Book Review : Josh Malerman - Daphne (2022)
There is only one Stephen King, but the writer I know who’s style resembles King the most is Josh Malerman. A fast and loose storyteller with original ideas and a fondness for genre-hopping, Malerman can write post-apocalyptic fiction as well as (sort of) weird Western ghost stories without missing a beat. He’s bold like King and confident enough in his storytelling abilities to take chances and just like for King, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In latest novel Daphne… it kind of doesn’t?
Daphne tells the story of Kit Lamb, the star of Samhattan high school basketball team and closeted anxious person. When one of her teammate tells her the apocryphal story of a seven foot criminal woman with an ax to grind against basketball players, Kit is immediately scared. Even worse, her teammates start to die horrible deaths around her. Uncertain whether she’s next every time one of her friends die, Kit is trying to keep herself alive while authorities are scrambling to find the maniac who’s crushing girls’ skulls.
The part of Daphne that works : indebted souls
From a purely critical point of view, Daphne is a serial killer novel that borrows elements from its cinematographic little cousin, the slasher genre. But it's also not just about that. Because when a story is just a story, it doesn’t connect with readers in a visceral way. So Daphne is also an allegory for trauma. Forces from the past who control the present, sometimes unknowingly from the victims involved. It took some time to unfurl in this novel, but it did create that visceral and satisfying connection.
The best part of this emerging trauma theme is that it doesn’t appear via the protagonist Kit (which I have my problems with that we’ll discuss soon), but via the supporting cast and mostly the adults who have the responsibility to keep the girls safe. Not only seeing them absolutely refused to engage their own collective trauma creates a real, tangible aura of danger for the girls, but it also create a real aura of mystery around the character of Daphne who I thought wasn’t real until then. That mystery was the selling point for me.
Beyond all these nuts-and-bolts consideration is the very relatable idea of trauma. As you read Daphne, broken youths and broken families emerge as you realize that their self-righteous inaction perpetuates the patterns of violence in town, leading to more broken youths and broken families. Fighting a demon you can’t see is tough. Fighting a demon that already came and went is even tougher. The sense of place, the feeling of community in Daphne is top notch up to a point it might trigger bad memories for some.
The part of Daphne that doesn’t (quite) work : Daphne herself and Kinetic Writing
From page one, there’s something about Daphne that didn’t work for me. The exact sense of dread a horror story is supposed to build up to is present and it doesn’t ever really ratchet up. It remains more or less the same. Because Kit is terrified of Daphne right off the bat and she remains appropriately terrified all the way through. The fact that Daphne gets to work quite early in the novel doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Kit never feels like an anxious mess. She feels like the only appropriately anxious character.
The other thing that bugged me about Daphne is the weird, kinetic writing that Josh Malerman used in order to give his novel more of a cinematic feel. Kit’s journals were by far the worst part, but this stylistic choice is everywhere. I don’t want to read what a character does. I want to read to read why I should care about them and he or she deserves to survive. Malerman is not the first to try and make a slasher novel and he’s not the first ti break his teeth against the concept. It simply isn’t engaging writing.
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So, I hope you see why Daphne KIIIND OF doesn’t work? The elements that make Josh Malerman’s writing so much fun and relatable are clearly there, but they’re not at the heart of the story. They’re not part of its primary conflict and that conflict is a little… how can I say that? Monochromatic? It lacks the depth and perspective that would make it as appealing as all the other cool, smaller conflicts. Daphne is a miss. Josh Malerman will be fine. He’s still good and he’ll be back. But you can live without this one.
