Curse the Names: A Novel

By Robert Arellano

One man sees an atomic apocalypse coming—and tries to warn the world—in this novel with “a sly, Hitchcockian touch”from an Edgar Award finalist (Publishers Weekly).
 
High on a mesa in the mountains of New Mexico, a small town hides a dreadful secret. On a morning very soon there will be an accident that triggers a terrible chain reaction, and the world we know will be wiped out.
 
James Oberhelm, a reporter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, already sees the devastation, like the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be. He believes he can prevent an apocalypse, but first James must escape the devices of a sensuous young blood tech, a lecherous old hippie, a predator in a waking nightmare, and a forsaken adobe house high away in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains whose dark history entwines them all.
 
A massive bomb is ticking beneath the sands of the Southwest, and time is running out to send a warning. James has to find a way to pass along the message—even if it ruins him.
 
“Arellano pulls off the not-inconsiderable feat of making the disintegration of his hero more compelling than the end of the world as we know it.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Reads like a top-notch thriller . . . Alternating between the hilarious and the dreamlike, the novel is imbued with the sense of foreboding inherent to Los Alamos’s infamous ‘gift’ to mankind.” —George Mastras, author of Fideli’s Way and writer/producer, Breaking Bad
 
“Nothing in New Mexico has ever been more secret than Los Alamos, the Atomic City, where a diverse group of geniuses built the first atomic bombs and changed the face of the world forever. That’s the setting and premise for this excellent novel by Cuban-American Robert Arellano. Disaster is about to happen and one man can avert it . . . maybe.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Release date: Dec 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781617751097

Robert Arellano

Robert Arellano is the award-winning author of six previous novels including Curse the Names, Fast Eddie, King of the Bees, and Don Dimaio of La Plata. His nonfiction title Friki: Rock and Rebellion in the Cuban Revolution, will be released in 2018. He lives in Oregon. Havana Libre is the standalone sequel to his Edgar-nominated Havana Lunar.

Book preview

Critical Praise for Edgar Award Finalist

Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano

Dr. Mano Rodriguez is caught up in intrigue in this thoughtful, lushly detailed neo-noir … Much Spanish dialogue, with prompts in English on more difficult words, deepens the sense of locale.

—Publishers Weekly

"A sad, surreal, beautiful tour of the hell that was Cuba in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The writing is hypnotic, the storytelling superb. Havana Lunar is perfect."

—Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old Country, editor of Brooklyn Noir

"Arellano engages the reader immediately by quickly developing his characters into unique individuals, both good and bad … Havana Lunar is not bashful in its presentation of Cuba and its seamy side: Arellano is savvy and able to show caring families while also introducing the reader to the grittier side … The detail is impressive … Arellano is masterful, weaving both the physical and emotional into a story everyone can relate to in some way …"

—Multicultural Review

"Written with passion and vision and with a clear, unflinching eye, Robert Arellano’s Havana Lunar breaks new ground. It is not a Cuban American novel but a Cuban novel written in English. In it the Cuban underworld of chulos and jineteras is revealed and the über-world of political bosses and apparatchiks unmasked. I am certain that Havana Lunar will find a wide and enthusiastic readership."

—Pablo Medina, author of The Cigar Roller

A noir novel short enough to read on a two-hour airplane ride and sufficiently satisfying to make you feel glad you read it.

—Albuquerque Journal

"What a delight, after reading a string of uninvolving novels, to come across Robert Arellano’s engaging ‘Cuban noir novel,’ Havana Lunar. The Havana setting breathes life into this story of grisly murder and false accusation … Havana Lunar has lots to enjoy, everything a comic noir aficionado could hope for."

—Michael Sedano, La Bloga

Robert Arellano’s book is a hypnotic trip into another world, a place we are hardly ever allowed to go—Castro’s Cuba. Without polarizing political pontifications or moral insertions of right and wrong, Arellano takes us straight into a country where people survive, combining resilience with ingenuity to keep the best of what works while simply sneaking around the things that don’t. It’s the way of life for most people who live under dictatorships—and yet the joy and beauty of this novel is how effortlessly he weaves his characters into our lives … It’s as if Balzac meets Philip K. Dick, for Arellano’s Cuba is a whole other planet to us, one we definitely need to know more about …

—Abraham Rodriguez, author of South by South Bronx

"In Havana, despite the fall of the Soviet Union, a continued United States embargo, shortages of just about everything except labor, and a zeal to make do with resources at hand, life is also lived with great passion. It is that passion which suffuses Arellano’s latest book, a ‘Cuban noir’ crime novel titled Havana Lunar."

—Taos News

The overarching rhythm of the chapters incorporates the underlying rhythm of the sentences … Alternating scenes, dialogue, and action create a cinematic experience … The intimate character of the tale has the quality of a memoir … a story as convincing as it is refreshing.

—Taos Horse Fly

CURSE THE NAMES

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Akashic Books

©2012 Robert Arellano

eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-109-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-030-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011923107

All rights reserved

First printing

Akashic Books

PO Box 1456

New York, NY 10009

info©akashicbooks.com

www.akashicbooks.com

For Donna and Dave Marston

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgments

Monday, July 1

Thursday, July 4

Friday, July 5

Saturday, July 6

Sunday, July 7

Monday, July 8

Tuesday, July 9

Wednesday, July 10

Thursday, July 11

Friday, July 12

Saturday, July 13

Sunday, July 14

Monday, July 15

Wednesday, July 17

Sunday, July 21

Thursday, August 1

Tuesday, August 6

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Ibrahim Ahmad, Johanna Ingalls, K. Silem Mohammad, and Johnny Temple for their inspiration and advice.

This was life.

The luckiest hours

Like scribbles in chalk

On a slate in a classroom.

We stare

And try to understand them.

Then luck turns its back—

and everything’s wiped out.

—Aeschylus, The Orestia

The time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.

—J. Robert Oppenheimer

Monday, July 1

She took my wrist in her hands and placed it on the padded, tissue-papered armrest. Keep your elbow real straight for me now. She was what you might call a goth: black scrubs, pierced tongue, and an extreme manicure, black-polished fingernails at least three inches long. How can someone who draws blood for a living have such long nails?

There were tattoos up her inner arm: figures, faces, and names. I don’t know, guys she had been with? There were girls’ names too. I watched her preparations.

She tied the latex strap around my bicep and gave me a rubber ball to squeeze. Somehow she pulled a pair of surgical gloves over those nails, and then she scrubbed the crook of my arm with an alcohol swab, finding a vein she liked. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. She jabbed the needle in and I groaned softly.

You’re lucky you have such low blood pressure, she said, and we both waited for the vial to fill. So, what are you doing for the Fourth?

Fourth of July: a special day for me—like the song says, Born on.

Staying home, probably. Fireworks make my dog skittish.

What made me say probably just then? And what made me refer to Oppie as just my dog? The same impulse that makes me take off my wedding band before entering the clinic: a just-in-case. Never mention the wife just in case you run into a woman who might want to make a pass at you.

The blood tech was holding her breath, and for the first time in our short history of brief encounters I noticed that she looked into my eyes with a strange earnestness. Back in college, that expression would have made me put down my beer at a party and follow her up the stairs no matter how she looked. I said, What about you?

She exhaled and flicked the strap away. A little grin stole over her usually dour pout. Me and my girlfriends go to Morphy Lake. Have you ever been up there?

Is that the one near Mora?

Yeah. There’s an abandoned house above the lake. It’s the only place in that valley, right after the bend in the old road. Me and my girlfriends bring a bottle of Crown Royal and make up ghost stories. And then she said, You should come.

What?

She backed out the needle and pressed a gauze pad against my skin. You should come, we could hook up.

Hook up, that’s the phrase young people use for sex, right?

For as long as things have been cooling with Kitty, I have been waiting for this to happen: a loose girl—a young woman, the likes of whose suppleness I haven’t experienced since grad school—makes the first move. I am a lecher, but I am also a coward, so I have always left it up to someone else to propose an extramarital affair.

The nails got in the way and she fumbled with the Band-Aid. I had to help her put it on my arm, our fingers briefly touching. I let go of the rubber ball and she finished her job with a bit of surgical tape. I liked the way she held my wrist and gently bent my arm back at the elbow instead of saying okay, you don’t have to keep it straight anymore. I liked the homemade signs she taped to all the cabinets, little penciled messages that read: don’t 4get servecing code! and remenber: just a little pinch! I decided she might just be trying to pick me up. Hook up.

I took a mental picture of her ass inside those scrubs. I wanted to know what it would feel like for those long fingernails to scratch my back, draw a line of blood. In my head, I was already winding across the mountains in the Spider, and Kitty was better than a thousand miles away—even though she would be right beside me—because my mind was on a sexy young blood tech I pictured disrobing inside an abandoned house at the end of the trail. I realized I had not felt this way in fifteen years, when driving three hours to get laid was almost as good as getting laid. It simultaneously inflamed my lust and awakened an affinity for deception.

In the clinic parking lot, I climbed in the Spider, took the New Mexico map out of the glove compartment, and drew a line across the mountains.

Thursday, July 4

Dozens of families went camping at Morphy Lake for Independence Day weekend, and every one of them had to drive over that awful road. Even SUVs bottomed out on the ruts, but I’m the only one who tried it in an Alfa Romeo Spider, bashing the tailpipe all to hell. Kitty and I weren’t getting along, Oppie had indigestion, I stabbed myself in the hand with a tent stake, and the cap on the Dewar’s somehow got open and spilled whiskey all over the trunk of the Spider. Kitty caught me trying to suck whatever I could out of the floor mat. Not an auspicious start.

Kitty said, Are you going to give Oppie his suppository or not?

I gave it to him last time.

"No. I gave him the last two times."

I cut my hand. I don’t want to get it infected.

Shit. How the fuck did you do that?

Fucking tent stake.

You clumsy fuck.

Kitty and I shared a carefree swearing habit, the mark of a childless couple. Sometime after the tenth wedding anniversary, living in close quarters without kids to keep us in line, we embraced expletives with gusto. It rattled anyone who hung around us. We never hit each other, but people picked up on the vibe of verbal abuse, and we had no real friends. There was Dr. and Mrs. Henry Farmer, but I can’t be sure they really count. It would be more accurate to call Hank Farmer a drinking buddy, while our wives relied on each other to bicker to about their husbands’ drinking.

At sunset we were eaten by mosquitoes. I had forgotten to bring the repellent.

Fire danger was just moderate, so the park rangers cleared the campground area for sparklers and small poppers only, but at dusk someone across the lake blasted The Star-Spangled Banner from an RV, and on cue a bunch of kids lit off some big ones on the beach: The bombs bursting in air …

The pyrotechnicians scattered before the campground host could maneuver his Bronco II around the ring road at five miles per hour.

Kitty and I watched it all from a rock while eating cold beans out of the can. The Coleman bottle I had brought didn’t have anything in it.

You stupid fuck. Couldn’t you feel it was empty?

At least I remembered the fucking can opener.

Oppie started whimpering, so Kitty and I let up and laid our sleeping bags out in the tent. I popped the trunk of the Spider and soaked a tissue with whiskey from the floor mat as antiseptic, wrapping it around my injured hand and securing it with duct tape.

When I got in the tent Kitty was deep in her sleeping bag with her shoulder to me. I climbed into my bag still wearing a shirt, pants, and socks. I waited fifteen minutes until Kitty’s breathing slowed and became shallow. I shook her shoulder to no effect. She hadn’t forgotten to pack her Ambien.

I squirmed out of the sleeping bag and slipped into my windbreaker, patting the pockets to make sure the camera and the Altoids tin were there.

Oppie, curled in a little ball at the foot of Kitty’s bag, looked up and wagged his tail. I made easy-boy gestures and clipped the leash to his travel collar. If I didn’t take Oppie he would whine and wake Kitty.

I unzipped the tent flap and stepped outside into my shoes.

The dark campground was quiet, the only sounds the crickets, my footfall through the brush, and the tinkling of Oppie’s tags. We followed an unmarked trail out the back of the overflow parking lot. I took Oppie’s leash off and we labored up the steep slope from the lake. The chirping of the crickets became louder.

What starlight made it through

Reviews for Curse the Names

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't know if 'pre-Apocalyptic' is a genre yet, but that's where this book seems to sit. I thought it was brilliant: a disturbing and dark tale of a man's disintegration in the hot summer glare of Los Alamos.

[copefiend2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting little book which would seem right at home in the bizarre book section at your local head shop. The story and premise start out intriguing but they both fail to fully deliver. I think there is a great story here but it just didn't quite do it for me. The pacing was engaging and I certainly was able to visalize the character and scenes. I think the author almost delivered on this one and could have knocked this one out of the park with a few tweaks to the storyline. Would I recommened this one? Probably not. I will however be looking forward to the next book by this author because I think he has tremendous imagination and potential.

[ct4bergeron · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was an interesting book, but it left me unsatisfied. The pace is good, the storyline has potential, but it is missing a lot of context or informations. Can't really put my finger on it, but I did feel lost at some point, the story taking me in different direction without actually telling me why. It left a lot of questions and I felt like I was missing the point.

[robtcm · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A great story idea..... and I found it easy to read, however, it felt incomplete. I do not pretend to be a book critic, and I am not going to waste your time or mine talking about the story in depth or character development, etc. Quite simply, I was expecting something more from this book and the teasers on the cover, but alas it failed. I did finish it as it was fairly short.

[robbflynn_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book was read as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group.Curse the Names is an odd little book. The situation is fairly straight-forward: James Oberhelm is a journalist employed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory whose 10 year marriage has turned stale. He’s bored with his job, bored with his wife, and bored with his life. In a somewhat terrified hope of an extra-marital hookup, he decides to meet a stranger at an old abandoned house. That’s when things go all weird… both with the story and the effect it had on me.Part paranormal thriller, part psychological thriller, and part conspiracy theory thriller, Arellano does a good job at weaving a very tight storyline into only 188 pages. I especially like (and admire) his ability to wring the most out of very few words. I do think there were a few scenes that would have benefited from expansion (primarily with description) given their ultimate importance in the book, but that would have had ill-effects on the quick pacing necessary for this kind of novel.What kept me going through most of it was that it was told in the past-tense. I assumed I was going to get some kind of resolution to… something. But with 30 pages remaining, Arellano shifts to first person present, and all hope of any kind of resolution quickly fades away as the narrative shifts to one buried in the psychosis of the protagonist. While I don’t need everything handed to me wrapped in a neat little bow, I do need something that lets me know the last 158 pages is actually going to mean something. Instead, I was left wondering not just about the story lines and potential causes of all this disaster that has fallen upon poor, hapless, drunken James, but, because the story itself has shifted into the present tense, I found myself questioning even the few things I “knew” to be true from earlier in the book. The shift in tense was quite subtle and extremely well done (especially the specific point at which it occurs), but ultimately I think it lessened the overall impact by casting everything that happened into doubt and eliminating any kind of satisfactory resolution.Most important, though, and from which everything else stems, I found James’ drug and booze habits forced and cliche. Rich, bored, and unhappy, a once-brilliant writer turns addict and his life falls apart in a psychotropic haze. His apathy makes him an unlikeable narrator, and his drug-addled decisions and observations make him unreliable narrator. I found his characterization, and everyone else’s, to be rather shallow and steadfast with little growth or development of any kind. While it’s a perfectly valid choice to remain steadfast and keep making the same mistakes time and again, it becomes stale and predictable, which is my overall impression of not just James, but the novel as a whole.At the end of the day, Curse the Names felt incomplete to me… incomplete storylines, incomplete character development, incomplete settings.As a humorous side-note (to me, anyway), I’ve never seen anyone “scavenge” as much change from “the cracks” of car seats as James Oberhelm. I bet I couldn’t come up with even a 10th of what he did, and I’ve owned my junker for nearly a decade.

[crazybatcow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A lot of reviews have given this book 3 stars because, if I understand correctly, it features a man having a meltdown (in more ways than one). Or maybe it's rated a 3 because they were expecting a police procedural when they got instead a dark psychological thriller with a hint of the supernatural (along the lines of what Stephen King might write as a "thriller"). Yes, there is drug use (pot, btw... when I saw all these references to drugs, I was thinking they meant "real drugs" not just marijuana). And the main character is an ass for sure... but... really, is he that much different than a lot of middle aged men in a loveless relationship and a meaningless job? No, I don't think so.I found it to be a very engaging story, albeit dark and a bit depressing... and I give it a nice 4 stars.

[willymammoth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I first received Curse the Names from the Librarything Early Reviewers Program, I was under the false assumption that it was a mystery/thriller. A large part of that may be due to the fact that Arallano’s last novel, Havana Lunar, was a hardboiled tale nominated for the 2010 Edgar Awards. The publishers also used praise for Havana Lunar to promote the new novel, so along with information about Curse the Names you had quotes stating that it was, “A Noir novel short enough to read on a plane ride.” Note to publishers: quit effing doing that. The remainder of my misconceptions I blame on blurb on the back cover."High on a mesa in the mountains of New Mexico, a small town hides a dreadful secret. On a morning very soon there will be an accident that triggers a terrible chain reaction, and the world we know will be wiped out.James Oberhelm, a reporter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, already sees the devastation, like the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be. He believes he can prevent an apocalypse, but first James must escape the devices of a sensuous young blood tech, a lecherous old hippie, a predator in a waking nightmare, and a forsaken adobe house high away in the Sangre de Cristo mountains whose dark history entwines them all.A massive bomb is ticking beneath the sands of the Southwest, and time is running out to send a warning. James has to find a way to pass along the message—even if it ruins him."See all that up there? That, ostensibly, is what the book is supposed to be about. But it’s not. Curse the Names is really about one man’s mental unraveling, and thus, it is more psychological horror than anything. But that’s not all.Like the blurb says above, James Oberhelm works as a journalist for Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has a cushy six-figure gig, an expensive house, and a dead marriage. While getting his blood drawn (gotta watch those lipids, after all) the goth blood tech working on him tells him that for the Fourth of July she and her friends are going up to an abandoned house near a local state park where they’ll get trashed and tell ghost stories. She invites James (the 40-something journalist) to come up to so they can “hook up.” Being the loser that he is, James cajoles his wife into going up to said park for a camping trip, and while she’s asleep, he hikes up to the house for his promised hookup. But he finds no one home at the creepy adobe house. His dog Oppie finds a shopping bag full of old animal bones, but nothing else. Defeated and thoroughly convinced of his loserdom (about time), James goes back to the campsite for a few hours’ shuteye.The next day, James heads over to see his pot dealer (yeah, you heard right), the “lecherous old hippie” in the blurb I referenced above. While he scores some righteous bud, he also asks about the abandoned adobe house. Hippie drug dealer tells him that back in the 1800s, that house was the site of a triple murder homicide, a homesteading family all murdered by the eldest son, who then killed himself. Subsequent to that, it was also a hippie commune where our hippie drug dealer lived for a while, but he left due to the “strange shit” that went down there. It’s bad ju-ju, he says, but James thinks it might make for an interesting story (or at least that’s what he tells everyone), and he sets off to find more about the house by tracking down the hippies that used to live there and researching more about the house’s history.That’s when James’s life starts to go to hell in a hand basket. He accidentally kills his dog, his identity is stolen and his bank accounts liquidated, he contracts radiation poisoning, he loses his job, his marriage finally disintegrates, and his mind ultimately breaks with reality. There are dreams, too—of the past, of the future, of some nuclear calamity about to unfold around Los Alamos Labs, and at the center of it all lies that house full of "bad ju-ju.". In short, James becomes quite unhinged. If you ask me, though, it is his own fault. He tokes like a chimney (he takes that Sublime song “Smoke Two Joins” a little too literally), drinks like a fish (his days are a litany of pitstops at various watering holes), and gnoshes oxycodone like candy. I had to laugh when the character complains about the cholesterol in egg yolks, and then slugs back a couple manhattans for his breakfast instead. Oh yeah, and he’s a totally self-absorbed, narcissistic prick. But then again, very rare is the journalist who isn’t. To James’s credit, Arallano leaves the narrative rather open-ended, allowing the reader to decide—is James really seeing all these horrible visions, really witnessing “the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be,” or is he just batshit crazy? I’m leaning toward the latter, but then again I’ve always been a skeptic at heart.The tension in the book is unbelievable. I wouldn’t say it’s scary, though—more like unnerving. That is mostly because of the frenetic pace of events. Arallano takes you through one thing after the other, never letting the pace slow so that you (or the narrator, for that matter) cannot stop and really reason through the recent events. Book critics, I think, generally use the term “rollercoaster” for this type of thing. Admittedly, my state of mind while reading the book probably had something to do with this impression. I was awake at three o’clock in the morning, bleary-eyed, jet-lagged (after a nine hour flight), and delirious from coughing my lungs out. The entire reading experience was a bit surreal. It was as if I were unraveling along with James, though whether that is due to the writing or because I truly was a little bit out of my gourd, I don’t know.The writing, imagery, dialogue, and style of Curse the Names are all excellent. I didn’t exactly understand what the title had to do with anything, but that’s OK. Plenty of books have titles that don’t have anything to do with the plot, so I didn’t mind. The reason that this book didn’t get more than three stars from me was because it lacked direction. The plot meanders. It jumps from the breakdown of an addict, to an investigative thriller, to psychological horror, and back again. It was as if the author started out trying to write one kind of novel—the “descent into madness” type of thing, and what evolved was more like an environmentalist’s harbinger of a nuclear nightmare. Then again, maybe a meandering and disjointed plot better reflects a mind slipping into madness. Maybe Arallano planned it that way. If so, the concept will probably go over most readers’ heads, but maybe the novel deserves better than three stars. I dunno. Call it three and a half.In the end, I think this is one of those books that you’ll have to read yourself. It can elicit a lot of different reactions, and it really depends on your tastes as a reader and your mental state during the reading. The good news is that it’s a short book. You easily can finish it in an hour or two, and then you’ll have the day to mull over what the hell you just read. Matter of fact, I’m still mulling.readabookonce.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-curse-names-by-robert-arellano.html

[aethercowboy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Curse the names is a short psychological thriller based around Los Alamos' past as a glowing city. By glowing, I mean radioactive. Upon reading the blurbs from the book, you might think it to be an interesting book full of colorful characters, but what it all boils down to are characters that are introduced once, only to have minimal "screen time" afterwards. The protagonist, otherwise, finds himself with several chemical addictions, and a life that's slowly falling apart once he start to pick at the seams to find out the deeper aspects of his home town.Since the book is short, it's not too much of a waste of time to read. However, it does contain significant profanity, drug and alcohol use, and some grim descriptions of insane folk. I'd recommend avoiding it.

[lpg3d · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Your name is on that wall, man. That's all there is to it. You go there, you start having fucked-up nightmares, and then bad shit starts happening to you and everyone around you." Curse the Names by Robert Arellano is an excellent thriller/mystery about an ordinary guy who just might be able to prevent a catastrophe. Too bad he'll have to lose everything he cares about in the process. This is a very hard book to put down once you get started. Excellent creepy atmosphere, and a great mystery wrapped up in a thrilling race to prevent disaster.

[mikemillertime · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Curse the Names" is both an interesting read: at points an ambitious novel with a variety of complex themes and ideas, yet also an easygoing and lackadaisical narrative that leisurely meanders through a menagerie of loosely connected ideas and plot points. With an unsympathetic narrator trying to find his way amongst a broken marriage, drug addiction and nightmarish visions of nuclear disaster, the story is an existential noir/thriller quality reminiscent of Don Delilo. Though the story gets a little lost along the way creating a distinct environment in this southwestern New Mexican setting, the book climaxes nicely when it unites its disparate ideas.

[lazybee_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I tried to finish this book since it was an Early Reviewer book, but it wasn't easy. The main character is completely unlikeable and the plot is not engaging. I definitely wouldn't recommend it.

[darcyo_12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An unhappily married writer for employee publication at Los Alamos National Laboratory is lured to a cabin in the woods and is stood up by the young woman he expected to find there. Instead, he is pulled into something evil that emanates from the cabin causing him to lose his wife, job and if the ending can be guessed, his life.I thought the premise was a little far-fetched. The story was entertaining. I would recommend it for guys especially and anyone who is interested in Los Alamos.

[tyllwin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book reminds me almost of a Jonathan Carroll novel, albeit with a much less likeable narrator, and a less acute point. We meet James Oberhelm as he's trying to cheat on his wife by hooking up with a girl half his age. In doing so, he goes into a house with an odd history, and when he comes out, not only his comfortable life, but reality itself, start falling apart. It's not set in stone what's happening to Oberhelm: it may be environmental toxins, delusions from drug and alcohol addictions, a nervous breakdown, a curse, visions from God, hallucinations from blood sepsis, or any combination. But as things fall to pieces he begins to have nightmares about a nuclear accident that would make Fukushima look like a papercut. It's a short book, which works for its benefit. Not that the writing is bad, just that you don't enjoy Oberhelm's company, and if it had been much longer, I might have started smiling at the ills that befell him. Still, I think that at base, it's an unsatisfying book: beyond "things fall apart," I can't personally tease a theme or broader narrative out of it, and don't feel there was much of a resolution to it on either a plot or a thematic level. (Disclosure: Review copy was provided to me free as a part of LTER)

[drneutron_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Frankly, this is an odd little book. It's not at all what I expected - a nuclear thriller with maybe some supernatural elements thrown in. Instead, Arellano tells the story of a meltdown, that while may or may not be nuclear, is certainly of the personal kind. James Oberhelm is a writer with a cushy, meaningless job at Los Alamos National Laboratory who, in a chance opportunity to cheat on his wife, stumbles across a very strange house back in the mountains. That encounter shakes him out of his routine of heavy drinking and recreational drug use to a state of complete loss. Everything about his life falls apart. And there may be a disaster looming at the laboratory...I was hoping for a better book. The initial idea is a good one, and the ending certainly leaves us with that sense of unreality that I expected. But I just couldn't bring myself to care about Oberhelm and his problems. He's an unlikeable person - which is fine if the story shows some humanity about the character - that never gets beyond the jerk stage. Unfortunately, I can only unenthusiastically recommend this one.

[donaldmcobb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Curse the Names by Robert Arellano is a great example of what happens when an author has a really great idea for a story, but just can't flesh it out enough to make anything worthwhile. It's the story of James Oberhelm, a reporter working at the Los Alamos National Laboratry. While on a camping trip with his wife, he hikes up to an abandoned house and from there, his life quickly spirals out of control. The house has a history of destroying people's lives, and James is just the latest in a long line of victims.See, that's not a bad core idea. However, Arellano doesn't know where to go with it. There is a lot of filler present in the first half of the book. I hesitate to call it pointless, because I feel that if Curse the Names was a longer book, this extended glimpse into Oberhelm's life would have been appropriate, but at less than 200 pages of large font in a smaller-than-usual trade paperback, it's a lot of wasted effort. Then when things start actually happening in the second half, again it seems that Arellano doesn't quite know what to do. The story seems to have paranormal roots, but there's enough evidence that Oberhelm is just hallucinating everything due to the truly ridiculous amount of drugs and alcohol he consumes. This setup can be a very effective springboard for horror, but it's handled very clumsily here. If Oberhelm is hallucinating, then events are presented in a manner that just make you pity him. If he is the victim of some sort of curse, it's really kind of a lame curse and not at all horrifying.Of course, it would also help to have a more interesting protagonist. James Oberhelm is just really bland. He's quite obviously an alcoholic, and later gets hooked on pain killers, but that's really the extent of the character. He's like a extra from an episode of Law & Order: pill-poppin' alky. Who likes golf. I guess that's one extra bit of character. He just cannot do anything at all without having a drink or three, but Arellano is so blasé about it that you just don't care. A drug-added alcoholic in this kind of story should be at least an interesting character, if not a sympathetic or antagonistic one, but I found myself just rolling my eyes every time Oberhelm stopped somewhere for a drink.Ultimately I find Curse the Names more frustrating than anything else. There's a lot of wasted potential here. Arellano seems like a competent writer, and the basic idea is not a bad one, he just doesn't do it justice.

[btuckertx · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Curse the Names, by Robert Arellano, began in a dense fog of anticipation and dread. I couldn't wait for the end to see what happens. Unfortunately, by the time I got halfway through the book, I really wanted to be done with it. The book was entertaining enough, but I kept thinking it would have made a great bit for one of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone anthologies. Pretty tautly written, terrific plot basis - the accumulation of radioactive waste at Los Alamos might be reaching critical mass - it just seemed to have too many moving parts for the plot, and very little character development. OK, virtually no character development.I should have guessed from the type size that this book had been stretched into a short novel. Arellano's editor should have insisted on condensing it into a short story for a later collection, or fleshing out the characters and tightening the plot into something that would fly as a full-blown novel.

[joybee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An entertaining read. A man's decent into madness and drug/alcohol abuse as his life is falling apart. James Oberhelm is a successful journalist who takes a writing job for 'The Lad', a government run nuclear testing facility in New Mexico. The work is easy, and the benefits are good, but strange things begin to happen on James's 40th birthday. Is he going crazy or is there some kind of conspiracy to ruin his life.

[enemyanniemae · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received this book courtesy of LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and Akashic Books was kind enough to send a replacement copy when the original did not arrive. *thank you!*James Oberhelm has it all, the cushy job writing human interest stories about the scientists working for the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He keeps his own hours and plays golf whenever he pleases. He drives a fully restored Alfa Romeo Spider. Life is good and he is bored by it. When he decides to take a chance that the goth phlebotomist who drew his blood for testing was looking to hook up with him when she offhandedly invites him to meet her and her friends at an abandoned cabin in the woods, strange things begin happening. This book may be small (only 200 pages) but it packs a wallop! The sense of unease and foreboding is palpable as Oberhelm's life begins to unravel. This little story is very Hitchcockian in its ability to transform a story about a fellow looking for a little adventure into a psychotic jigsaw puzzle. Robert Orellano combines the best features of several genres (thriller, paranormal and horror) into a neat little package.This is definitely recommended reading.

[rdhawk6886 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Jim and Hunter Thompson meet the X Files. The book's strength is the narrator's authentic voice. In today's market, too many "dark" or "noir" books feature the "flawed" protagonist who is deeply depressed, yet finds the time to work out, get laid, and come out on top in a Rambo style gun fight. Here, the narrator seemed to be believably on the edge. The setting (New Mexico) and some of the other characters (goth med tech) were unique. However, the narrative was lacking. I felt like there were several unique circumstances which were introduced but nothing really arose from those circumstances. I don't mind a vague narrative, but in that instance, I think there needs to be a relationship that you care about involved. Here, there were other characters, with whom the protagonist interacted, but there were no relationships which drove the narrative. I was rooting for something to happen to this interesting and authentic narrator.

[klarsenmd · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as part of LT's early reviewer program. When I first read the book description on the website and again on the book cover, I thought this was going to be a fantastic apocalyptic read. The plot set-up was really interesting and this could have been wonderfully executed. The actual book however, fell short of the mark. I found the idea of a journalist tied to Los Alamos to be very intriguing. The problem was this particular character, James Oberhelm, was so unlikeable and lacking in any real depth, that I found I couldn't care about him to save my life. The plot felt far too contrived at important times, and the ending was not only poorly written, but confusing and a little pointless. I found the short 188 pages at once too short (more back story and character development might have saved it for me) and at the same time just long enough ( I couldn't take another drunken pill popping description). There were a few grammatical errors and typos but I chalk this up to the ARC copy. It's the type of book that leaves the reader questioning the reality of the narrator's tale, which I assume was the intention. All in all a bit of a disappointment from what could have been a fantastic story.

[cmwilson101 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Curse the Names by Robert Arellano is a spooky, unsettling, and ultimately disturbing story set in Los Alamos. It takes place in one short month, and revolves around James Oberhelm, who is rich, successful, and employed in a mindless job of writing glamor pieces about retired Los Alamos National Laboratory employees. James is bored, in his fancy suburban house with his equally-successful, but cold wife, and decides to take up a casual offer made by a stranger to attend a party at an abandoned house. This decision is the first step in the unraveling of his life. The house fascinates and repels him, and he ultimately comes to believe that somehow it has cursed him, because after he visits the house he begins losing everything, including, (perhaps?), his mind. He is plagued by visions of death by a radioactive incident at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and embarks on a journalistic quest to discover the truth behind the house, the Lab, and his own sanity. Curse the Names by Robert Arellano is a unique story. It is not tidily wrapped up at the end, which leaves the reader unsettled (hence, my "disturbing" comment earlier). I felt that the ending was appropriately unclear, a bit like Jame's own mind. A thought-provoking, interesting, and nightmarish story, which I greatly enjoyed.

[luna68_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a very strange book. I thought I knew what it would be about (an apocalyptic-type event at Los Alamos), and I spent a good portion of the book still believing that is what it was leading up to. However, in the end, it was more of a character book. The book did not have a satisfying ending, and was very disconcerting almost from the start. Ultimately, I think the whole story and the way it was written was a reflection of the mind of the main character. If he were more likeable, I may have enjoyed the book more. Although, the way it was written, it did keep me glued to find out what would happen. It was just a bit of a let down when I got there.

[elric17_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a very well written work, but the story was not sure how to describe it, but different, not what was expected, but an enjoyable read despite that. Personally, I am always unfulfilled when the book doesn't end with a nice ribbon around it at the end.

[thetwods · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A classic unreliable narrator novel, Curse the Names sucks the reader in with hypnotic, rapid-fire prose, steadily building a sense of impending doom.James Oberhelm is a journalist for an in-house magazine at Los Alamos, the nation's nuclear research facility in the mountains and deserts of New Mexico. Unhappy in his marriage, he decides to try to pick up a girl. Boy, will he regret that mistake.Lured to an abandoned, dilapidated house in the desolate Sangre de Christo mountains...something happens. What that is remains for the reader to decipher. The pages of his past articles are pasted to the walls of a locked room he breaks into. Soon, his life begins to unravel. Is he the victim of a curse? A set-up? Is any of this real? Is he losing his mind? After all, his father did time in a mental hospital. Are his visions of a coming nuclear catastrophe an omen of the future or the schizophrenic detritus of mind fried on oxycodone, alcohol and pot?In any case, the sense of an insidious threat to James and the populace around him grows. A noose seems to tighten as we race to the conclusion. A conclusion that refuses to offer any simple answers. Someone get this novel to David Lynch's attention - the same foreboding feeling of pending annhiliation - personal, psychological, physical - I experienced in watching Lost Highway is at play here. I cannot wait to read more by Robert Arellano.

[marcush_42 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book made me think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but with nuclear waste. James Oberhelm is dissatisfied with his life, so he drinks, smokes pot, and pops pills. As a journalist for a nuclear research lab, James' life is pretty dull, so it makes sense that he needs to spice it up a bit. He gets more than he bargains for when he "chases some tail" to an old abandoned house in the woods and begins to uncover the secrets behind the buried nuclear waste in the desert.The book has some tense moments where you might wonder if it's going to turn into a zombie, post-apocaylptic novel, an occult thriller, or remain a rambling commentary on drug usage. Unfortunately, it remains the latter. There's a lot of potential for this to be super creepy: an old house, bones buried in the wall, evil hexes on people, yet it just continues to grind away at James' drug usage. I was pretty unsatisfied by the end of it.

[zmagic69 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have not read any other books from this author, but I must say the book sucks you in immediately. That being said I am not sure what I think of the book. It is a very strange story without much of an ending. I don't know if it is about a man losing his mind and seeing apocalyptic visions, a man who has come back from the past or something else entirely.

[barbharper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book has an intriguing premise. In the mountains of New Mexico, a potential disaster involving stored nuclear waste is giving journalist James Oberhelm nightmares. James is not a very sympathetic protagonist, hoever, given his paranoia and penchant for alcohol and drugs. He relates the plot in the first person and as his life spirals downward the reader must question how reliable a narrator he is. I found the ending frustrating since it lacked a resolution. There are strong supernatural elements that are never explained, and everything could be interpreted as the result of a mental breakdown, or maybe not.

[shayrp76 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

James Overhelm, a reporter for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is trying to prevent an apocalypse. The nightmares demanding that he warn everyone begins after he comes across an abandoned adobe while camping. He follows the mysterious trail of the adobes past knowing that somehow it is connected with the devastation that he wants to stop. Unfortunately his progress is stopped at every turn and the days do not stop counting down.James is the kind of guy that I don’t want to like but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him every once in awhile as I was reading. The marriage dynamic and just the everyday routine of the character was, I am sad to say, believable. The flow and pacing is just incredible which means I didn’t get bored or impatient. I found it predictable, but wasn’t disappointed when I finished. The story was not the strong point for me, but I still enjoyed reading it.

[darcia_10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a short, kind of strange book. I didn't think the description matched the story all that well. The small town isn't hiding a secret. The secret belongs to the main character. Most of what goes on is in his head. Or maybe it's not. We never really find out.The only character we get to know is the main character, and he's not likable. He's an arrogant drunk who might be crazy and pops a seemingly endless supply of Oxycodone while always high on marijuana. The plot moves along quickly, but drags us down random paths and leaves us hanging to figure out the scenery. That being said, there is something oddly compelling about the prose. I'm just not sure what that something is.

[anniemod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Welcome to LA. Not the one in California - the one in New Mexico. Los Alamos - the city where the Lab is conducting the nuclear research of the USA. James Oberhelm is a middle aged journalist that had decided to replace the free voice and worthy articles for the calm life of a journalist for the Surge, the magazine for the Lab's employees. And everything is going just fine until a girl sends him to a house... and weird things start happening.An old house, a curse (more presumed than spelled out), a sequence of unhappy events and nightmares. These are the organic parts of this story. There is a ghost (or is he just someone's imagination?), a man that does not seem to exist, a dead animal, a divorce, the possible death of a lot of people and a link to the past that could not exist. Even at the end of the novel, it is not entirely clear what kicked the whole chain in motion - who started it all and why. At least not if you are looking for a logical explanation. Anyone is free to make their own interpretation and in the world of the surreal anything is possible. It is a short novel and this helped a bit to like it - I like supernatural stories but most of the surreal ones are leaving me cold. You can read this one in a lot of ways - as an obsession with a house, as a ghost story or as a curse story. And probably in 20 other different ways. Overall - pretty interesting and quite readable - even if it was not exactly my cup of tea.