Transcript
Speaker: Hello listeners, this is your blanket spoiler warning. We will be spoiling 99 Fierce Street, the first horror. We will not spoil the second and third books in this trilogy.
Speaker: Cody's cheeks darkened to scarlet. I felt a presence in the room, Callie, she said, lowering her voice to a solemn whisper, a cold presence, misslike. I felt it float over the table, and then, a second later, I saw the knife plunge into Daddy.
Speaker: Welcome to the Book Club Podcast. Today, we are discussing 99 Fear Street, the first horror by R .L. Stein. This is our young adult choice for the season. I'm Carly, and I read this book many times when I was a teenager. It's one of the few Fear Street books that I didn't give away, although I'm not sure why. Just the thought of this book evokes a sickening feeling because I always remember that green vomit scene the most vividly. I'm Caroline, and I did not read this book.
Speaker: as a child, although I did read a lot of the Goosebumps books, so I'm very excited to dig into some R .L. Stine again. This is a classic haunted house story.
Speaker: A family moves into a new to them house that happens to have a violent history that they uncover over time, and they are immediately visited with frightening apparitions and spooky happenings. Blood is spilled. The book opens with a prologue featuring two teenage boys or young men working on the construction of the house in the 1960s, 30 years before the book takes place. They find a number of very aggressive rats
Speaker: and then get eaten or consumed or killed in some way by a dark cloud that comes out of a crack in the wall. The story then opens 30 years later with the Fraser family of five driving to their newly purchased home at 99 Fear Street. The family features Callie and Cody who are 16 year old twin girls and they have a nine year old brother named James and two parents that never get named.
Speaker: Callie is our narrator and we know her thoughts from her nightly diary. She goes out of her way to inform us that she is more confident and prettier than her sister and that this causes some jealousy on Cody's part. When they arrive at the house, both girls hate it. The trees are thick and the yard is dark and cold, even the middle of a summer day. And then immediately the family starts getting injured in unusual ways and weird things start happening in the house.
Speaker: Callie meets a boy her own age, Anthony. Anthony tells them the lore about the house. A hundred years ago, Simon and Angelica Fear tortured and murdered countless people and buried their bodies where 99 Fear Street now stands. When the house was built 30 years ago, they found the coffins.
Speaker: but the homeowner decided to continue building his house anyway. On the day he brought his wife, son, and daughter to see the house, he left his family in the living room to check on something. When he came back downstairs, he found them sitting with their heads missing and blood everywhere. While Anthony is telling the story, James starts panicking because he can't find Cubby, his new puppy. They can hear Cubby barking and whining, but they can't find him. The puppy's barking can't be heard outside the house. This goes on for weeks, with James getting more and more distressed.
Speaker: He refuses to leave the house. One morning, Callie finds the porch covered in blood and the number 99 scrawled on the wall. She screams and her family comes to find that it's not blood, it's red paint. Cody tries to convince Callie that the house is haunted. Callie starts hearing quiet knocks on her door at night. When she gets up to open the door, there's no one there. One night she gets up to wash her face and green vomit comes out of the tap. She can't turn it off. She wakes Cody and her father trying to stop the flow of hot,
Speaker: sour, stinky vomit. Mrs. Fraser comes into the bathroom and she's covered in blood. It's dripping from her bedroom ceiling. Mr. Fraser goes to the attic to find the source of the blood and finds three heads, a woman and a boy and a girl. At this point, Cody tells their parents the story that Anthony told them about the original owner of the house.
Speaker: Mr. Frazier decides he's going to confront the real estate agent named Mr. Lurie about not telling him the history of the house prior to sale. Mr. Lurie's business cards only have an address on them, not a phone number. And when they go to that address, it's an empty lot. Mr. Frazier is distraught that all their money has been sunk into this house and they can't escape.
Speaker: They then go to the town historian and learn that Mr. Lurie was the original owner of the house, or at least someone of that name hanged himself in the house a month after he found his beheaded family. One night, Anthony comes over for dinner again. While he's washing the dinner dishes, the garbage disposal turns on and pulls his hand into it. Two of his fingers are cut off and Kelly rescues them from the drain and they go to the emergency room.
Speaker: Later that night, Callie catches Cody knocking on her door in the creepy manner mentioned previously. Cody admits that she's been the one knocking on Callie's door, but says she's just trying to convince Callie that the house is haunted. She also admits to painting the red 99.
Speaker: That night, Callie reads James a bedtime story, noticing he's very fearful. She leaves James and is writing in her diary when she hears him screaming. The family rushes to James' room, but they can't find him. Mr. Fraser determines that he's trapped in the wall and starts knocking holes in the wall with a sledgehammer. They follow James' voice downstairs. Mrs. Fraser falls and breaks her arm. Mr. Fraser hears James in the ceiling.
Speaker: James says he's found Cubby and they hear Cubby barking excitedly. Mr. Frazier climbs the ladder to knock a hole in the ceiling. A white cloud descends from the hole and when it leaves, Mr. Frazier is blind. That night, after Callie and Cody left their parents at the hospital, Callie can't bring herself to write in her diary. She hears knocking on her door and goes out to confront Cody.
Speaker: but it's not Cody. It's a spirit that looks like Callie. It tells Callie to read her diary, which says, I died tonight, and swallows Callie up in hot tar. Cody tries to save her, but doesn't succeed. The ghost of Callie watches her parents and twin sister leave the house. She is now the full embodiment of the rage of the haunted house. In the epilogue, Callie watches a new family move in, a teenage boy, his cat, and his parents.
Speaker: So now for our opening question, I'd like to talk about the end of the book, Callie becomes the personification of the house. And so my question is, is this a shift in the way that the haunting works?
Speaker: So here's a quote from that part of the book. The overpowering evil of the house had consumed her. And as she floated up, she felt the century -old rage, felt all the anger, all the fury, all the smoldering evil. So much evil that the walls rang out with her scornful laughter, the laughter of a hundred tortured souls now triumphant inside her.
Speaker: an evil ghost in a house of evil. So what's the relationship between ghosts and this haunted house and what's the relationship between ghosts and haunted house in most haunted house stories? Does one require the other or is one a manifestation of the other?
Speaker: So I've been thinking about this question since we figured out this would be our opening question. And it wasn't until you read it just now that I realized a factor that might be relevant, which is nobody has lived in this house until Callie and her family because it was only built in the sixties. Mr. Lurie and his family never, never even moved in much less lived there for any extended period of time. Callie's family is the first to do so.
Speaker: Maybe there is, at the end of this book, an evolution in the haunted house. And it has something to do with the fact that now someone has lived there long enough to take on the qualities of the house or to take on the mission of the house. But I think it's pretty undeniable that before that there was no ghost or entity or person associated with the hauntings.
Speaker: Yeah, and Mr. Laurie is a weird aspect of it too, because he's connected to the house. So you have a question about was the Mr. Laurie, who's the real estate agent who sells the house to the Frasiers, is that actually the same person who was the first owner of the house who hanged himself? Or was it someone else? So I'm curious about your thoughts about that. So like, maybe let's talk about that and then come back to like, why is it Mr. Laurie, the personification of evil? Why did it take Callie's family and Callie to do it?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good point about Mr. Lurie. Wouldn't he have been the first personification? But he seems a little distant in a couple of ways. I think it's implied at the end that Callie will never leave the house. And Mr. Lurie, if he's
Speaker: a ghost or possessed by the spirit of the house or someone just serving the house, he can clearly leave and he clearly spends most of his time elsewhere. Like another plane of existence elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, maybe he does have a real estate agency somewhere or maybe he just
Speaker: I don't know, like a vampire turns into that when he's not selling haunted homes to people. I don't know. But he seems somewhat more removed from the house at least. It's true, we never get insight into what he's thinking so we don't know if he's motivated by revenge, if he's even a person with motivations, or just a manifestation of the house.
Speaker: Yeah, like, you know, deep sea ocean fish that has the light to attract prey, like he's the light that attracts the prey to the house. That's a good analogy. I think I incline more to that view than that he is.
Speaker: emotionally intertwined with the house in the same way Callie is. And part of the reason I think that is because the happenings that occur earlier in the story are just so dispersed in a way. They do not seem to have a motivating intelligence or even any baseline unification between what happened. So I made a list of everything where I actually don't think I got everything of the thing, the spooky things that happen. And it is such a broad list.
Speaker: I thought this was unusual compared to most horror stories. So there's the unexplained injuries that draw blood, like a screwdriver, a knife slipping. There's the aggressive rats, the basement black cloud that kills two people.
Speaker: Tree limbs randomly falling, her dad getting stabbed. He doesn't stab himself. Somehow the knife is just in him all of a sudden. A ladder being pushed over in much the same manner while Cody's on top of it. The puppy disappearing, but it's barking can still be heard in the house, which to me was very eerie.
Speaker: James's disappearance into the walls, the green vomit, blood appearing on Callie's mom, who then falls down the stairs and breaks her arm, the apparition of the three heads, Anthony's hand being forced down the garbage disposal, a ghost with Callie's face informing her about her upcoming death, and then the hot tar consuming Callie and killing her at the end.
Speaker: It's a pretty wide variety of phenomenon. And none of it is through the language ascribed to a particular cause, right? The opening quote we read about the knife that plunges into daddy. I think that's a great example because Cody says, I saw the knife plunge into daddy. There's no description of what or who plunged it. It's presented very passively. And so I think it is a real shift and change when now at the end, there's Cali, a personification, a central entity running the house.
Speaker: Right, like she will add motivation. So as you were listing all of the different things that happen, I was thinking about, are these actions supposed to scare the family away? Because, you know, that's a trope with haunted houses. Is it the ghost who wants people to leave it alone? Or is it trying to draw people in? And, you know, there's not one clear directive there. But the thing with James and the puppy, like, first of all, the puppy disappearing into the walls, and that becomes
Speaker: an anchor for James. James does not want to leave the house because he has to find his puppy. And so in that way, it's a trap. And then James is disappearing. That's a trap for the mom. Yes. Which mother is going to want to leave when she can hear her son's voice and only in that house, right? And so that's a trap. But then the knife, the window falling on Cody's hand, the tree falling, Cody falling up. Those seem like they're trying to scare people away. So yeah, it's more of this a lot of chaos.
Speaker: But then that makes me wonder why Callie? So in the house when Callie is killed, it's her and Cody who are left in the house. And Callie is the one who gets sucked into the hot tar. And I find it so fascinating, especially since she's the one who didn't believe in haunted houses. Cody was immediately the one who was like, this house is haunted. I don't know what to do with that. Like Callie, why Callie? Why did the house swallow up Callie? I don't know. I also think it's interesting that Callie's death
Speaker: takes the form of her coming face to face with an apparition that looks exactly like her, which is an odd echo of the fact that she has a twin. And I think they make the point that they're not identical twins, although they do look similar. And so that seems like the house is kind of echoing that in an odd way, right before her death. I don't know exactly. You said earlier that you thought some of the happenings were an effort on the house to scare people away. I think maybe that's true, but they also just seem to me sort of like the lashing out of a
Speaker: an injured or an angry animal. And I felt that way because there was so much randomness in what happened. But yet the rats, so in that prologue too, the house doesn't use the rats in that way. Like I was expecting the two kids to be eaten by rats, which would have been much grosser and much scarier in my opinion to me that like the idea of like these animals in my house eating me is more terrifying than like an amorphous smoke
Speaker: coming out and then somehow magically I'm dead. So I thought that was interesting. No, that makes perfect sense that the randomness is like a hurt animal, but it isn't represented by animals. It's represented by these vague substances, smoke and green vomit and blood and
Speaker: Yeah. And two different colored smoke. Yeah. White smoke and black smoke. Like, did you need both in the same haunted house? And it's hard to unify those, right? The black tar that consumes Callie at the end seems like a very Christian idea of hell. You know, some.
Speaker: Christian versions of help. Lake of Fire consumes you, but the rest of these examples I wouldn't call particularly religiously motivated or symbolic, I don't think. Hard to imagine how the green vomit would fit in with a more religiously based iconography, so that's not there. Do you think it has something to do with the fact that Callie keeps a diary?
Speaker: Oh, interesting. It's a really cool trick on the house's part to imitate Callie's handwriting. I die tonight. I also wonder if the house is some sort of intelligence, which we don't know, right? We've called it an animal that it was totally random. But if it is by putting her thoughts simplifying them and putting them out in the world, it can
Speaker: access them it can can read them it can reflect them yeah because they've been given shape and what is a haunted house if not giving evil particular shape yeah so evil the word evil is used a lot so we have simon and angelica fear who are evil founders of fear street and their evil created this
Speaker: energy. But that's that's about all we get. We don't get more cause and effect in that story. No, which I think is very interesting in and of itself, because I think a lot of modern horror, certainly more adult horror focuses a lot on the lore of why something is happening. You get that much more in Stephen King, for example, and we'll read
Speaker: some of his work. And I don't know if this is because this is a children's book and children just don't care. They just want to get to the cool, gross stuff. I don't know if this is just a different style, but this does not provide that background reasoning about here's why this evil's loose in the world or why bad things are happening. Just really is not interested.
Speaker: in explaining that in other than in a cursory way the evil just is and then bad stuff happens but then you might get consumed by it and become part of it i mean that twist at the end seems very different in tone yeah but it's not like punishment like callie isn't being punished for anything she did explicitly it's
Speaker: It's she's just consumed like she was just what the first one that the house is able to consume. That's true and she we should probably mention she gives voice to being angry that the new family that she's watching move in is alive. That very much felt like not just the voice of Callie the ghost but of the house and anger at the people for being alive. I don't know why a house would be angry at someone for being alive.
Speaker: So the house is cold and dark like a corpse and by definition both stuck in one place because it's a house and it is not mobile like human beings but also very much stuck in the past but to be angry about that you'd have to imagine that the house has a desire to be otherwise which is maybe kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker: No, so I'm wondering like the anger, it doesn't matter what the new family was like, the anger is there and then there's a justification for the anger, right? Like I wonder if a family came to look at the house and decided not to move in, there would be anger. You know what I mean? Like it's just the anger is unchanging and then the reasoning for the anger is added afterwards.
Speaker: I mean, I think anger is mostly unmet expectations or disappointment. So what is causing the anger? I mean, there's this common idea in haunted houses that sort of bad things or violence leave a mark and therefore repeat in a way. But I agree, this also seems angry. And that's a little different than just saying there's sort of an imprint or an echo that keeps going. It's just a trauma. Trauma response. Anger? Mm -hmm. I think you still have the question of unmet expectations. Like, what are you angry about?
Speaker: Well, but something wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Right. So I maybe I'm projecting too much onto it, but I am thinking of the hundreds of bodies that were found and they never are given identities. Like we don't even know, you know, who the fears were targeting. Were they targeting travelers? Were they targeting servants? Like we know nothing about them, just that they were tortured and murdered.
Speaker: and then buried in this location. And so once those identities fade away, like, sure, there's an original anger that like anger that they shouldn't have died in this way, they shouldn't have been tortured while alive, but they've been dead for so long that the identity has faded away. And with that is the reason for the anger. Okay, so you think it's the anger of the individuals who were killed in this way?
Speaker: I think the anger and the evil was born out of their trauma, but has become its own thing. Okay. See, I think there's a little bit more agency just on the part of a place here. So on the one hand, we could say this originated in people, both their anger and their evil, you know, it continues to echo or has some sort of long lasting effect. And now there are people back in the house and it's manifesting in people again. But I kind of like the idea that there,
Speaker: is a particular geographical place that has maybe even agency of its own or at least existence of its own. And it is also a factor in what is happening here. Well, I don't remember many of the other Fierce Street books that I remember. I know I read them, but I don't remember any connected lore between Fierce Street books. I wonder if that's explained throughout the series. It's like little bits get dropped.
Speaker: into the different books in the series. And then you get a full sense of Fear Street as a location, as a place where weird things can happen. It may not be. I kind of like the idea that there are some stories that just aren't as invested in lore and you're along for the ride. And that is what I remember liking about Goosebumps series, which just crazy stuff happened like that, the green vomit scene. I would have loved that. And there were similar things in other Goosebumps stories.
Speaker: My memory of his stories is always a particular, not even a scene, but an image, an idea, not necessarily how it's all connected and hangs together. And there's this world where this type of causality, you know, connects to this, that, and the other was very satisfying for that reason. Yeah, I want to know more about that because, you know, reading this again after many years, it struck me as training wheels, horror training wheels, right? Like,
Speaker: Why is this written for teenagers? And does that explain sort of the like action packed, so much random assortment of horror, scary things, violence? What is it about like the vomit, especially because that is the thing that stuck with me. The vomit was so clear. And that's what I always think of whenever I like see the book on my shelf is like a green vomit, hot, green, sticky vomit.
Speaker: Yeah, why is that so attractive to teenagers and kids? You seem to mention that you would have enjoyed it as a kid. Is your enjoyment of it less as an adult or are you still enjoying it? So as an adult, I still enjoy horror, but I'm much more interested in the lore. You know, what is the originating story? I expect background. I expect, honestly, several layers of background in history that we
Speaker: Discover over time. I expect the presentation of the spooky phenomenon to be cohesive with what that backstory is. I expect it to be cohesive with certain types of symbology. And they can pick their own, of course, but my expectation is just a lot higher in regard to what can be analyzed, I guess.
Speaker: use the term training wheels is this horror training wheels. I actually think it's kind of the opposite. I think this is the more pure form of horror. It's just bad stuff happening. You don't get to explain it or justify it by knowing the lore and fitting it into place because I think that's a very adult way to handle the world. And I think we are increasingly trained to do that with every year of our adulthood. And so we can't drop it even when we're trying to enjoy something that should just be over the top and like a horror novel.
Speaker: So I actually think this is closer to being the straight stuff in terms of horror in some ways. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think in myself, I like to have happy ending or resolution, right? So when I read or watch horror, the lore is almost always the key to defeating the evil, right? It's almost always the key to finding the resolution to make it all stop. And that does not happen in this book.
Speaker: And there's no expectation that it will ever stop. It's just changing form and evolving. Yes. I also think this is a very young adult children's book in a certain way because as a kid, you're just born into a situation and you deal with it, right? Right. It's only much later in your 20s and 30s when you start to learn who your parents were as people and who their parents were and why that made them the way they were, what economic factors really contributed to this period of your childhood or stuff like that.
Speaker: you didn't get that until later. As a kid, you're just immersed in it and living with it, right? It's very much like this book, I think. So can we talk a little bit about James? Because that makes me think of like James's reaction to the haunting. He doesn't seem to care. He cares about his puppy and he wants his puppy. And that's true even after the puppy disappears. And yeah, I mean, now as an adult, that's more shocking and horrifying to me, this poor child who's just kind of trapped. And
Speaker: upset and you know at one point they try to send him away to camp and he goes once or twice and then refuses to leave because he just wants to be near his puppy and just unable to identify like this is a hopeless cause because he's a kid he just wants his puppy that's all he ever wanted.
Speaker: Oh, it's so sad. It is. That was affecting and then his ultimate disappearance into the very walls of the house where they can hear him calling out to mommy and daddy for help. And so they get the sledgehammer and they're trying to break down the walls, but then it moves from upstairs to the living room ceiling to the walls and then it just fades away. And whatever the haunted house is, I think one of the things it is, is family.
Speaker: It just seems like how individuals get completely lost in their own family that loves them even as the family sometimes is trying to save them but sometimes the family dynamics that make them lost. I don't know exactly where to go with that but I agree that those two.
Speaker: instances with James, the loss of his puppy and then how he ultimately gets lost were by far the most affecting to me too. I always look for like the comforting part of it and the comforting part of that is that he does get reunited with his puppy so wherever they are at least they're together. I actually hadn't even thought about that. I guess that's true wherever it is. So we mentioned how this seems like either training wheels for horror or in some ways the essence of horror
Speaker: Because it lacks explanation. Do you want to talk about the horror genre or the horror tropes that we see here? Yeah, let's talk about that Okay, so, you know right off the bat a previous act of violence in the house That either may have caused the current haunting or you know is in some way related to the current haunting
Speaker: That seems like a basic trope, right? Another one, there's some reason you can't leave. The family has to keep returning to the house until the story is over. Here, it's because there's no money to go elsewhere. But there was more than that. You mentioned James being unwilling to leave the house. I thought it was kind of odd that even when all this terrible stuff is happening, they'll go to the hospital for some injury, and then they have to come home to the house.
Speaker: Or I think you pointed this out, they keep closing the windows because that feels comforting to them, but they're trapping themselves in the house that is hurting and killing them. Yes. No, it feels like a very suffocating place. And they mentioned the heat getting making the room warm. And James' room is last night when Callie is reading to him. He doesn't want to open the window because he's afraid. And I found that surprising because they feel the suffocation of the house and all of these horrible things happening, injuries, lack of money.
Speaker: inescapability and yet having that window closed is comforting to James. And then Callie does it her last night alive too. She doesn't want to open the window because she feels safer with it closed. And it's like the bad thing is in the house with you. Don't you want to invite or at least have an escape route out to out your window somehow. I couldn't make sense of that. I mean, I think that's one of what the things that makes haunted novels scary. That's where you're supposed to go for comfort. There's a scene
Speaker: Sometime when they get back from one of their mini trips to the hospital and it's 5 a .m And some or all of them gather in the kitchen and get whatever beverages are most comforting to them I think it's orange juice for Callie and to your coffee for the adults or something like that but it's this very domestic picture of You know something bad has happened and now we're finally back home getting our comforting beverages and talking it over and
Speaker: But they're in the place that caused the emergency and the harm. Right. Yeah. I mean, one thing I appreciate in the story is that Mr. Frazier, it seems very quickly is like we got to get out of here, right? Like he very quickly is like I can't keep letting these injuries happen to myself and my family, but he can't get out. Like they go to family to try and borrow money to leave, but then they can't. So for him, at least he's not returning to the house and finding comfort in it. He's actively trying to leave.
Speaker: which I like, I like, I like some rationality. My character is right. Well, he's actively trying to leave, but they never go stay in a hotel or anything like that, right? That's true. And I assume it's because they don't have the money or think that they can't afford it, which, you know, as a new homeowner, I really relate to that, like,
Speaker: I bought an old fixer upper and yeah there's some things I have to tolerate and I will because it's mine. The dream of home ownership and the effort of having your finances together and finally it's a space of your own and
Speaker: that Mr. Frazier expresses out at the beginning of the book of like, it's our home, you know, you don't have to be squished into a little apartment, and we can fix it up. We make it our own. I really, really tell all of that. I agree with all that. But I think also this idea that you can't leave the home ease of in as you're discovering problems with it. And, you know, it's not cut and dried. It reminds me of another story or saying that I've heard, which is
Speaker: You can't build your new world except with pieces of the old, implying you don't ever get to just cut off something and go straight to the new, right? Even as you're trying to get out of whatever your situation is or your cycle believes, you're going to have to use pieces of that to build the bridge to the new world. That feels very true about haunted houses because you can't leave until it's over, basically.
Speaker: in whatever form that takes. So back to tropes, I think certainly another one is moving into a new town and the local towns people know more about your house than you do and or may have a more sinister connection to it than you realize initially.
Speaker: Yeah, I wonder if that's connected to the idea of fitting in in a new place. You talked a little bit about family before and the idea of being in your family and your family is separated from the community, but also is trying to fit into the community somehow. There's this like tension between that maybe.
Speaker: I think so. It also strikes me that a lot of haunted house stories require moving to a totally new town where you don't know anyone. I think actually in the course of human history, that's an exceedingly rare thing. In America, we're very mobile. Most of the world has been for the last century or so, but you can't have those stories in a town everyone, including the protagonist, has lived in their entire lives plus all the generations before, right? These stories very much depend on a lack of knowledge about a new venture.
Speaker: Hmm. Yeah, we should probably bring that up in future discussions. See if it comes up in our, in our other readings. Yes, I agree. Another trope is house with its own weather, dark and gloomy while it's bright and sunny out. So we're talking about moving into new community, but the house is even in some ways separate within that community, although not entirely. Cause the townspeople always know about it and have connections to it. So little bit of both connection and disconnection between the house and its environment.
Speaker: And then another one that I noticed in this novel was that early on there's a harmless explanation for some of the happenings. And so that here was when Cody admitted that she had painted 99 on the front door in red and that she was doing the creepy knocking on Callie's door.
Speaker: And also, there's a chapter ending with an animal jumping on Callie and it turns out that's the puppy. Like that was a fake out. Oh, yes. How about that? And this is all pretty early on, I would say in maybe the first quarter or third of the book. And I guess that's to keep the reader guessing. But I think that's also a trope in that it makes it so that the reader and the protagonist sort of doubt what's happening, doubt the evidence of their own senses, because they can say, well, you know, this small portion
Speaker: of the happenings had a reasonable explanation right and of course it prolongs the story in anticipation so it has a very practical effect as well but i bet we will see that come up again too yeah i don't think it was very effective in this book i like stories where there is some suspense about
Speaker: you know, everything can be logically explained. And there's a suspense about questioning your own sanity as a character, but also as the reader. Yeah, sometimes there can be a little bit of like a mystery novel effect figuring out what's happening. This book did not have that. Not really. Right. Any other tropes that you suspect exist in this book? I guess it's hard to say what's a trope when this is technically our first book, but we've all seen and read and watched horror movies before.
Speaker: I mean, rats are pretty common in scary stories. And rats are pretty scary. They are, but I think it's because they're so smart and fascinating and social, and they can invade your home. They are a real danger. You can't let one rat in because then you will have hundreds. Then it's impossible to get rid of them.
Speaker: I've been afraid of rats ever since as a very young child. I saw a lady in the tramp and the villain at the end of that is a red -eyed rat who's sneaking in to get the baby. I don't know if you remember, but absolutely traumatized me as a young kid. Every time a room was dark, I would rush to get the light switch and I wouldn't look at the room because I was so afraid I'd see those red eyes looking back at me. So any mention of rats does it for me always. Interesting.
Speaker: Well, Caroline, do you have any final thoughts to share about the experience reading this book? Yes, I think it was a perfect starter haunted house book, both for the series that we're doing and both as a kid. I think it introduces a lot of the ideas. It is
Speaker: a fascinating and unexpected litany of events all the way through. I'm not sure that it provided what I look for in a reading experience in terms of the lore, the background as discussed. I do really like that. But after discussing it with you, I've sort of talked myself into the position that it's actually a superior form of horror to not explain anything. So now I
Speaker: I've talked myself into liking the book more than when I first read it, but I did enjoy it. It was a sort of sweet and simple haunted house story, if you can say such a thing exists. Yeah, I think it wasn't until I was writing notes and after reading it again and trying to put the summary down, I was like, oh, this is a lot of fun, actually. I think I was carrying into it just the sort of
Speaker: hopelessness and disgust that I felt when I first read it, that like, oh, it's just it's not a happy ending. I didn't remember the ending, actually. But when I got there again, I was like, Oh, yeah, this is why I read a lot of Fear Street growing up. But I think I quickly moved on to other books because there there isn't a happy or a completion at the end of the stories. It's just
Speaker: Yeah, there's more and more happening. And so I think I felt that way as a kid and I still feel that way now, but now I can appreciate just the fun of it and just the like crazy imagery of there's blood and then there's vomit and then there's smoke and then, you know, there's more blood and fingers cut off. It's just, it's just, you know, like a campfire story that you can imagine telling just to try and like shock your audience.
Speaker: Oh, I do have one more thing to say. I do think that as a kid, I would have loved the twist at the end where the teenage protagonist becomes the embodiment of evil in this house just because that would have felt so powerful and cool to me as younger Caroline. I really would have enjoyed that. So I can understand the appeal to younger audiences without a doubt. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, listeners, tell us what did you think of 99 Fear Street? Have you read any other books by R .L. Stein? Were you a Goosebumps fan? Did that introduce you to horror at a young age that you've carried on? What do you think about horror and haunted houses?
Speaker: Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing it to openingquestionatgmail .com. You can also complete the feedback form on our website at bookclubpod .com. Send your responses before November 13 so that we can include them in our feedback episode at the end of the season.
Speaker: Our next book discussion will be on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Read with us. We'll release that episode next week. You can get your copy by using the affiliate link in our show notes. The Book Club podcast is produced by Carly Jackson and Caroline Gorman. Audio editor is Alex Marcus. Thanks for listening.
