Review: Ronald Malfi's The Hive slithers into our heads and won't stop buzzing
- Jonathan
- 15 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The neighborhood is the world and the world is the neighborhood
The neighborhood is more than just houses. It’s the people who live in them.
Everyone—retired heart surgeons, single real estate agents, amateur beekeepers—forms a collective community. Just like every worker bee’s wax forms the structure of a honeycomb, every character forms the intricate structure of Ronald Malfi’s The Hive.
Released this week from Titan Books, the sprawling 768-page epic is a labyrinth in nearly every sense of the word. Each chapter is a small piece of a large cosmic puzzle that had me turning pages and racking up notes like coat hangers (you’ll have to read it).
Mariner’s Cove is a lovely bayside community in Maryland. Following a violent summer thunderstorm, the residents of the cove find random inanimate objects scattered throughout (a shopping cart wheel, a colander, the rim of a basketball hoop, etc.) and begin obsessing over them through some unseen influential force. As their obsessions intensify into bizarre actions and behaviors, the only unaffected resident to sense a greater scale is Cory McBride, a ten-year-old with psychic abilities.
That’s about how much of the plot can be revealed without going completely behind the veil.
With a premise that sounds relatively simple, Malfi, who was interviewed last month by The Horror Lounge, tells a story of slow burning, otherworldly influence that parallels not only the animal kingdom, but our own possessive drives.
There are multiple horror subgenres present in The Hive; cosmic horror, psychological horror, body horror, and Malfi balances them all while keeping a goal (endgame!) in mind that pays off towards the conclusion. Whether it be the image of a hollowed-out dead woman full of nesting, translucent bees, or of a middle-aged neighbor pressing his palms against a window, telling the young occupant through an outstretched grin to “come out.” As well as the many fine, lengthy horror novels of the 70s and 80s, The Hive would have undoubtedly earned a shout out in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell if it were written in that era. Indeed, some of the more defining aspects of the novel carried vibes from the Stephen King works It, Needful Things, and The Shining.
The characterization is my favorite aspect of the novel, and what I consider its strongest. Malfi manages to tell an overarching story through the stories of the characters themselves, and we’re already invested in them by the time they start to intertwine.
Some of these characters include Ellen McBride,the nurturing, nail-biting mother of the aforementioned Cory, and Brian Russo, Ellen’s recovering addict brother who recently accepted a job offer in New York. Outside of the family includes a mechanically inclined fanatical redneck named Jeremy “Stinger” Stuckey, a strong-willed engineer named Alex Braswell and his wife Georgette, and a pair of workers at a local joint called Hollywood BBQ named Eric Rhodes and Sarah Miller. Each of these characters brings their own perspective of their neighborhood’s situation, and it all formulates into a memorable finale (endgame!).
Malfi’s passion and skill for character building is evident in even the smaller, but still consequential, characters. Two that I enjoyed reading were Winona Orem, Cory’s neighbor and sister to his best friend Davey, and Air Man, Brian’s hard-partying mentor and partner from his days as a DJ.
However, some of the characterization (or lack thereof) is where I have criticism. Some revelations of individual characters—the curious pregnancy of one, and the seemingly implied psychic powers of another child—never fully emerge, and questions that seemed intentionally planted don’t seem to be answered.
Nevertheless, every character and chapter is part of a puzzle. One whose pieces are dumped in front of us face down, and after we turn the pieces over and start connecting them, we slowly unravel the big picture. Just like every person in every house makes up a neighborhood. Just like every bit of beeswax in every cell makes up a honeycomb. Just like every page we eagerly turn makes up The Hive.
Mariner’s Cove: Come join us
The Hive is available from Titan Books.