Wow, this wasn't anything like I thought it would be. I expected some campus slasher novel and got this crazy amazing psychological novel dressed up as a horror story. I'm not sure where to start. Anyway, Tom's experiences in college must have been pretty bad to create this nightmare of academia. Imagine academia as one big putrid conspiracy theory.

Caleb Prentiss has had it with prancing professors and finally loses it in class. But it isn't just the teachers that are putting the pressure on Caleb, see his parents are dead, he's living in his redneck girlfriends backyard shed over winter break, his sister, the nun, committed suicide in front of him when he was a little kid, and a girl got whacked in his dorm room over winter break and they didn't catch the guy or clean up the mess very well. And then things get really bad. By the end so many bad things have happened to poor Caleb that he's pretty much circling the drain. He'd like to quit school but I'm betting he doesn't make it the six more hours it will take to drop out. Enough paranoia to make you look over your own shoulder, especially if you are in college.

No way are you going to figure out where this is going so it becomes a page turner. Picirilli's prose is dense and wavy, lush with metaphor and palpably sensuous. Except for Caleb most of the characters are two-dimensional leading to a somewhat melodramatic feel to the whole thing at times. This isn't a problem, lots of good books have these good and evil type characters that we only see one side of. It makes the flip-flop more dramatic.

I loved it. I think this is rated so low because most people don't get what is really going on here. I guess they are expecting a slasher or a werewolf on campus thingy and not some psychological dread paranoia hopelessness novel.

I've got to check out more of Piccirilli's stuff since this is my first brush with him. ( )

This surreal, somewhat confusing novel didn't push my horror-book buttons. Piccirilli doused the present story with frequent flashback bits; this only works when done sparingly, and so it didn't work here.

University life is always challenging, but for this character, it's unreal. Half the time I really didn't know what was going on. There were some awkward shifts in scenes and sequence. Caleb has his hands full being preoccupied with the mystery of a dead girl no one brings up, memories of his sister's suicide, consulting a strange friend who is a sleeping prophet, all while unraveling bizarre actions of the university leads. Really the story sounds quite good with it's summary - lots going on to mess with the mind and keep interesting - but it just doesn't do that.

The beginning stands as the best part as things unravel, but the middle grew sluggish as it was pulled into too many confusing directions, topped with going back and forth between memories and different shifts of reality. The ending starts to conclude with a decently solid wrap-up/betrayal, but then ruins it all by an ending that's supposed to stand as an ironic twist it doesn't deliver.

Caleb is likeable enough - clearly troubled and it grows worse because of the bizarre university life. Why was he considered so special? The stigmata is cool but nothing comes of it besides it being there, letting him know when someone died. I just don't get his connection with the teacher he hates and what he's seeing beneath the layers. Perhaps if I could grasp the book better, I'd have enjoyed it more.

Overall I'll have to slap a failing grad on The Night Class. It dares to be different - kudos for that. I generally like surreal stories, but this one is so surreal it just loses connection. It's hard to care much about a story that shifts this much. The writing style made it easy to read and quick to finish (although the irrelevant song and poetry lyrics weren't welcome), but that's not enough to save it. ( )

The writing was very good, and I generally enjoy these kind of odd stories. The ending, however, was useless. ( )

Piccirilli does a great job of creating his protagonist in THE NIGHT CLASS. Unfortunately the rest of the story is not as engrossing as Caleb Prentiss. It starts and ends strong, if a tad abruptly on the ending, and has many very strong middle points but the glue in between those parts weren't quite enough to keep me actively pulled into the novel.

After becoming frustrated with the instructor in his Ethics class, Caleb storms out to start what will turn out to be a very busy and revealing day. At the heart of his day's activities is discovering the details around the death of Sylvia Campbell, a woman who occupied his room during the winter break.

The story is part mystery and part character study with some poetic threading to tie things together. It's easy to see how the characters in this book are a precursor to those in A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. Precursor might be the wrong word here; maybe evolutionary step? It's difficult for me to adequately and fairly describe them which is why I'm not really trying to. Let me switch tacks here slightly. This novel is more attuned to Piccirilli's earlier work where the action is not as hard-boiled but it is very much in his style of having complex characters that are interesting to learn about. I didn't find myself pulled into the story as much as his other novels but I am glad that I read it. For multiple reasons. ( )

No matter how hard I tried I could not get into this book. I didn't like the protagonist, and I really didn't care what happened to him. I didn't even finish reading the book, and I usually finish everything, even if I do hate it. ( )