There’s something about old novels that I love. I’m not sure what it is, exactly; maybe having the chance to discover an author or series that has plenty of books already available, or maybe the idea of reading something that has dropped out of popular trends.
Regardless of the reason, old novels draw me in. So when my parents offered me the chance to look through a couple of boxes of their old books and take home whichever ones I wanted, I jumped at it. I ended up with quite the collection — I filled a box with everything from historical fiction to fantasy.
I’ve only read a couple of the novels so far, but I’ve already found one I want to recommend: Comes The Blind Fury by John Saul.
Comes The Blind Fury starts by introducing us to a young girl. She’s blind, but has learned how to navigate the cliffs near her home. Until one day a group of children finds her, and those cliffs become a lot more dangerous.
From there, the novel jumps ahead a century to introduce us to the Pendletons, a family of three who have recently moved to the town of Paradise Point. Michelle — the child in the family — loves her new home, and has mostly settled in well at school. But something isn’t quite right in the town of Paradise Point, and after Michelle experiences an accident of her own on the nearby cliffs, she begins an unusual friendship with a blind girl who nobody else has met.
Saul has been a favourite author of mine for years, and Comes The Blind Fury didn’t lessen that opinion. The novel switches points of view fairly often, but I didn’t have a problem determining who I was following when. And I liked the differing points of view — it added an element to the story that I think would have been missing if there were only one.
And the story itself… well, it had a pretty tight grip on me. While I had an inkling of what was going to happen before it did, I still found that I needed to keep reading. I needed to know why everything was happening, and how it would be resolved.
The ending, while it didn’t go quite as I expected it to, did fit the novel really well. And Saul left it with just enough of a question at the end to force me to wonder if everything really was as resolved as I thought it was.
—
Goodreads summary
Amanda
A century ago, a gentle blind girl walked the cliffs of Paradise Point. Then the children came – taunting, teasing – until she lost her footing and fell, shrieking her rage to the drowning sea…
Michelle
Now Michelle has come from Boston to live in the big house on Paradise Point. She is excited about her new life, ready to make new friends…until a hand reaches out of the swirling mists – the hand of a blind child. She is asking for friendship…
seeking revenge…
whispering her name…
Miranda Burski 
I read this about 20 yrs ago with Suffer the Children.
I haven’t read Suffer the Children yet, but it’s one I’d eventually like to get to. Did you enjoy it?
Absolutely! Those books were written very well for supernatural fiction. I used to read Dean Koontz before he degenerated into that Odd Thomas junk he writes now. Koontz was never a Saul, but he wrote some decent reads around the same time.
Good to hear! I haven’t read much Koontz yet, but, if I’m remembering correctly, I do have at least one of his books at home, waiting to be opened. I took it home along with all of the others that my parents gave me.
Choose carefully on this because he has some pretty big disappointments in there, you know, you read it for about a third in and it sucks, but you feel that you must give it a chance to improve?
I hate when that ends up happening. And I have a hard time putting books down if I’m not enjoying them, too, whether I think they might improve or not. I usually only put them down if I absolutely hate something or can’t follow it. So thanks, I’ll make sure to really look into his books before I choose one.