The Mailman Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

An idea perhaps for a short story but, for a full length novel it fails big time.The issue is that to keep things going people, notably the police, need to just sit on their hands and do nothing whilst the Mailman does his thing.Even though everyone knows the Mail is causing their problems they seem to let it affect them when it shouldn’t.It’s also a tad unbelievable that he could cause the power companies to have their own supplies cut off..just ridiculous.Or for me.

Bentley Little is one of the unsung stars of horror fiction, having produced many novels and stories that are great, back-to-basic examples of the genre, but receiving almost no critical notice beyond the rave reviews of fans and fellow writers like Stephen King. (King has long been a champion of the Arizona novelist's work.) He's a real journeyman of the genre, producing at a steady rate of about a book a year and never dipping hugely in quality.As a writer he's comparable to the English horror novelist James Herbert, in that he brings a straightforward narrative approach to stories of the macabre, mixing extreme gore and everyday settings into a coherent, enjoyable formula. However, as much as I like Herbert, I do have to say that Little actually surpasses him in terms of style, although that may be a personal preference. Herbert's stories tend to be "large-scale"; no matter how small the start of the story is, more often than not it balloons out to encompass entire cities. Little is more intimate and surrealistic than that, which is closer to my taste.The Mailman was his second novel and while it's far from perfect, it's propelled by a wonderful idea and rock solid grasp on tone and imagery. When compared to his debut, The Revelation, it's a little disappointing because, unlike that novel, The Mailman's structure begins to loosen around the midway point, never quite picking up the pace again and becoming repetitive. This is because, although Little has that wonderful idea, he clearly doesn't know how to bring it to conclusion. I don't know how either, and the truth is that, plot-wise, this material may have been better served as a short story.The story is that the small town of Willis, Arizona is rocked by the suicide of its beloved long-serving mail carrier, and begins to tear apart at the seams when a new mailman arrives. His name is John Smith, the classic pseudonym of choice, a strange, pale young man with flame-red hair, and with him in charge of deliveries important letters start disappearing, and soul-destroying hate mail begins arriving. The hero of the story is Doug Albin, a high-school English teacher with a wife, Tritia, and twelve year old son, Billy. By being the only one in town brave and persistent enough to face down the mailman, he becomes the focus; events elsewhere are revealed through his and his family's association with them.The most interesting aspect of the story from a psychological perspective is how the mailman, although responsible for the town's decreasing stability, rarely commits physical violence directly, instead influencing others through his manipulation of their communications system. It should be said that, like most of Little's fiction, The Mailman makes use of extreme and upsetting gore, though we don't really see it carried out.Moreso we see the aftermath, like what was for me the story's most disturbing thread, about a fellow educator and friend of Doug's who receives letters supposedly from his brother, killed in the Vietnam War, which make the dead brother seem like a sadistic, psychopathic war criminal and sexual predator. The effect these letters have on the character of Doug's friend ties into that psychological aspect of the story, and is deeply troubling in how it reveals the thin line between perception and reality that we all stand behind.Moments like that are what elevate The Mailman despite its structural flaws. The narrative settles into a monotonous pattern of: "Doug worries about the mailman, something terrible happens to one of his friends/neighbours, Doug tries to alert the authorities into action but is ignored, go back to square one", which requires a fair amount of patience from the reader to slog through. I had the patience, but then I'm extremely sympathetic to the genre and Little's goals in telling this story; if you're not a die-hard fan of the macabre, I can see you wanting to fling this book across the room after a point.Nonetheless, not a bad novel, and filled to the brim with those gorgeous Little-esque moments, like an image of mailboxes turned upside down with dogs' heads impaled on the posts, because after all, mailmen hate dogs. Little is a great surrealist when it comes to the development of his stories, so much so you can sense him almost kidding the reader, as if looking over her shoulder and saying "you think THAT'S weird, just you wait..."

I enjoy Bentley Little for his ideas, but maybe not as much for his writing style. He has a keen sense of capturing the creepy in ordinary situations making the reader feel uneasy and drawn in at the same time. This works best in the short format, as can be seen in his wonderful The Collection. The problem with Little is that he often has difficulties in expanding his ideas into novels. Somewhere along the line he almost always loses his way, and the story becomes less and less believable, and in my opinion less and less engaging. The Mailman is a very good (or bad) example of this. It starts out great. For the first 150 pages or so I found it difficult to put down the book. Then gradually it went from from deliciously creepy, to slightly silly, to outright ridiculous in the finale. Not worth the hours spent reading it.

Great idea. Its over the top and some of the horror is real. I would have wished Bentley would have found for some of his scenes something else instead, but then the Book wouldn't be what it is now. This book is any way one of his better work straight from the first page to the last.

Great book by Bentley Little. I really enjoyed it. A simple enough story and with characters you care about. Little’s writing style is great, not long winded or boring, it just flows.

a great read found another top author thanks to amazon kindle

Absolutely loved this book cracking yarn about horrific crazy mailman

Brilliant