and puberty has hit Art Barbara hard - he’s a painfully socially awkward teenager, underweight, acne-ridden, and bent crooked by scoliosis. Worse, he has no extra credits to get him into college. So Art starts the Pallbearers’ Club, dedicated to mourning the homeless and lonely – the people with no one else to bury them. It might be a small club, unpopular and morbid, but it introduces Art to Mercy Brown, who is into bands, local history, folklore and digging up the dead. The changeover to punk to him was a revelation because here were musicians doing something different. Here were musicians that were oftentimes in their lyrics saying something is terribly wrong. I guess, as dark as punk music can be sometimes, to me, that's, like, a hopeful act, the idea of saying, hey, we're exposing, like, a terrible truth here. And I think horror stories do the same thing. It's hopeful because, you know, there's that shared recognition that something's terribly wrong, whether or not we can fix it. You know, hopefully we can. if art is meant to be paul tremblay/not paul tremblay, it’s not a very kind self-portrait, either in his physical descriptions, his behavior, or his writing skills, which—as art—are frequently turgid and overwritten. concerning the surgery to correct his scoliosis: Another reviewer on Goodreads states in his review "I found it ok, but I think many people will be angered by it.", which was amazingly prescient, because every time I opened this book, I grew angrier and angrier. How dare they publish this crushing bore? The weird friendship is....not that weird. Not at all interesting. Boring. The book is so floridly overwritten that when something DOES happen, I didn't even catch it because Art's prose is so purple that it just seems like more claptrap. A stark evocation of a lonesome New England life. . . While Tremblay is a detailed and deft writer, this is his greatest embrace yet of the tools available in literature alone. And oh, what he’s done with it." — Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Nothing happens. Ever. There is NO STORY, just self-indulgent memory porn and two self-obsessed dud characters. A long, appalled pause). Hüsker Dü are my favorite band and the lead singer Bob Mould is my favorite musician. I’ve probably seen Bob perform over thirty times. More than even reading books, it was listening to Hüsker Dü and Bob’s later music that inspired me to create something myself. I learned to play guitar and I wanted to be a punk musician, even if it was in shitty bands. But it never happened and I figured I was a better writer than musician. Some of the music is still there in the fiction, though. That a story engenders a shared recognition of something being terribly wrong is a defiantly hopeful thing to me. I think punk has a similar raised-fist—a “we know we're doomed, but at least we know the truth” vibe. The most beautiful and heartbreaking funeral I've been to in a long time, The Pallbearers Club is melancholy, funny, and very cruel, but you won't regret carrying this coffin." — Grady Hendrix, bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group Another note: as the book goes on, the playfulness decreases and the terror increases. It's like a sound mixing board. The playful slide moves down and the terror one up and up. The "story" revolves around Art Barbara, a social outcast High Schooler who suffers from Scoliosis.BOND: High school, the kind of humor, the kind of music - you know, Art goes from - in this - on one of his many transformations from listening to Def Leppard and The Scorpions to being introduced to punk and getting really into Husker Du. I went in cold and I recommend you do, too. Thankfully the summary doesn't ruin most of the book, rare these days, and it understands what this book wants to be all about, friendship (and 80's punk music). I wish it really was about those things, I just found the actual plot to not live up to the concept.

Seventeen-year-old Art Barbara is not cool, and he is well aware of this. He is six feet tall, extremely thin and lanky, and does not have many friends. So, as a senior in high school, he decides to start the Pallbearers Club. Members will volunteer to act as pallbearers at funerals that are poorly attended. Since Art isn’t very popular, he only gets two people to join at first, but putting up flyers advertising the club gets him an additional member: Mercy Brown. Art and Mercy bond over music and their love of such genres as punk, post-punk and goth. What an enjoyable read this was. I've fallen in love with Tremblay's writing already, that's after reading just one book. One written in a very original style too. TREMBLAY: Although as their relationship sort of goes through three-plus decades, it's one of those relationships that I think both people realize, you know, they've - they're good for each other, but they're also, like, the worst people for each other. One of the best, most intriguing horror novels I’ve read in many years, The Pallbearers Club is also Paul Tremblay’s crowning achievement, sure to be embraced by literary fiction devotees and horror lovers with equal fervor. It’s a high-wire act most writers would never attempt.”Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she's making cuts. This is horror at its most heartfelt, horror that confirms our fears and flaws, the insecurities that we carry with us from our formative years.”— Priya Sharma, the award-winning author of Ormeshadow if you want your copy to have spikes, you're gonna have to DIY—bookstores and libraries frown on that kinda thing.

Co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi announced a new imprint for ChiZine Publications (CZP) to focus on Young Adult fiction. Called “ChiTeen,” the first title will be The Unlikely But Totally True Adventures of Floating Boy and Anxiety Girl by Paul Tremblay and Stephen Graham Jones, scheduled for release in spring 2014. Paul Tremblay delivers another mind-bending horror novel. . . . The Pallbearers Club is a welcome casket of chills to shoulder.”— Washington Post

Paul Tremblay

that is a good example of art's prose-stylings; dripping with self-deprecation, laden with ominous foreshadowing and unnecessarily grandiose language, and mercy's more lively, conversational voice is a breath of fresh air as she rewrites his-story, often better, and certainly less self-consciously, than his own version of events. TREMBLAY: (Imitating Boston accent) Art Barbara (laughter). But I think Mercy's more - her problem more with it is just that he's renaming himself for the purposes of the memoir. And I think she suspects right away, when he names her Mercy, it's a reference to sort of a unique corner of New England folklore. Co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi announced a new imprint for Chi The YA imprint of the dark fiction press ChiZine Publications

Books can have teeth. A whole mouthful of them. The Pallbearers Club has a whole lifetime of them." --Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw BOND: What was it about this particular time period that really lent itself to this story or maybe shaped the story as you told it? a gangly, scoliosis-stooped loner, art was immediately drawn to the enigmatic and effortlessly cool mercy, who became his virgil into pot, punk music, and the wonders of providence, both its contemporary (for them) club scene and its eerie historical legends, like the one about mercy brown, a notable woman whose story is known to all of little rhody's babygoths. Because Art is writing his memoir to make sense of it all, but Mercy is reading it too. Mercy thinks Art’s novel – because this isn’t a memoir – needs some work, and she’s more than happy to set the record straight. What if Art didn’t get everything right? Come on, Art, you can’t tell just one side of the story… Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers’ Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.Mercy seeing one of Art’s fliers about the club decides to join. Mercy was a bit older and in Jr. College, constantly smoked weed, and was way cooler than Art but she seemed to like him and thought the club was interesting. But she had an odd habit of bringing her Polaroid Camera with her and took lots of pictures of the dead. She also knew a bit a freaky folklore that involved digging up the dead.