Harrison squared, known to his mother as H2 because of the family tradition of calling the first born son Harrison Harrison, lives under a dark cloud since he lost both his leg and his father in a boating accident. Pulled from a life in the city he is taken by his scientist mother to the decidedly odd, rural town of Dunnsmouth. He finds the kid at school weird, the teachers more so. Unhappy, H2’s life takes a turn for the worse following the disappearance of his mother…

Harrison Squared (2015. 269 pages) is a young adult Lovecraftian horror novel, written by Daryl Gregory, who had previously penned Pandemonium, it works as a prequel novel to We Are All Completely Fine.

Harrison, having lost his leg, is bothered by nightmares of the event - of some tentacle covered monster attacking him - even though his mother insists that his injuries were a result of his leg being caught in the metal on the boat as it sunk.

Dunnsmouth might be weird but Harrison is not so easily dissuaded from trying to find out what is happening in his school from the unearthly chanting in the morning act of worship, an act which he is not invited to, to the eccentric professor who is forever in the library, looking for some long forgotten tome. His fellow students act like characters from Village of the Dammed, not that the school seems to care whether he attends or not.

So Gregory has constructed a good facsimile of a Lovecraft town, with all the requisite mystery and hidden secrets. Lovecraft has had a bit of revival recently with a lot of collections of short stories and new novels, so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to another. Thankfully Gregory has used his own voice and placed his own riff on an old idea by populating his book with quirky characters.

Harrison meets the fish boy Lub, after he steal a comic book. Rather than behaving like the usual dweller beneath the seas Lub is mad about comics and wants nothing more than to be Aquaman, even though Harrison points out that no one really cared for the character. In his search for his missing mother Gregory uses both sassy, modern kids a well as a smattering of standard horror story types.

One of the weaknesses, for a modern audience at least, of Lovecraft’s work and a lot of which followed was that a lot of it is based around cranking up the tension only to end the book with what amounts to a giant squid posing as a galactic god. Gregory replaces this centre with a detective story. Harrison is a surprisingly driven sixteen year old, with initially inexplicable bouts of uncontrollable anger. In his quest to find his mother he gathers together an unlikely collection of allies.

There’s not a lot of horror, although there is tension in the book and the pace of the story keeps you wanting to read more. Overall, the book is written very well and you do find yourself caring for the well-drawn characters. It was a lot of fun to read.

8

Charles Packer