The Pallbearers Club

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The Pallbearers Club is Tremblay at his most audacious best. It's such a sneaky mindblower! It'll burrow deep inside you, and by the end, you'll be wondering if the room you're sitting in, the people you're talking with, or even your own memory, are real. This book is horror's answer to Nabokov's Pale Fire." — Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors I wrap myself around your leg and I sift myself through your very essence. I shark within your cells, and I breathe you all in But do we? It’s as if you have written this book specifically to deny us the truth, with Mercy deconstructing and undermining Art’s memoir from the margins. 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…

Co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi announced a new imprint for Chi The YA imprint of the dark fiction press ChiZine Publications Bleak is something you’ve done before, but that inward turn feels like a departure, especially compared to your last two novels.

Advance Praise

Tremblayhas earned worldwide acclaim because he is able to seamlessly combine reality with speculative elements, and his newest may be his most prescient yet. . . Gorgeously written about terrible things, the relatively short Survivor Songis a good choice for fans of pandemic epics . . .and novels that probe themes of friendship, family, and social commentary amidst chillingly realistic horror.”— Booklist(starred review) - I can see this being one of those 'Marmite' books, you either love it or hate it but to me, it seems to be a hugely underrated novel. Before we even get to the uncanny and possibly supernatural elements of The Pallbearers Club, the very nature of the club itself is such a strange idea. Where did that come from? Oh and bonus-- vampires, of the New England variety, well maybe vampires, well yes for sure we learn about a historical vampire. But are they left to history? Or are they real? So cool You’re an author who generally eschews tropes, or you deconstruct them to the point where they're no longer recognizable. I was surprised to see you take on the vampire in The Pallbearers Club.

Rating 10: Loved it so much. Mixing humor, horror, and a whole lot of pathos, “The Pallbearers Club” is Tremblay’s best work. PAUL TREMBLAY: (Reading) I am not Art Barbara. That is not my birth name. But at the risk of contradicting myself within the first few lines of a memoir, I am Art Barbara. 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.And then Mercy appears and so begins her side of the story for as you read, she annotates, interferes and comments on Art’s narration and soon you find your perceptions jostling alongside hers. It is clear from the start that this is not your average psychological thriller. Truly, it is difficult to pigeonhole this novel as one specific genre, as it encapsulates qualities from many distinctly different areas of writing. Blurring the lines between fiction and memory, supernatural and ordinary, Paul Tremblay's latest work is nothing short of enthralling.”— Erie Reader Will something terrible happen? When will something terrible happen? Is the worst always to come? The worst is always to come.’ Well, my first love, in terms of horror, was movies. Before I took to reading later, I learned about story through film, and as a writer who uses the influence of other books and other media, it would be highly hypocritical for me to have a problem with someone using my story to make something different. There is something very interesting in that to me, how someone can take the bones of a story and make something adjacent to it. Of course, no writer is ego-less, and it will be strange if and when there are differences between the two tellings—because it is sobering that once a movie is made, in the eyes of the wider culture, that IS the story. Millions of people will see this movie, compared to the few hundred thousand who have read Cabin.

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: 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. if you want your copy to have spikes, you're gonna have to DIY—bookstores and libraries frown on that kinda thing. So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things - terrifying things - that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?The Pallbearers Club constructs a maze of uncanny ambiguity and disquiet—a Nabokovian labyrinth that sustains its mystery past the point few writers but Paul Tremblay would risk.”— Ramsey Campbell The Pallbearers Club is Tremblay at his most audacious best. It's such a sneaky mindblower! It'll burrow deep inside you, and by the end, you'll be wondering if the room you're sitting in, the people you're talking with, or even your own memory, are real. This book is horror's answer to Nabakov's Pale Fire." – Sarah Langan, acclaimed author of Good Neighbours

Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship. Critical Praise 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.” Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers’ Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unforgettable and unsettling friendship. Paul Tremblay just keeps getting better, and THE PALLBEARERS CLUB may be his most transcendent work to date.... The book threatens to reach cult status, which is the highest compliment I can give it." 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.BOND: And I understand that during your recovery that summer, you came under the spell of another New England writer, Stephen King. Was there something about his books in particular that also influenced you? Melancholy and funny as well as dark and complex, this novel will be the dark hit of the summer. Unique in terms of style and format, The Pallbearers Club occupies a peculiar place between a thriller, a horror novel, and a narrative that will make you question everything." — Boston Globe 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. 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. TREMBLAY: And, you know, just a physically transformed person. But as this story takes place over 30 years, Art's body definitely goes through multiple metamorphoses.