Let's talk about Riley Sager's Middle of the Night because
I finished reading that book weeks ago and I'm still thinking about it.
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| I saw the book in the library's "New Books" section and I snatched it. |
The story follows Ethan, a teacher in his forties who
returned to his family home to fix it up during summer vacation before selling
it. His parents moved away to a retirement community, so he plans to be in and
out of there. The thing is, Ethan has been haunted since he was ten. Not by a
ghost, but by nightmares. When he was ten, he and his friend Billy were camping
in the former's backyard, and the latter disappeared. No body was found, no
suspects were arrested for anything, no evidence was found. Then, where is
Billy? And most importantly, why has Ethan been feeling his presence in the
neighborhood, when the motion-activated lights turn on? With Ethan dealing with
grief from several fronts, there is also the aspect that his picture-perfect
suburban community is hiding some secrets.
Sager's book interweaves the fast pace of a thriller, made
me keep reading to figure out just what was going on (like all of his other
books that I've read so far), and tugged lightly at my heartstrings.
Themes:
- Bullying's ripple effect
- supernatural
curiosity pushing into something close to madness
- Teen
pressures as a cause for teen actions (think "peer pressure" but
cooler because I dive into the explanations and examples)
- Old
beliefs of the people known to oneself vs. new beliefs that one might not
want to know
Characters (some of them):
- Ethan
(protagonist)
- Billy
(best friend that went missing)
- Ashley
(Ethan's neighbor, used to babysit him when he was a kid)
- Russ
(another neighbor)
- Ragesh
(another neighbor, a neighborhood bully)
- Henry
(Ashley's ten year old son)
When it came to the writing style, this book was slower than
Sager's other books that I've read (Survive the Night, The Only One
Left, and The House Across The Lake) and did not keep me
at the edge of my seat with my palms sweaty and quickened heart rate. It did,
however, keep me guessing. The book has a wonderful balance of narration,
dialogue, and atmosphere. The narration set the scene and made me go to the
spot where the part of the story was taking place. Then, the dialogue, (gosh, I
enjoyed the dialogue so much. My creative writing brain was fangirling and
taking notes) pushed the story forward and sprinkled clues here and there. Some
pieces of dialogue that I didn't think much about made so much sense as the
story progressed. Lastly, when it comes to the atmosphere, Sager knows what
he's doing. The story is told in dual timelines; both taking place in the
Summer. I was jumping around between that Summer in the 1990s when Billy
disappeared, and the modern Summer when Ethan is trying to figure out what
happened to his friend. Every time that the setting changed, the descriptions
placed me in the scene that was unfolding. If the camping night was described,
with its loud crickets and dark skies, maybe a gentle breeze swaying the forest
that was visible from the spacious backyard, I felt as if I was there too!
The writing towards the resolution was formulaic. I caught
the same patterns in the other books by him. It pushed me slightly off the
story, because I already knew that someone from the protagonist's inner circle
was involved. Nonetheless, the deliverance of the ending scenes was quick and
satisfactory to the story. His previous book had some supernatural touches
mixed in the plot, this one does too, but not as I expected.
If you enjoy slower thrillers with a side of supernatural,
you should give this book a chance.
Now on to talking about what has been roaming my head
regarding this book. There are some spoilers.
The characterization of Billy was lovely. He is not a character in the story in the modern timeline, so I found out most of his details through the flashbacks and small pieces of information that were given by other characters. It was clear that Billy was a weird kid. But he was not a bad kid. And just like any child, he wanted to fit in and make friends, but the discernment as to who was a good friend to him wasn't there (because he's only ten). He was constantly being mocked by Ragesh, and in school he did not have more friends. So sticking with Ethan, whom he befriended because they were neighbors, was all he knew; until he chose to do more things by himself. Pursuing his interests gave him the confidence to attempt things that he viewed as brave (although one of those brought his demise).
That decision created a rift between the two friends, and
the manner in which Sager wrote it was magnificent. Because we've all been ten,
we've all known the things that other kids say to hurt other children who are
considered weird. In Sager's story, the children were just that, children.
Through their innocence and desperation, as written by the author, I saw how in
the pursuit for acceptance they acted erratically and allowed the expectations
that Russ, Ragesh, and Ashley had for them. The need to impress and be part of
the group was stronger than sensitivity and self-preservation.
Words were something that cut Billy deeply and ultimately
made him feel so alone that he decided to walk into the forest by himself a few
times. His self-awareness was not fully developed, and the constant push by
others by calling him weird and creepy steered him towards the thoughts of only
counting on himself. I think we all know that no child should feel that way. The
peer pressure that the neighboring kids put on Ethan to turn his back on Billy
could be seen as the final straw on where their friendship really stood. Ethan
told him that he would be better off dead if he cared so much about ghosts
(which was Billy’s intense interest that almost bordered on obsession). That memory was a crucial point in the
story, because the protagonist, Ethan, carried the guilt of his words for
thirty years. The words, as soon as they were spoken, left a mark on all the
people who heard them, and followed them throughout their lives.
Here’s where I’d like to touch on the term of “teen pressure.”
We know how peer pressure works—someone offers the temptation of something and
then we feel that we must do it because everyone else is doing it. To that, let’s
add the always-changing environment of being a pre-teen and a teen; everything
is changing and there’s nothing we can do about it, yet social acceptance is sought
in order to have a constant environment (a group of friends, a club, etc.) Questions
such as “who am I really?” And “what do I like?” come to us during those years,
and sometimes teens don’t feel comfortable or safe sharing those concerns with
others. In this book, it is later revealed that it wasn’t simply Billy’s
unusual behavior and strong interest in the supernatural that made him a target
of bullying by others. Ragesh, struggling with his early recognitions of
homosexuality and his attraction to his friend, and how his family might react
to it, made him let out all those feelings in the form of rage and mockery directed
at the weakest person in his environment: Billy. On the other hand, Russ was
constantly swinging between wanting to be part of the little friend group that
his neighbors had formed and wanting Ethan to choose him as his best friend
rather than choosing Billy. Russ’s anger and insecurity was acted upon in the
final day of Billy’s life, after him only having that insecurity swirling inside
himself. Ethan’s friendship was always cautious and more of a performance. He
did appreciate Billy, but the constant drag of being seen with the neighborhood’s
weird kid and having that reputation rub off on him was something that piled up
in Ethan’s mind. At the end, he exploded and Billy heard his best friend, maybe
his favorite person, telling him the nasty words that he probably thought never
would come out of him.
The constant pressure of self-discovery and assimilation to what is expected from teenagers is a weight that only becomes worse when emotions are not properly recognized and dealt with. I would like to mention that I am well aware that not all bullies are troubled, some of them simply enjoy making others suffer, and not all troubled kids become bullies. However, for the sake of narrowing down the issues that expose themselves as bullying others—self-discovery, exclusion, and embarrassment—the kids in Middle of the Night acted to their own interest and preservation. Unfortunately, Billy was affected from all sides, and after his disappearance, the other kids recognized and carried their guilt. The effects of childhood bullying don't only haunt the victims and survivors during that time; it marks them for the rest of their lives. In Billy's case, he did not survive to live with the effects, but if something can be taken from the analysis of the characters' situations, is that words are powerful, and we never know how they may affect someone once they leave our mouth.
Here are some resources, if needed.
