The Troop is a horror novel written under the pseudonym of Nick Cutter by Canadian author Craig Davidson. I assume he chose a pseudonym because his literary work has been nominated for things like the Scotiabank™® Giller Prize and he doesn’t want to sully his real name by associating it with the lurid trash that is the horror novel. Also possibly because Nick Cutter is a way more bitchin’ name than Craig Davidson.
It’s relatively rare for me to read a thoroughly Canadian novel and Cutter (hey, it’s shorter than typing out Davidson) does a fine job in sketching out the small town life of PEI and the boy scout troop that sets sail for the otherwise uninhabited Falstaff Island for a few days of camping out with their scoutmaster. As Falstaff represents some of the lesser aspects of being human–vain, cowardly, a braggart–it is appropriate that the namesake island serves as a place where terrible things are done by terrible people.
There are spoilers below. If you want a simple recommendation, I give this book a thumbs up. If you wan to be spoilered, keep reading.
Using a format adopted by Stephen King in Carrie, Cutter mixes the events on Falstaff Island with official reports, online articles and other background information in order to provide the reader with details that are unavailable to the troop on the island. This serves to make the horror–namely a super tapeworm that breeds like crazy, transfers easily to others and ultimately kills its host–all the more frightening. When a man infected by the worm lands a boat on the shore and the scoutmaster takes him in, you know things are not going to work out well.
With the infected man making short work of their only radio and all of the kids conveniently cellphone-free (under request of the scoutmaster) the stage is set for a game of survival as the worm turns…on anyone within reach. Who will survive before the schedule boat comes back a few days later to pick them up? One, as it turns out. For reasons unclear to me, Cutter spoils this fact well before the story has played out, making it a question not of how many will survive, but which one. By the time only two of the five boys are left the deliberate misdirection makes it obvious who the final surviving member will be. It’s a bit disappointing to have the reveal come up and I’m not convinced it was the right choice. It’s a horror novel–milk the suspense over how many will make it!
The only real issue I had with the story, which is otherwise fast-paced and tightly written–Cutter is especially adept at vividly capturing the elements of the island, the sounds and smells and sights–lay in the characterization of the inevitable “crazy kid” and his interactions with others. Starting with the predictably effete name of Shelley Longpre, this psychopath-in-training is revealed through flashback to be a monster, capable of drowning kittens for the simple pleasure of doing so. The scene depicting the drowning is recounted in loving (?) detail, presumably to underscore that Shelley is a cold, emotionless shell of a person and to further set the stage where he will escalate his deeds to other humans once he feels he is free to do so on the island.
Cutter plays a game where one of the five kids may or may not be infected. The stalwart but hotheaded Ephraim lapses into paranoia and apparently becomes susceptible to any nutty suggestion Shelley gives him, ranging from cutting himself repeatedly in order to allow the worms to escape to actually dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire. Good ol’ cleansing fire.
It’s just too much to buy into and it hurts the credibility of a story that has enough horror to spare without saddling it with a crazy person making others do crazy things.
That said, Shelley’s demise comes not long after and the rest of the tale plays out much more believably.
There’s a coda with the surviving boy Max in which his post-island life is depicted as a miserable affair, with him kept in isolation and when eventually freed, finding no one wants to get near him. It is a downbeat but appropriate conclusion that underscores the horrible effects of a biological weapon.
Despite my problems with the psychopath character, I enjoyed The Troop. Cutter captures the language and interplay of the boys well and the island environment is well-rendered and convincing as a backdrop to their terrible adventure. Recommended. Less so if you have a phobia about tapeworms or worms in general because this story is positively squirming with them.