I had this recommended to me from the r/horrorlit subreddit and I decided to try it out. I’ve had some previous experience with Bentley Little:

• Bentley Little – The Resort – Horror book review
• Bentley Little – The Collection (2011)
• Bentley Little – The Association Book Review
• The Mailman – Bentley Little Book Review
• The Ignored * Bentley Little
• Bentley Little * Guests
• The Revelation By Bentley Little

I knew it was going to be horror, I just didn’t know if it was going to be good horror like The Association and The Mailman or crappy horror like The Resort.

Juniper, Arizona, is an off-the-map desert town the retail giant called The Store has chosen for its new location. Now everything you could possibly want is under one roof, at unbelievable prices. But you’d better be careful what you wish for. This place demands something of its customers that goes beyond brand loyalty. At The Store, one-stop shopping has become last-stop shopping.

Bill Davis is the only one in town who senses the evil lurking within The Store. But he can’t stop his two teenage daughters from taking jobs there and falling under the frightening influence of its sadistic manager. When Bill finally takes a stand, he will get much more than he bargained for.

I must admit – while I was reading this, all I can think of was Wallmart.

Something big to be in every town. Something massive. Something impressive.

“The Store is a national chain,” the mayor said. “For obvious reasons, they have their own building designs and construction standards. They want all of their retail outlets, in every town, to look the same so they’re easily recognizable. The corporation does not cave in to local pressures because it has a national agenda

The only horror bits of it at the beginning was the dead deer next to the sign and the way they cleared the land for the store using dynamite and killing off some local wildlife. The town is normally split between pros and cons of having a massive corporation build nearby. They seem blinded with the prospect of a steady income.

The Store will create jobs. Don’t you understand that? All you tree huggers care about is saving squirrels. You don’t give a damn about people

In The Store, his multi-pronged attack on consumer culture is clear and straightforward. The protagonist hates it and so does the author. I don’t usually expect that kind of lucid renunciation of capitalism from this most reactionary of genres.

As usual, his writing is straightforward, almost transparent. The plot moves quickly but inexorably, the characters are simply depicted and all the more real for it. And the attack on the potential of dehumanization within consumerism, within capitalism, is both vivid and furious.

There is one additional sub-plot involving the teen daughter and her boyfriend and a pregnancy scare that made me happy we are not living in a small town.

Bill had fully intended to boycott The Store, but to his own dismay he found himself going there quite often. He was offended by the way the corporation had bought off town officials, hated the way The Store had bulldozed its way into Juniper, was suspicious of the unexplainable strangeness surrounding its arrival, but he had to admit that The Store had an excellent selection of … well, almost everything.

Poor Bill. Had to stop at Wallmart.

So let me tell you about the scenes that creeped me out the most:

He said nothing, but looked up at her, smiled, put his mouth around her big toe and began to suck.

• The shoe salesman who really likes to service his clients
• The disappearance of feminism
  • What had happened to the progress they had made back then? What had happened to the concept of “liberation”? Nowadays, women who called themselves feminists were advocating restrictions and censorship, trying to inhibit freedom rather than expand it. They’d become just like the people they were fighting.

• The passivity of human nature against change
  • Besides, people are basically passive. They’ll piss and moan for a while, but they’ll get used to it. They’ll adjust. It’ll be more convenient for them to listen to the music they’re being offered than to write a letter or make a phone call or do something to change it. It’s human nature.
• The big businesses ruining America
  • All of the downtown merchants did. Members of the public always paid lip service to the idea of the small businessman and America’s great entrepreneurial spirit. They bemoaned the loss of the comer store and complained about the impersonality of large corporations, the excesses of big business. But when push came to shove, they chose convenience over service, picked price over quality. There was no loyalty, no real sense of community among people anymore.
• Getting the first born of a mother in case of non-payment for a microwave
  • “‘In the event that payment is not made on time,’ ” he read, “ ‘the signee’s first-born child will be accepted by The Store as payment of the unpaid portion of—
• The incest…
  • It was Sam. The revelation was so shocking, so totally unexpected, that for a full thirty seconds he had no reaction, no response at all. He simply stood there stupidly, continuing to watch the screen as his daughter began working on him.

All in all, a good book, one I probably will struggle to forget, try as I might.