The Pallbearers Club

Paul Tremblay, a nationally bestselling author known for The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song, presents a psychological thriller that blurs the line between fiction and memory. The narrative follows Art Barbara, a seventeen-year-old loner in the late 1980s who wears a back brace and listens to hair metal. He forms an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. A new friend joins him, bringing a Polaroid camera and taking pictures of corpses. She also displays obsessive knowledge of New England folklore involving digging up the dead. Strange and terrifying events occur when she is present, usually at night. Decades later, Art writes this story as a memoir titled The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. His former friend obtains the manuscript and becomes upset with its contents. She begins making cuts to the text, creating a seamless blend of supernatural elements and mundane reality. This structure creates a disconcerting portrait of an unusual relationship. The Washington Post calls it a welcome casket of chills to shoulder. Esquire notes that uncertainty is Tremblay's stock-in-trade. NPR describes the work as a deliciously confusing thriller. Readers who enjoy mind-bending horror and inexplicable nightmares will appreciate this immersive suspense. Those seeking straightforward, linear narratives may find the shifting perspective unsettling. The book relies on the tension between memory and manipulation rather than traditional ghost stories.