STARRED REVIEW OF "THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS: A NOVEL"

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From Booklist:

"If you look at Keating’s debut as a sort of horror anthology—no supernatural here, but plenty of monsters—each lurid shock becomes all the more impressive. (The fact that it takes place over a single Halloween weekend is our hint.) The book is arranged as a series of character studies that keep circling back over the same few events, with minor characters from previous stories graduating to the spotlight...This is Peyton Place sunk a few rungs lower in hell, featuring the abuse of animals, prostitutes, handicapped children, and just about every husband and wife in town. Keating’s prose, though, is serpentine and sinewy and all-around gorgeous; if Jack Ketchum had plotted Franzen’s The Corrections (2001), it might’ve looked something like this...."

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