Jack Ketchum has a tendency to fictionalize real life crime stories. He accomplished this in "Off Season," "Joyride," and here in "The Girl Next Door." In 1960's Indiana, Sylvia Likens and her little sister moved in with Gertrude Baniszewski while their parents went out of town. Baniszewski, her children, and several neighborhood children tortured and eventually murdered Likens over a period of months. At the trial, the children involved in the crime got off with an insignificant punishment, leading to outbursts of rage among the community and anyone with an ounce of moral fiber. In what must surely rank as one of our justice system's lowest moments, Gertrude herself was eventually released from prison, dying peacefully several years later somewhere in Iowa. This case serves as the loose outline for Ketchum's diabolical novel.

Set in the seemingly bucolic era of 1950's America, "The Girl Next Door" starts in the present day with our narrator, David, setting the stage for a flashback to that peaceful time in American history when Ike was in the White House, McCarthy chased Commies out of the State Department, and the biggest fear for most people was the realization that the USSR had the bomb. For David, there is a worse fear from that time, something buried deep in his heart and in his mind that needs telling before it drives him over the brink of sanity. David's childhood was marred by a horrific event, made even more horrific by the fact that he stood by and watched it happen without doing anything to stop the nightmare.

When David was a child, he lived next door to Ruth and her three sons. Everyone in the neighborhood loved to hang out at Ruth's house, even though the father of the children no longer lived there. Ruth allowed the boys who came over to drink some beer, watch TV, and generally goof off. Ruth treated the kids like adults, which impressed David to no end because his own parents do not get along whatsoever. Going to Ruth's is a great way to blow off some steam if you can put up with Ruth's occasional tirades about her worthless ex-husband.

This is Ketchum, so the story gradually moves into realms of unspeakable evil. The trouble starts when Meg Loughlin and her crippled sister Sarah move in with Ruth. Meg and Sarah's parents died in a car accident, and Ruth is the only family they have left. Life is fine at first, but David realizes gradually that Meg is having big problems with Ruth. Ruth gets nasty with Meg, meting out harsh punishments for innocuous behavior. Then Meg and Sarah begin to suffer verbal assaults from Ruth, often times in front of David and other boys in the neighborhood. Ruth's rants begin to take on an insanity and incoherency that frightens David. Ultimately, Meg ends up locked in a bomb shelter in the basement, where the real pain begins. All of the kids in the area participate in the torture and debasement of Meg, overseen by Ruth. The final indignity committed against Ruth is so horrible I refuse to refer to it here.

The violence in the book is horrible and stomach churning, but the cruelty takes a back seat to the moral lessons Ketchum is trying to convey. While reading this book, Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" repeatedly came to mind. These people are not monsters springing out of closets or hostile aliens invading the earth. Ruth and the children involved are everyday people caught up in an unexplainable web of heartless and devastating malevolence. Even David is caught up in the unfolding events, although he does not take part in the actual deeds. It is safe to argue that David's role is worse than those who commit the crimes because he knows it is wrong and does nothing to stop them until it is too late. "The Girl Next Door" is not a horror novel per se; it is a morality play. Ketchum draws us into this warped world and forces us to condemn David while at the same time recognizing that we very well might do the same thing if it was us in his shoes.

You will not soon forget this grim and unsettling novel. Ketchum penetrates depths here that he rarely plumbs in his other books. It is a darn shame "The Girl Next Door" is not available in a mass-market paperback edition. Many people want to read it, and an introduction by none other than Stephen King lends a stamp of credibility to the book. Look around for a copy, but think long and hard before shelling out large amounts of dough.


The single, most horrifying novel I have ever read...   January 24, 2000
 39 out of 45 found this review helpful

I had heard dark rumors for years about this guy Jack Ketchum (mostly due to his infamous OFF SEASON) but could never find any of his books. For a writer this good, his stuff is amazingly difficult to come by. Well, all I can say is if you haven't read any Jack Ketchum, get thee to the book search page and order something...ANYTHING... by this guy! His fiction is more alive and immediate than just about any other author I can think of off hand. Forget about the fact that he's lumped into the "horror" genre (not that's there's neccesarily anything wrong with that :)) -- this is just good writing. Period.

Now, about THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: Jesus H. Christ! That's all I could say after finally finishing this book in one marathon 4-hour session. This book is tough. Uncompromising. Brutal. And believe me, whatever ideas you may get based on this review or any of the others...they're WRONG. You may think you're prepared for this book after hearing us tell you about it but you're not.

Trust me. You're not.

Not remotely.

The only other thing I can think of to say is that I have rarely experienced a piece of fiction that is this horrifying and yet this honest, this psychologically and emotionally true. And that is about the highest praise I can imagine.

Read it. Now.


Overwhelmingly Brutal Realism *Should* Make You Squirm   May 13, 2004
 33 out of 40 found this review helpful

Ketchum's novel should make you squirm with discomfort, not because it is a horror book, but because it is horrifyingly closer to the real side of human brutality than to those fantastical drafted gore fests we sink our teeth into when our tongues require the taste of terror.

There is a novel by Luanne Rice called Stone Heart that crept into the hidden realm of Domestic Abuse without the benefit of rose colored glasses, and left me breathless in the wake of such an emotional journey.

"Girl Next Door" took me through that journey again, but this time the passage was darker and filled with unaccountable dread. "How could this happen?" you will say. "Why didn't anybody DO anything?" The tide of emotion you will feel sweeping over you, washing your pity in tears as salty as the ocean and swirling the intense sadness through your soul, will leave you touched by a profound sense of loss.

In the 1950's, life was simple for a group of neighborhood children, living in a close knit, out of the way community. David was a boy back then, when Meg and Susan Loughlin move in next door with Ruth Chandler and her three sons, after the death of their parents in a car accident that left Meg scarred and Susan crippled.

David doesn't mind playing with Ruth's boys, and often found Ruth to be quite pleasant, in that she would treat the boys as adults and even allow them beer at times. But Ruth had a legendary temper, well known throughout the neighborhood.

David is enchanted by Meg, and therefore hangs around more than ever next door, wanting to be near her. Ruth, unstable before, begins rushing down towards the pits of insanity at a noticeably accelerated pace; and makes the Loughlin girls targets for her anger-infused mania. Descending from verbal abuse, to overworking Meg at chores, to her final psychotic imprisonment of the two innocent girls, Ketchum's painting of Ruth in the colors of derangement and lunacy is vivid and realistically unsettling.

Ruth slowly begins to allow others to join her in terrorizing the girls, and though David is mortified at the scenes unfolding right in front of him, he does nothing and tells no one about Ruth's basement until it is too late. I will not divulge any further information, but with the story being told from David's viewpoint, you can feel and understand his hesitation and fear, and remember that he himself was still just a child.

In this book, you may find yourself wishing that Ketchum was less skilled in his writings, so that you wouldn't find yourself so drawn into the characters and the appalling scenario. This book will make you angry and sad, leave you feeling helpless in your inability to change the outcome, and that is exactly what you should be feeling. You will not walk away untouched. By far, one of the most riveting and revolting horror books I have ever read, well worth the money you spend.


Matter-of-fact Writing Rings Haunting Resonance   February 14, 2001
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

First, let me say that if you read this book, you will not forget the experience, not for a long time. Whether it stems from the piercing theme or from the realism that sears through the work like a hot rivet in the snow, this novel resonates more than any other I've ever read. Sure, the unthinkable violence and cruelty keep you turning the pages the way a line of ambulances and crunched cars make you turn your head when you drive by a multi-car pileup, but it's more than that. I'm a slow reader and I downed this book in two days, mostly in one evening. But it's more than that. A lot more.

The narrative is the wizened recollection of a man haunted by the past: the summer of his thirteenth year on the planet in the late 50's. The realism comes from his devout memory of the period. The initial sympathy is driven by everyone's memory of early adolescence and the first love during that phase of life. But that is only the primrose covering the path. As we follow Ketchum, we find things beyond the thin dressing along the trail; we find dark shadows and strange twists and decisions and sharp things that hurt and water that scalds and scalds again and searing needles that carve words on a young girl. And hot irons. Hot irons that melt flesh.

The novel is essentially about a murder. A slow torturous murder of a 14 year-old girl, but the central story nonetheless. The theme and ideas revolving around that occurrence are what make this novel one of the most resonating I've come across. He reminds me of a severe Maxwell Smart in his storytelling. Would you believe a woman goes crazy and tortures her niece? Maybe. Would you believe she brought her boys in on it? Well, that's tougher to swallow, but sure, it could happen. OK, would you believe she had every kid on the block helping beat, cut and dehumanize the girl? I don't thinks so.

But you will, if you read this book.

I've never been so haunted by a story in my life. So torn between loving it and hating it. I hated what happened in it, but no more that I hate what Jeffery Dalmer did. But I still watch the documentaries about him when they're on. I still watch.

A boy in The Girl Next Door watches too. He's the only one who never actually harms the girl. But he still watches. He still lets it happen. And that begs the question, which is the true monster, the aunt or the boy? By the end of the novel, we know. We know because he knows and he tells us.

I've tried not to give too much away here - no more than you can read from the dust jacket. But I would heartily recommend reading the Introduction after the novel. It's written by Stephen King, who is always worth reading, but Mr. King gives a bit much away. Better to read it later, as the resonance begins to hum.

This is the first Jack Ketchum novel I've ever read. But it will not be the last.


Strong concept, weak execution   January 5, 2008
 11 out of 16 found this review helpful

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is essentially a one-note book. As everyone even marginally interested in this book knows, it's the story of a demented middle-aged woman and her three young sons(12, 12, and 10) who abuse, torture, and eventually kill a sweet 15-year-old girl they've imprisoned in their basement. It's based loosely on a true event.

The concept is strong, but Ketchum is not the writer to pull it off. He's essentially a B-list author of paperback originals who made a name for himself with graphic descriptions of gore and mayhem. There are lots of better B-list authors out there, including T. Chris Martindale, T. M. Minton, Robert Masello, Drake Douglas, and William Schoell. And A-list authors such as Stephen King can write circles around him.

Ketchum's prose is serviceable, and I've read worse. But his pacing and characterization leave much to be desired. His tactic here, as elsewhere, is to spend roughly 100 pages setting up the characters, then unleash the savagery. I have no problem with this tactic; in fact, I prefer a leisurely build-up. But in this novel it doesn't work, for two reasons.

First, the characters themselves are uninteresting. We are introduced to a bunch of snot-nosed kids who are either bland or downright irritating (the narrator is particularly insufferable). Ketchum's decision to tell his tale in the first person means that we never get inside any mind other than the narrator's. The 15yo torturee is presented as all sweetness and her persecutor as a demented psychopath. White vs. black does not for an involving story make.

Second, absolutely nothing happens in these first 100 pages. Someone needs to tell Ketchum (maybe Steven King is the person, since he seems to like Ketchum's work so much) that even while you are laying out characters and setting, *something* needs to happen to hold the reader's interest. And catching crayfish, attending a carnival, and peeking in bedroom windows does not cut it. Writers have a saying: "when your characters are having a good time, your readers aren't." And this reader certainly wasn't during those initial interminable chapters. By the time the torture kicks in, the reader is apt to breathe a sigh of relief that something is *finally* happening. And I doubt that's the effect Ketchum had in mind.

Okay, the scenes of abuse and torture are pretty graphic. And they may well make the reader wince. But that's just because the mere idea of a woman and her sons torturing a 15yo girl is awful in itself. It's not as if Ketchum has ever brought that girl to life or made her a believable character. In other words, Ketchum simply doesn't earn whatever chills his readers may experience. He could have cut the first 100 pages and the effect would have been the same.

I'm surprised that King has such a high opinion of Ketchum's work because as writers the two are simply not in the same league. Then again, King liked "The Ruins." In a way, I wish King had written TGND because in the hands of such a skilled author it could have been a truly unbearable read. As it is, it's simply distasteful.

I just bought the DVD of the film based upon this book and will be interested to see how such an unflinching tale of child abuse could be made into a movie. I hope it will be more involving than the book.

This edition contain an apologetic afterword by the author as well as two of his short stories, both of which go nowhere and take forever getting there.