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August Book Club Pick: Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare (2020)

8 Oct

Clown in a Cornfield is a fun small town ride that takes on the weirdness of growing up through the angsty and pubescent teenager years – trying to follow your own path and ambition, but the powers at be want it their way. 

Book cover for Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare. The black and red cover shows a dark rural cornfield at night, with a farmhouse, silo, and glowing moon in the background. Large red text reads “CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD,” with “ADAM CESARE”. The tagline at the bottom reads, “The kids are not all right.”

This young adult novel follows Quinn Maybrook as she and her father relocate to Kettle Springs, Missouri. Right from the get go, the title fulfills its genre’s promise, by exploring Quinn’s navigation through high school, her encounters with cliques and the popular kids, and the collective banding against the evil science teacher, Mr. Vern.

With the adults suspicious and with gratuitous malice towards the children of Kettle Springs can you blame the kids for exercising daily revolts? The cycle is endless…until one night Frendo, the town’s clown mascot, takes havoc into his own hands one crossbow shot, ax swing, and fireball launch at a time.

It’s a quick read, even at 330+ pages, but the narrative flows easily with a simple event after event. A fast reader can get this done in a week if not sooner. 

Quinn is quickly engaged in her own gaggle of mischievous kids, bent on using the town’s run-down buildings and abandoned plots of land for their own use…but Frendo is always watching and they don’t approve. 

The internal monologue and overthinking was a bit much, but I recognize that that too is a trait of the young adult genre. The action really picks up around the 200 page mark, and from there is 130+ pages of fiery roller-coaster mayhem with fun deaths, psycho chases through corn, a few fun call backs to a new generation handling older technology, and more.

In the end, it’s a summer slasher founded in teenage angst, romantic curiosity, and rallying against a killing spree to keep a town in the past.  

Once you’ve had a read, you can follow it up with the movie.

Have you read Clown in a Cornfield, seen the movie, or both? Comment below.

You can reserve the book in the BCCLS system here. Audiobook also available on eLibraryNJ/Libby and Hoopla. Hoopla also has the sequel Frendo Lives.

You can reserve the movie in the BCCLS system here.

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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

Movie Pick and Review: Winchester (2018)

13 Aug

Gun heiress Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) builds a 7-story mansion. Staircases lead to nowhere, and 100’s of rooms open to only walls. Honestly, I thought this was an exaggerated historical fiction account, but no, this is a inspired by true story.

Movie poster for Winchester, featuring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, standing in black mourning attire and holding a large ring of keys in front of an ornate window. Text reads "Inspired by True Events at the Most Haunted House in History."

The house in San Jose, California, is still standing and open for tours, and many consider it the most haunted residential house in the United States.

Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester and heiress to the Winchester fortune, demanded and ordered this house be built around the clock, but workers were given no master plan.

Two-part composite image of the real Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. The top photo is a black-and-white historical image showing the sprawling Victorian mansion's turrets, gables, and irregular rooflines. The bottom photo is a modern color aerial view of the same house, showing its maze-like layout of red-roofed sections, courtyards, and surrounding gardens.

The house was a 38-year construction project started in 1866 and had a total of 160 rooms winding 7 floors until a 7.8 magnitude earthquake leveled the house to it’s current four stories (top picture).

Today (bottom), though, the structure is still a labyrinth of hallways, 40 bedrooms, six kitchens, 2,000 doors, 10,000 window panes, and 47 fireplaces with only 17 chimneys. Doors really do lead straight into walls and windows are on the floor. One in the séance room opens up to nothing but an eight-foot drop directly to a sink.

Why would someone want a house with over a hundred rooms, staircases leading to ceilings, doors that open to drops, and staircases that wind in maze-like fashion?

Sarah is convinced she’s cursed by the sins of her fortune, so all this is meant to ward off the spirits killed by her family’s product.

If she can build a house so confusing, perhaps it will confuse them and keep them contained.

In 1906, the company’s board sends Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke), a drug-dependent psychiatrist, to declare her unfit to run the business. This is not a mission of goodwill on the board’s part. Instead, Dr. Price starts seeing these ghosts in gruesome fashion.

Is it the drugs or the actual suspicions of Sarah manifesting?

Mirren, as always, is committed to her role and takes a script that seems to want to be a bit too jump scary back to the true story’s more gothic and macabre roots. The house, too, is a character in itself, and the movie leans hard into its confusing architecture.

I must be honest: if it wasn’t for these two stars, the story would simply be another jump-scare, stereotypical ghost-with-a-grudge story. The beats (while I admit I still jumped) can be obvious, especially for a vetted haunted house movie watcher. However, if you, the viewer, tap into the guilt and grief behind the moral and repercussive pain of Sarah Winchester, then it’s quite a lovely gothic homage to the moral message of the monuments, big and small, each of us has built for the ones hurt (even if indirectly) by our doings.

This is where I have to be honest: the ghosts are pretty predictable. Jump scares, a vengeful spirit with a grudge, etc. Fans of haunted-house movies will see many of these coming. But, there’s a much stranger, sadder movie underneath about guilt, grief, and a woman literally building a monument to everyone her husband’s business ever hurt.

Winchester is a good scary-night movie, helped by the fact that sometimes history is scarier than fiction.

Reserve the Bluray in the BCCLS system here or the DVD in the BCCLS system here.

Comment below your thoughts once you’ve had a watch.

Hit subscribe to get weekly updates on posts from the Hoboken Public Library!

Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

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