Before providing full resolution to this story, Darnielle cuts to a prolonged, tangential flashback.

The videos and the criminal behavior they seemed to depict fizzle into narrative nothingness, explained as merely a banal occurrence in the Iowa wilds. The disappointing answer to that question is the book’s demise. In this exciting, suspenseful part of Universal Harvester, we anxiously keep reading to see what is coming. Jeremy teams up with a regular customer and the store owner to investigate. As store complaints increase, each video shows more disturbing footage and suggests a violent crime spree is happening in the local area. He finds a new segment spliced into the video that seems to show a violent episode with real life people. After customers inform him that the video cassettes they are returning have something “strange,” a curious, Jeremy takes one home to watch. The book’s first narrative line centers on Jeremy, a teenage video store clerk trying to reconcile his tragic recent past with a plan for the future in ‘90s rural Iowa. This is an unfortunate choice by John Darnielle, as the book rapidly devolves into a jumbled mess of half-baked ideas, incomplete character development and unsatisfying resolutions to its too-numerous storylines.

Subsequently, it abandons its rich atmosphere, promising plot and charismatic cast, complicating the taut thrills of its first hundred pages in search of a broader tale about family and rural life. Universal Harvester carefully constructs a foreboding setting, a clever narrative device and a coterie of likable characters in its first act.

Universal harvester book review