Writing style
Atmospheric · Direct · Spare
Apple BooksThe auctioneer
Horror
- First published
- 1975
- Print length
- 239 pagesSimon and Schuster, 1975
Description
John Moore lives with his family on a struggling farm in rural New Hampshire, where privacy, habit, and mutual dependence hold a small community together. Then a charismatic stranger arrives and begins running auctions, presenting each sale as a contribution to the town’s safety and prosperity. What starts with voluntary donations soon becomes an escalating demand for household goods, livestock, land, and obedience, enforced by the auctioneer’s expanding police force and the neighbors’ fear of standing alone. John watches ordinary civic cooperation turn into a machinery of dispossession, even as resistance threatens those closest to him. The Auctioneer is a spare, claustrophobic novel of rural horror about how coercion gains legitimacy one concession at a time.
Reading profile
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Pace
Measured
Tone
Bleak · Frightening · Tense · Unsettling
Structure
Linear
Focus
Atmosphere · Character · Relationships
Emotional intensity
4 / 5
Reading complexity
1–5 · higher means more demanding- Writing
- 2 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
Themes
Book details
For the print edition listed above.
- Publisher
- Simon and Schuster
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780671221393
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