BOOK REVIEW: The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

I wanted to love this book, but if I’m honest, I really struggled with THE PALLBEARERS CLUB.

Let’s start with the good: this book has an experimental format that is a lot of fun. It’s written as an unpublished memoir by one of the main characters with what essentially amount to beta reader notes sprinkled in from the other. I liked the back-and-forth nature of it. The book is also scored by some great ‘80s & ‘90s alt rock/punk music (Hüsker Dü in particular is repeatedly referenced). There’s also a very unique exploration of vampires, leaning less into the blood-sucking and more into the energy-sapping, life-draining in a way that keeps you on edge. Is this supernatural? Is it just a toxic friendship? The horror scenes, though few and far between, were excellent - atmospheric and just right the kind of creepy.

Onto the things I didn’t love: this book is dense. There are big, long walls of text around every corner. I think part of this is to sell the unfinished memoir vibe, but I found it a bit tiresome. There’s also quite a bit of introspective info-dumping, to the point where it was bit difficult to discern what details were important to the plot and what was filler. It often broke my immersion, and I resorted to skimming a lot of the heftier pages. Overall, I feel like this book could have shaved down a good hundred pages and still told the same story.

The audience for this book is definitely out there. I’m just not in it. If you give this one a try, definitely opt for print - there are a lot of margin notes and interplay between the characters on the page that don’t lend themselves to an audio experience.