Jack Ketchum

A family of savage murderers preys on unsuspecting tourists on a small island off the coast of Maine.

Off Season

Geoffrey Froggatt

I’ve always loved horror stories that feature cannibalism. I’m currently obsessed with the survival horror television show Yellowjackets, so it reignited my love for horror exploring what some consider the ultimate taboo. I love exploring taboo themes and storylines through fiction and I’ve always been fascinated by cannibalism because it’s one of the ultimate taboos and I love how it’s a staple of survival horror and shows just how far people will go to survive, and the idea that you can commit such a dark act just to ensure you continue living is an interesting story beat. Despite its prevalence in survival horror, I’ve also been intrigued by this trope from stories that feature willing cannibals ever since stories like Hannibal and A Certain Hunger, both stories featuring characters who consume other human beings simply because they enjoy it. I thought the idea of a cannibal family was also interesting, but movies like Wrong Turn sort of soured that idea for me, until I found this book and heard the premise. Carla, a successful editor from New York City, rents a cabin in the town of Dead River, Maine during the off season to work on her writing. She invites her sister, their friend Laura, and their respective boyfriends to join her. Unfortunately for them, the cabin is being watched by a clan of feral, inbred cannibals living in a cave nearby. After the main cast of characters are introduced, the cannibals descend on the cabin. What follows is some of the most ferocious horror ever put to paper. Tales of savage cannibal families preying on civilized folk go back centuries to the myth of Sawney Bean, a Scot who supposedly cannibalized over a thousand people with his family sometime during the 13th-16th centuries. More recently than that, we have Tobe Hooper’s infamous 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven’s 1977 opus The Hills Have Eyes. It is inevitable that Off Season sometimes evokes those films, as they were its inspiration. I wasn’t too invested in the characters for a majority of the novel, but when the cannibal horror began, I began to sympathize with them and saw them as people. While this does draw major inspiration of classic cannibal horror movies, I do feel like the depiction of the cannibal clan here is more realistic than what’s been depicted in horror movies as they were cannibals written with a focus surrounding feral humans. A lot of the cannibal families in horror movies are depicted as twisted versions of humans who kill for pleasure, but these cannibals felt like an offshoot of the human species that were never touched by modern human civilization, making them feel like animals or beasts in human form rather than human beings who kill for pleasure. This was easily the most interesting aspect of the novel for me, as these cannibals may have enjoyed killing but it was far more feral and animalistic than what was depicted in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Wrong Turn franchises. At first I was disappointed that the cannibals couldn’t communicate or speak English as I thought I wouldn’t be able to get a grasp at their characterization, but I actually preferred what was depicted here. The cannibals reminded me of popular depiction of Neanderthals, only instead of hunting dinosaurs or animals, they hunted civilized humans. This depiction reminded me of what Mark Twain said about humans, how humans are the only truly evil creatures, as we’re the only ones with the concept of morality. I think that’s where a huge horror aspect of this story hit the bullseye for me; Even if these feral humans are murderous cannibals, are they truly evil? They commit atrocities and what we consider evil, but are they not just wild predators killing and procreating in a cannibal culture that was all they’ve ever known? This was an interesting angle to the story that permeated the novel for me, and it made the civilized human perspective even more interesting as they fight their way to survival. The sexual assault and brutality in this novel aren’t as bad as on-screen depiction of these subjects, but it’s significant enough that I’d recommend people with trauma from sexual assault to avoid this book. It’s a short few scenes, but it’s enough to be disturbing. I liked the ending despite how it could be considered anticlimactic. I liked how the men at the end are at first surprised by how feral and brutal the cannibal children were, and I liked how they were surprised by how easily they were able to get over killing children once they started attacking. It’s this unspoken theme of dehumanization, a parallel between the cannibals dehumanizing the civilized people by killing and eating them, and how the men dehumanized the feral children by killing them swiftly and without remorse to their situation of being born into a killing culture without their consent or knowing anything else. I liked the little note at the end about the author and how the book was received, and it does show how much darker material can be traditionally published these days. Overall, fun cannibal survival horror, which I enjoyed.

Isabela H 

This was one of my first real experiences with darker darker reads, and I went in with 0 expectations. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, so all of the shock factors really hit me. I definitely enjoyed the book once I adjusted to all the gross things I was reading about. 
I really like books that are so perfectly descriptive that I can imagine the scene as a movie, and there were so many of those scenes in this book, especially the last scene. 

I recommend this book as a good introduction to slasher-type books where readers are looking to get shocked. I do not recommend this book if you're squeamish, you'll be uncomfortable in the worst ways.

Dee B. 

illa

Introduction by Douglas E. Winter. Afterword by Jack Ketchum

The Unexpurgated Special Edition

petit-chocobo

I didn't expect to be that disappointed. This felt so meh to me, just gruesome bits within a plain and as basic as a plot can be. All the breasts descriptions annoyed the heck out of me, they were no women, just sticks with "bare breasts", "naked breasts", "quivering breasts" and "nipples that stiffened". Also, OF COURSE ONLY THE WOMEN ARE BEING PHYSICALLY AND SEXUALLY TORTURED! and the men get to be the heroes! even the savages manage to be misogynistic, like come on, the men savages are dressed but not the women? and all we hear about is how naked their breasts are and how pleased they are to be the cave "whores". I know this is from the 80s but come on.... anyway, it's not even remotely scary, there's no atmosphere, no tension, just random and very explicit sex scenes and some limbs choppings (don't forget the bare breasts, they are the real protagonists here). 
this is my first jeff ketchum and if i was hesitant before about reading the girl next door, i'm not anymore. There's no way I want to read these poor girls being over sexualized and sexually tortured, especially knowing it's based on a true event that still haunts me. no thank you.
I may try his other books but i don't have high hopes.

naomi

this book was a struggle to finish for a two reasons:

the characters
the characters were so unlikeable, especially the men. it was so obvious that this book was written by a man, it was just full of objectification of women. 

the storyline
everybody praises this book because it's 'raw' and 'disturbing' but i was bored. it was just so predictable.

★2/5★

Jordan Robinson

Bryan Alexander

I've been meaning to read this notorious 1980 horror novel for years, given its reputation. I suspected it was an antecedent to much in subsequent genre fiction, including splatterpunk. I was curious about why it was badly marketed and possibly censored (and so pleased to read the author's own edition here).

Brief spoiler-free summary: Off Season is about a group of friends encountering an American version of the Scots Sawney Bean family. A group of friends in Maine is ambushed by cannibals, and much, much violence and gore ensue.

As horror entertainment the novel certainly succeeds. Tension established quickly, the action sets in soon after and doesn't ever slow down. Protagonists, although sketched lightly, are sympathetic. The cannibals are fascinating (see below). The struggle is energetic, terrifying, and very well told. You might look outside with a shudder afterwards, or rethink tasty sausages.

The style is very direct, post-Hemingway, concrete and manly. There is no humor, beyond early banter between the protagonists; the cannibals' laughter, in contrast, is supposed to be terribel. This is dead serious. There aren't many lyrical passages, but I do admire some, like this sudden burst:There were crickets in the tall grass and they fell silent too as the women walked by, and there was a moment of deep quite that surrounded the house and then passed like a hand passing through the flame of a candle. (Kindle location 709)And the bitter last lines, like noir, and foreshadowing Andrew Vacchs:...she could see only the slowly brightening sky and the telephone wires that seemed to glide slowly along above her as they drove the smooth new tarmac. The wires were studded with wooden poles, like dark stab wounds in the flesh of morning. There is an additional moral layer in the text, a relatively quiet sense of outrage, perhaps echoing fellow Mainer Stephen King, or fierce moralist Harlan Ellison. The villains' lack of human feeling, for instance, is constantly noted.

Although the text is mostly devoted to describing action and violence, the novel is definitely engaged with certain literary themes and references. Obviously it partakes of the classic American redemption through violence narrative (pace Richard Slotkin), but while there is plenty of violence, there's no redemption. This nihilism (not so much as tragedy) draws on post-Vietnam American culture (remember this appeared in 1980). Indeed, one of the protagonists is a Vietnam vet, and others compare the desperate struggle to combat.

There are nods to contemporary horror films. The finale - without spoiling - echoes that of a classic 1960s movie, and Ketchum admits this in an afterward. I'm pretty sure The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is a strong influence, from the remote violent clan down to the appearance of one of their members. There is also a use of a trope that appeared in 70s horror, which would become a favorite in horror movies since:(view spoiler)[
  the final girl
 (hide spoiler)].

There is also a grinning, ironic love of American wilderness stories. Our protagonists set up in a remote rural cabin - yes, that is going to be a favorite setting for horror films, with The Evil Dead appearing the next year - but what's more important here is that gesture towards returning to the countryside. The cabin couples are city folk, as we learn early on, and look forward to a rural interlude. Moreover, the cannibal clan is the flipside to classic stories of wilderness survival, as they certainly do succeed in maintaining themselves without industrial technology, other than a few scavenged items. Ketchum depicts their ways of making clothing, shelter, and food in careful, almost recipe-like detail. There are also nods to the western (2100).

Off Season also reaches further back, I think, to a current in 19th-century horror stories wherein the author strove to get across with semi-scientific detail what it would be like to experience an extremely bad situation. Poe is the best known exemplar of this, of course, as he generously explored what it would be like to be trapped in a pit under a pendulum, or to be buried alive. Ketchum spends a great deal of time in characters' mental states, taking us through their changing consciousnesses as they fight, feast, scheme, are tortured, and killed. 

So how does this novel hold up nearly 40 years after publication? The gore and violence, while plentiful and effective, are not nearly so shocking to readers accustomed to subsequent horror novels and movies. As a lifelong Gothic reader and scholar, I am pretty jaded, but confess to being surprised by the scenes of repeated violence against children - not abuse, but combat. As I said above, it's gripping stuff.

In an afterward Ketchum mentions outraged readers, publishers, and cultural guardians. I was expecting to learn of conservative protests, but also read that the Village Voice, that New York quintessential liberal newspaper, apparently howled in protest. There is an echo in our time, with the current progressive concern for content warnings. Perhaps a generation of experimentation and boundary-pushing occurred between 1980 and 2017, and we're seeing it start to wane.

So I recommend it to horror buffs. It's a fine read, and important in the genre.

Off Season

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