Laura Kasischke’s The Raising is a disturbing book. It’s compelling and intense, but also pretty disturbing on several levels.
When college golden girl Nicole Werner is killed in a car accident (driven by her slightly obsessive boyfriend Craig), the facts don’t seem to match up. University employee Shelly Locke is first on the scene, but what she saw differs from what all the newspapers have reported. She doesn’t even think that Nicole was dead when she left the scene. But why don’t the police want to talk to her?
Returning to school the next year is difficult for Craig. He thinks he sees Nicole everywhere. His roommate Perry, who is also a high school friend of Nicole’s, agrees that things don’t seem right. He wants to explore what he’s feeling about her death and a possibility of life after death so he takes professor Mira Polson’s seminar on death. She ends up getting wrapped up in what the boys are convinced is proof that Nicole is not really dead.
This novel is a little more graphic than I usually choose to read. It takes place on a college campus and is told from the perspective of several college boys. There wasn’t much rock and roll, but apropos to the setting there was sex and drugs, and language, and actions taken that often showed the young adults’ lack of concern for consequences of their actions.
The other jarring issue is that the subject, as the title implies, is the undead. This is approached in a more academic way, literally — since one of the characters Dr. Mila Polson is a professor of anthropology who focuses on after-death experiences. However, the fact that these boys are so tormented by what happened and even the very grounded and earthly presentation of the “real” Nicole as she’s slowly revealed in flashbacks throughout, left me just feeling a bit squeamish.
The content was so unsettling to me that I should have stopped reading it, but it’s a testament to the way the story built and flowed, that I just didn’t want to. The plot is advanced through flashbacks and present-day action. There is a lot packed into the 460 pages. Characters are developed who I can’t even mention in a short review. Social preconceptions are challenged in many situations.
As I was reading it, it felt jumbled and yet it wasn’t confusing. It was the literary equivalent of the time in a horror movie where everything is happening so quickly that you can barely keep up and you definitely can’t look away.
Then in the midst of the climactic resolution everything just stopped. A conclusion is made, but as is more often the case than the thrillers that wrap everything up perfectly and reasonably, all of the proof is not laid out and analyzed and tied together. I felt like I knew what the truth was, but I wish I had been left with more assurance that all of the characters were certain of that as well.
The author is a poet, and though this is a paranormal suspense thriller, some of the writing and observations are definitely in line with her poetic style. Take this scene (a flashback) when Craig first meets his roommate Perry:
Four flights up, through a maze of old carpet and blasted rap music and flyers taped to cinderblock warning the residents about STDs and inviting them to church jamborees and library orientations, they dead-ended at Craig’s room, number 416, opened the door, and found Craig’s roommate sitting at one of the two desks, reading a textbook of human anatomy.
That was Perry, back when Perry was a stranger.
—The Raising (page 12)
If you like suspense and paranormal themes, and aren’t afraid of some strong subject matter, and want all of these fast-moving types of themes delivered by excellent prose, then you should check out The Raising. Me, I might keep working at trying to forget it.
Check out my very first video book review of The Raising by Laura Kasischke.
Jennifer Donovan went through a Stephen King phase in her early adulthood, but when she picked up one of his newer works a few years ago, she found she couldn’t stomach it, though she still acknowledges he’s a master storyteller. She blogs at Snapshot.
Janice says
After reading this review, I got curious about the truth if Nicole really is not dead and how the accidents happened.
Jennifer says
Janice that is one of the elements that kept me reading as well. But even once I thought I had it figured out, I was also waiting to see how the other plots were going to resolve.