Michael Harbron’s Interview with the Devil – Indie Book Spotlight

Welcome aboard, Readers! As is typical for these columns in October, we’re looking to be spooked. We’re looking to be scared. We’re looking for something to send chills down the ol’ spine. And who better to do that than the origin of evil himself; Mr. Lucifer Morningstar?

So, grab yourself a beverage and a note taking apparatus of your choice and let’s chat with the man himself.

Book Stats

Basic Premise

As a child, Joseph Banbury could see demons. So could his sister, Amy, but he was better able to make out the details. These apparitions seemed to delight in scaring young Joe almost as much as Amy seemed to enjoy tattling on him. His family was relatively poor, his parents frugal and, especially his Mom, extremely religious.

As Joe grew older, he developed a taste for reading and eventually started to write. A librarian at his local library took him under her wing and taught him the finer points of getting his thoughts down in writing.

He went to college in New York and improved his skills to the point where he’d been working on a manuscript featuring his thoughts on religion. It’s at a college party he meets Lily, who’s ambition is to become a literary agent. She reads the manuscript and is blown away – they form a sort of verbal pact wherein if Joe can finish his manuscript and Lily is an agent, she’ll shop it around for him. She even inspires the novel’s name; The Skeptic.

The manuscript takes a decade or so to complete but once he finally finishes it, it’s finally time to reconnect with Lily. And she makes good on her promise. The skeptic as a result is an immediate best seller!

Joe’s mental state? A little more spotty. He’s started seeing the demons again. And, even more disturbing, his crappy apartment seems to have become a window into hell, allowing him to see a range of melting, writhing souls; sinners all.

More than this, though, his work seems to have garnered the interest of a very important party who is very much looking for someone to tell his very long and interesting tale…

My Take

So, I’m going to be fairly upfront and point out that this book, while somewhat enjoyable, isn’t scary. Joe does go through some scary things but I never really felt the terror of those moments… not that they’re badly written or anything but there’s a certain level of detachment in the prose that kept me a little above it all. Joe never really seems to be in danger. I was at least able to understand that this stuff, if it were happening to you, would be pretty freaky; a glass of expensive whiskey becoming blood and overflowing? Gross. Disembodied souls writhing in the middle of your, already filthy, living room? That should be haunting… but Joe is up for sex with Lily only a short time after. The Priest you’ve known all your life is murdered in a grisly sacrifice? Sort through your feelings using the mental mask of a fictional detective you like. It just seems as though there’s a layer of separation between Joe and the stuff that’s supposed to upset us and so it’s not a particularly frightening time.

Joe himself is a mostly likable character. Easy enough to empathize with, anyway. I did have a bit of trouble believing that his book was as infamous as the story laid out. Maybe in a world without Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Ricky Gervais, Penn Gilette; a world without other high profile, hyper vocal, published or otherwise famous atheists? Sure. I could buy it. But some of the aforementioned people are brought up by name so they have a presence in the world of this book and so I wonder what The Skeptic says that they aren’t already talking about? This will only really be an issue for folks well-versed in that cultural movement though so your mileage may vary. The bits of Joe’s writing we’re shown are simple and offer insights that are fairly well-worn so it’s hard to understand how he’s doing interviews on the cable news circuit because of this debut novel, before which he was entirely unknown.

The interview that we’re promised in the title comes very late in the book. Satan is a well dressed, charming gentleman and bemoans his depictions in media as a horned, goat-legged beast. Instead he’s smooth talking, chain-smoking, sympathetic and generally fairly even tempered and I spent most of he last quarter of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never did. As we got to the real substance of Joe’s interactions with the original fallen angel where we’re given a bunch of metaphysical exposition, we’re told the story Will Be Continued.

Our narrator for this book is Eric Priessman, who does a good job. Everyone’s voices are distinguished enough that there’s no confusion, line to line, who’s speaking.

Overall, if you’re looking for a slow burning supernatural story that’s the start of a series, check it out.

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