Book Review: Who Made Stevie Crye?

Last week I read a 1984 horror novel called Who Made Stevie Crye? by Michael Bishop. The book begins as a horror novel, and then begins to move in a pretty surreal direction, ending up with a novel that works both as horror and as parody.

The story in a nutshell - Journalist Stevenson (Stevie) Crye is a mother of two and a recent widow. Her husband Ted, before dying of cancer left her a typewriter which she could use for her work as a freelance journalist. The book begins as the typewriter dies, leaving Stevie little choice but to get it repaired.

The repair, done by a suspicious young man named Seaton for $10 (the book was written in the '80s so the costs seemed a little small to me), begins acting strangely, first typing on its own and eventually transcribing Stevie's dreams. The strangest part about the writings however is they are given chapter numbers, numbers which match the chapters in the novel and are made up of the same text...

The book gets pretty strange but I've got to admit it was a fun ride and it definitely had me confused throughout (as was its aim) as to what was actually going on.

A fun read.