There’s baseball, barbecues, and a seasonal sensuality specific for the time of year: “A breeze had come up to give relief from the humidity and rustle the branches above the lawn. There’s anticipation, and anxiety an undercurrent of the unease of altering.Īlmost like a background character, summer plays a part in the story.

The author sets the story during the political and cultural shift of 1960: A possibility of a Catholic president the space race color television an atmosphere that teeters on transition. Simmons doesn’t merely summon up the scares they pulsate through a narrative that is eloquently evocative of its environment and time period. It was the terror of embalming tools and the blade at the eye, the terror of the cold hand on the back of your neck in a dark room.” For the kids, the psychic torment is intense: “It was a deep, sick-making terror, a fear of the dark combined with the startle-awake sound of someone breathing under your bed. The uncanny entity has minions in the local populace some living, some dead. Possessing the resourcefulness and determination of the young, the ensemble bravely squares off against a loathsome and lethal adversary. This mélange of moppets become allies against a malign force which attacks their small town of Elm Haven, Illinois. Kevin, who snaps to at the call of his mom’s cry. Harlen resides with his irresponsible mother, whose antics make him sarcastic and embittered. Cordie, a seemingly dim witted girl living in dysfunctional poverty deceptively aware of what’s happening around her. Michael, the only son in a large Catholic family pious and attentive. Dale, who comes from a stable home sensitive, and fiercely protective of younger brother Lawrence. Barren herself, a stiff old spinster, Old Central borrowed other people’s children over the decades.”Īmong these children are: Duane, a motherless only child brilliant beyond the comprehension of teachers. “By the spring of 1960, Old Central School had come to resemble some of the ancient teachers who had taught in her: too old to continue but too proud to retire, held stiffly upright by habit and a simple refusal to bend. Its last students are happy to leave the edifice. At once endearing and terrifying, the novel shakes up youthful memories and places them in an ambience of evil.

He conveys the sensations of the season and the qualities, qualms, and questions inherent in being eleven years old. Simmons, however, embraces the theme and its permutations in his own strong and unique voice. Stephen King went there in It, and certainly Summer of Night bears similarities to that work. In Summer of Night, Dan Simmons examines a petrifying puberty.

Yes, it’s the inevitable just around the corner but there’s more. It’s summer, and for six kids on the brink of adolescence a major change is about to happen.

Children of the Night by Dan Simmons