THE PARASITE

by

RAMSEY CAMPBELL

Macmillan (book club edition)  (1980)

CONDITION:  GOOD (or better) hardcover book with GOOD jacket; minor shelfwear at edges and corners.

Twenty years after a game of Ouija ends in a ten-year-old's disappearance, Rose Tierney discovers that she has developed psychic powers that enable her to see into the future and travel without her body, but that make her vulnerable to an evil force.

Commentaries on line:

The Book Club Edition (BCE) of The Parasite was released in tandem with or shortly after the 1980 first hardcover editions.

I really enjoyed this classic horror novel. In the preface you hear about a seance with a little girl being locked in alone in a room. Then you delve into the story about a wife named Rose Tierney and her husband bill. Both write about movies and teach at university. When Rose starts talking with a friend of theirs, Diana, about astral projection and extra body experience the eerie story starts moving. Slowly moving you are getting drawn into an eerie atmosphere full of horror and sinister occurences.

A book for cold winter nights. Highly recommended!

This is another finely crafted story of horror in which a malevolant spirit, that entered the protagonist Rose when she was a child, gradually starts to make it's presence felt although she can only wonder at first, at her new found psychic powers, but later her nightmares begin to dominate.

This ïs another favorite of mine. When I read it, it struck me as a bit dated with its astral projection stuff. But then things started getting pretty weird.

Campbell at his best.

One of the best of Campbell's novels that I've read. A triumph of sustained tension, building to two consecutive well wrought and nail-biting conclusions.

With 'The Parasite', Campbell succeeds at painting unseen dread with a dark flourish. 

I really liked this story once it got going. At first it was slow going, but then I couldn't put it down! I would recommend this book to anyone who loves horror as a genre and I will be looking for more from this author!

This book really wouldn't let me put it down! Very well written. It captured my imagination and ran with it!

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