so than Straub's usual oeuvre), and not unlike Dracula in structure, the book tells the story of one fatal night through many viewpoints, and the reader is ultimately left to decide for her/himself what really occurred.

If you like well-written dark fiction, you can't really go wrong here.

BTW: Amazon - why no more "I own this" and "rate it" button? What gives?
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