The Bookworm: The Overnight and Lights Out

The Overnight by R.L. Stine. 148 pages. Pocket Books. October 1989.

Lights Out by R.L. Stine. 163 pages. Pocket Books. July 1991.

Holly continued to look, horrified and sickened. The wheel turned rapidly, on each pass rubbing away more of the thing slumped over it.

The thing that she saw had once been a human face, but was now a bloody mass of raw pulp. [Lights Out, page 100.]

Death by pottery wheel. Who knew it was possible? R.L. Stine, apparently, because he used it to full affect. Making it even better is the description on the next page: “It was Debra who sat slumped over the table, her face nearly rubbed off by the potting wheel.”

Let that one soak in for a second… Epic, huh?

I have to admit I laughed when I read it. Just the wording — “her face nearly rubbed off” — makes it comical. And, frankly, I was glad Debra was dead; she was a complete bitch. I am sure Stine’s smile stretched ear to ear when he wrote about her demise, representative of another hallmark of the Fear Street series: creative deaths.

Well, I was wrong. Given the camping and woods theme of the books, I assumed they took place in the fall. But they do not. The Overnight takes place sometime in late-April or early-May and Lights Out is set in the early-summer. I suppose both are ideal times for camping and outdoors whatnot, as well as death by pottery wheel. Though I am a little bummed they were not fitting for the season (I was a little annoyed by having to imagine fresh green leaves on trees when I can look out my window and see colorful fall foliage), they were both entertaining.

The Overnight does involve a lot of fallen leaves — used to hide a dead body. [Dun dun duuun!] The book tells the story about the six-member Shadyside High Outdoors Club. After their advisor cancels the upcoming “overnight” on Fear Island, smack dab in the middle of a lake inside the Fear Street woods (awesome place to go camping, huh?), the group decides to go anyway. Della, the main character, meets a strange man in the woods. He attacks her, and in self-defense she pushes him into a ravine and he presumably breaks his neck and dies. Unwilling to contact authorities for fear their parents will find out they camped without a chaperone, they decide to cover the body with leaves and swear not to tell anyone about it. However, someone was watching them, and when they return to Shadyside they become targets for revenge.

The Overnight is by far the best-written Fear Street book I have reread so far. Once the series got rolling, I assume a number of the books were ghost written. Early on, though, Stine must have done all the writing. As the third book in the series, first published way back in the fall of ’89, the writing and story in The Overnight are much more polished. Though the premise is still cheesy, it was easy to tell someone cared about making the story and characters believable — at least as much as they can be in young adult horror. In regards to the writing, check out this graph:

The canoes began to bob up and down as the current became stronger near the island’s shore. Della was enjoying the ride, the feel of the paddle in her hands pulling the canoe forward with each stroke, the cool wind against her face, the splash and tumble of the rolling water.

When I read that I thought, “Wow. This is some good shit.” And it is, compared to The New Boy and The Dare.

Unless she appears in one of the first two Fear Street books, Suki Thomas, perhaps the only recurring character in the series, makes her first appearance in The Overnight. She was mentioned in The Dare, but I really had no clue who she was or how to imagine her. In The Overnight she is painted as a classic late-eighties metal punk: lots of earrings, spiked and dyed hair, and obsessed with ripped and metal studded clothing. At one point Stine even describes her wearing a Guns N’ Roses shirt. Awesome. Suki apparently joined the Outdoor Club to get close to Della’s ex-boyfriend, which brings up this line: “Suki had quite the reputation.” Oh, Suki Thomas — that slut! Knowing that obviously gives her name a totally new meaning. (At first I wondered if she was Asian.) Clever, Stine. Clever.

So, is Suki’s appearance in multiple books supposed to be symbolic? I mean, there was at least one major whore at everyone’s high school, so I wonder what Stine was trying to say by including her in more than one book.

Death by pottery wheel aside, Lights Out was less memorable and more indicative of later Fear Street books. It is, though, the first book I have read that takes place outside Shadyside and does not involve Fear Street. Holly Flynn, the main character, does live on Fear Street, though.

Holly, a rookie counselor at her uncle’s failing summer camp, becomes convinced someone is trying to ruin the camp after a series of accidents. A red feather has been left behind at each, presumably the calling card of the perpetrator, but no one will listen to Holly and her theories. Even the police, after they investigate Debra’s close encounter with the pottery wheel, ignore her. Despite her growing concern, she puts on her teen sleuth cap and comes face to face with Debra’s killer.

Compared to The Overnight, Lights Out was much more childish and playful. The plot was pretty thin, too, which meant there were multiple and distracting storylines. Aside from the accident and murder mystery, Holly is caught up in adjusting to life at camp, dealing with an old feud, and a whole bunch of awkward advances from the male counselors. She also stumbles onto a forbidden counselor-camper love affair. Lights Out was a mélange of storylines, and, though they were easy to keep track of, I had no clue how everything would be resolved in the end. A couple are, but at least one is left hanging in the wind, which made me feeling indignant. I had to read all about a stupid catfight between Holly and her former best friend, Geri, and nothing came of it. Though it contributed to the story in one way, it was, essentially, minor backstory.

I will read one more, and very seasonally fitting, Fear Street book before turning my attention to the last volume of Richard J. Evans’ history of the Third Reich.