Review: Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson – Thank God that you can't read minds

Novel: Horror, supernatural. Contains violence, disturbing imagery, obscenity, and adult situations. 

Richard Matheson is superb at taking a good idea, even an average idea, and refining it to an exquisitely razor point. In my opinion, the best example of this is his short story “Duel” which remains one of my favorite short stories. 

The plot of “Duel” is essentially this; a maniac in a truck begins to hunt a man on the highway and eventually tries to run him over. That could easily flop, but Matheson knows how to throw in an enough tension to keep us on the edge of our seats. And he knows how to not overstay his welcome, but still give us a good piece of literature to sink our retrospective teeth into.

So the premise of Stir of echoes is not may not be that exciting (Especially in this day and age when the same concepts are shown only slightly differently on every TV show involving the supernatural), but Matheson goes all the way with it. An average man by the name of Tom Wallace lives in the suburbs with his wife, Anne, and their child Richard, when he is accidentally given psychic powers.

On the one hand, it goes about the same way as you would expect it would, he discovers his awful neighbor's dark secrets, his wife starts to shy away from him, and he starts to go off the deep end three-quarters of the way through the book.

On the other hand, Matheson does something completely new with the mind reader formula, he makes the very act of mind reading totally different then it has been shown in other such books. It would have been decidedly easy to show the characters thoughts, or to have Tom see visions of what the other characters imagine. 

But Matheson knows that people’s minds don’t work that way, and he has enough sense to only give the protagonist limited telepathy.

Instead of reading thoughts like one reads a book, Tom has vague feelings and must decipher them like a museum goer inspecting the meaning behind the painting. And the feeling of those read by his power invades his mind. And the ghost in his house does not haunt the same way you might expect, instead, he always wakes up in the middle of the night and he starts to sweat profusely and becomes terrified, yet he can’t resist leaving his bed.

This brings us to the horror of the story, Matheson’s bread and butter. The scary bits are strewn across the story, not really one coherent threat, but the many carnal and dark thoughts which are revealed at different times. Although towards the end, all the tension and dread that has been built runs rampant in last few chaotic chapters.

Personally, I dreaded what would happen to Anne and Tom than I did the ghost. Their relationship was very sweet but still realistic, and I’m a sucker for that type of stuff. The fact that Anne is pregnant creates even more suspense as Tom’s new abilities invade more and more of their previously idyllic life. Not that any of the awful things which happen are Tom’s fault, but you can’t blame Anne for hating his ability to predict them.

The tension grows and grows until it explodes towards the end of the book. I won’t ruin the ending, but Matheson knows how to keep some tricks up his sleeve.

If you enjoy stories involving psychic then I suggest you pick it up, if you're looking for a ghost story then I will have reveal to you that the ghost is somewhat downplayed, but is still a vital part of the story.

Since this is my first review I will explain what my system for judging books is.

Awful - Bad - Good - Great - Brilliant

In my opinion, the story is Great bordering on Brilliant. If you enjoy Matheson but haven’t read this book yet then I suggest you pick it up. If you haven’t read any Matheson then you can do worse looking for a book to start with.  

Thank you for reading and have a nice day!