Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We are quick to condemn the guilty for the crimes they have committed, the awful acts of ruin and despair they have brought to people’s lives, we seek to justify calling them evil, even when it is clear that their actions originate in the complex and dark recesses of the mind, a trauma, the after effects of PTSD; it is just easier to label all who cross a line of civility and humanity as evil.
We as a society find it intolerable, almost inexplicable, that we are surrounded by those who decide, for whatever reason, to embrace the darkness, to see their own addiction as one that sees them through life. There will be those that say anyone with an addiction is weak, but how many get a thrill, a narcotic like high running through their system, when they go out to the shops and buy items they don’t need, when they act superior to others and put them down, when they hoard money, these are addictions like any other, these are the moments that cause the rush, the Crack to become addictive.
D. E. McCluskey’s 2018 novel, Crack, is a tale that deals with the nature of addiction, the one that comes from the visceral and believed to be involuntary reflexes of cause and effect; and how one moment in time can change a person completely, from the mild-mannered to the unconscionable, forever.
As we gather round the television sets late at night, we find it easy to declare that someone who commits murder should be thrown in jail and never see the light of day again, some will even go as far as suggesting capital punishment as a solution, the hang ’em high brigade will always be vocal in such circumstances.
However, and with the knowledge that the author is not making an apology for the most despicable of acts in this brutal and yet compelling psychological horror, the suffering of the protagonist, Joe O’Hara is evidently clear, and the course of action he takes to cure himself of the nightmares and visions in the after event of a terrible and shocking road traffic accident, what the reader will find as they turn each page is exposure of a single moment in time and the damage wrecked upon the soul of what is an ordinary man.
We can point with certainty to the true evil of the world, but the help, the compassion for those who have turned to violence, to murder, to exorcise or to banish the visions they are being plagued with, we should at least try to understand, to empathise that it could be anyone of us who has succumbed to a darker, terrifying way to live, the addiction of absolute carnage, in the hope it will set us free.
There is no getting round how visceral D. E. McCluskey’s novel is, but is not one of shame, but of a pursuit of understanding the complexity of losing one’s ability to withstand the voices in the mind. We may decry those who see something so traumatic that they unravel, we may believe that they were only ever hiding their true mature, a mask in society, however D. E. McCluskey’s very modern take on the underlying subtly of horror is a rapid page turner, undisputable in its direction, one that asks for an understanding of the downfall whilst all the time making no bones about just how far someone will go to relive the moment in which experiencing a high to make them feel calm, or even alive.
A book that will sit uncomfortably, but with true reason, in the heart and mind, for the reader will know just how close we are to being seen as a monster when we disavow or don’t acknowledge PTSD as a reason for a person’s mental disintegration. Overwhelming and breathless, Crack is addictive.
Ian D. Hall