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Universal Harvester
- A Novel
- Narrated by: John Darnielle
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
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Universal Harvester
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Summary
Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It's a small town in the center of the state - the first a in Nevada pronounced ay. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It's good enough for Jeremy: It's a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.
But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of Targets - an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store - she has an odd complaint: "There's something on it," she says, but doesn't elaborate. Two days later a different customer returns a different tape, a new release, and says it's not defective, exactly, but altered: "There's another movie on this tape."
Jeremy doesn't want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment, and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation - the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing - but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town.
So begins John Darnielle's haunting and masterfully unsettling Universal Harvester: the once placid Iowa fields and farmhouses now sinister and imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. The audiobook will take Jeremy and those around him deeper into this landscape than they have ever expected to go. They will become part of a story that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain.
Engineered by Matt Douglas
Music by Buttonwood Agreement
John Darnielle - piano, guitar
Joaquin Spengemann - drums and percussion
Additional synth by John Vanderslice
Music produced by John Vanderslice at Tiny Telephone, San Francisco
Additional mixing and postproduction by Tim Franklin
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 13-12-22
Creepiest book of the year award
The descriptions plus the music in this book is not to be read at night! Creepy and a little confusing with multiple timelines.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 17-10-19
Highly atmospheric work; elevated by both performance and it being a second reading
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PRETTY VAGUE SPOILERS: I’m going to be entirely honest about this: I am highly biased in John Darnielle’s favour, as I am a massive fan of both his band the Mountain Goats and his previous literary effort Wolf in White Van. Universal Harvester is a book that I think is improved by reading/listening more than once, and I certainly enjoyed it more this time around. This was marketed as a horror novel, and while there are several disquieting moments surrounding the tapes, it isn’t really a horror novel. (There are no supernatural elements or serial killers here, and while a cult shows up they aren’t really the central antagonists?) It is an interesting, atmospheric exploration of grief and trauma, though, and if you meet the novel on the wavelength it’s actually going for, rather than the one you’ve been trained to expect by the premise, you’ll be highly rewarded. Excellent delivery, and a great story with some powerful moments.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 05-07-23
Wouldn't advise if you're feeling a bit low
Undoubtedly an excellent novel however, the content of the story, combined with the narrator's tone, leaves me feeling pretty down in the dumps to be quite honest. Others may find the narrator's voice soothing.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Tomtomward18
- 02-01-18
Intriguing
A seemingly slow paced novel which struggled to grasp my attention at first.
However, I'm not sure if it was the calming smooth pace of John Darnielle's narration or the consistent carrot on stick type writing which left me wanting to know more.
Definitely worth listening to and I garuntee you will want to know the story behind these characters after Part 1.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Auguste Dupin
- 13-12-19
A powerful book that will stay with you
An extremely moving novel about families and loss and coping. Its beautifully written, and is one of the most compassionate books I have ever read. It is a enigmatic story that extends over several decades, and gives us characters who we imagine having lives outside of the story. Its very hard to describe without giving spoilers, and you don't want to have the book spoiled.
I did not rate the narration so highly. Its good but a bit one note. There are a lot of characters and Darnielle does not attempt to distinguish between them in his diction. I also listened to Wolf in White Van, and because that book was mostly in the head of one character Darnielle's delivery worked much better. Honestly I hate to write this, because I really enjoyed this audiobook, but I can imagine a great American actor (Maggie Gyllenhaal?) taking it on.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- R. OH
- 25-09-18
A Book Ruined By Its Marketing
First and probably only review I've done because it might do some good to read:
If you're going into this book with the expectation of a horror or a thriller, as was described in the lead up to the book, you're going to be disappointed. I bought this audio book halfway through Darnielle's Wolf In White Van because I found that story to be so compelling that I was convinced I would love this one too. in another life, where my expectations were not set for literally the opposite of the book's pace and tone, I believe I would have.
Darnielle's Universal Harvester is a slow paced character focused story on a variety of characters suffering from loneliness in the american mid west. It had some vaguely creepy moments, which were not focused on, because they weren't the point. Apparently the marketing team missed that. Only thing for me to do now is make it fade from my memory and listen to it again in a few months.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- mary
- 28-12-17
best book of the decade
i have not being so moved by a book since I read 'god of small things' 20 years ago. This beautifully crafted hymn to the loss of family and home moved me to tears.
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