A PRETTY MOUTH

by Molly Tanzer
248 pages, Lazy Fascist Press

Review by S.P. Miskowski

My first encounter with Molly Tanzer’s delightful fiction occurred at the 2011 World Horror Convention, where Tanzer read an excerpt from "The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins." This cleverly cockeyed story of inappropriate devotion between 18th century aristocratic siblings first appeared in the Innsmouth Free Press anthology Historical Lovecraft. It was soon reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu (Night Shade Books). Around the same time Cameron Pierce at Lazy Fascist Press invited Tanzer to turn the growing history of one peculiar family into a book. The result is A Pretty Mouth, and I haven’t had this much pure, crazy fun reading a work of fiction in a long time.

For anyone looking for a good read, this is it. Tanzer knows how to tell a tale. The pacing is expert and the characters are immediately engaging. A Pretty Mouth is definitely a page-turner. Yet each period Tanzer recreates is specific and wildly vivid. Nothing is tossed off. The underlying foundation for the book is a solid grasp of history, language, and philosophy. So the more you know of British history and the more classics you have read, the more fun you will have.

The book is comprised of four short stories and a novella. Each tale is set in a different era and may be read and enjoyed separately. Together they form a substantial arc, revealing hundreds of years of strange (often supernaturally strange) behavior among the highborn Calipashes. The mysterious origin of the family curse is withheld until the last story, creating dramatic suspense while the author traces several generations in reverse chronological order.

"A Spotted Trouble at Dolor-on-the-Downs" takes place in Edwardian England at the Marine Vivarium, a resort hotel catering to the whims of the aristocracy. There Alastair Fitzroy, the twenty-seventh Lord Calipash, frets over the impending demise of his family’s estate and wonders how to get his sister to stop languishing all day in her bath. The Lord Calipash is at a loss until he bumps into his old school chum Bertie Wooster. It seems Bertie’s valet Jeeves is a wizard at solving problems.

The audacity of introducing these characters to assist in a Wodehouse-worthy situation is matched perfectly by Tanzer’s facility with prose style. The entire story is recounted by Jeeves as an entry in the Club Book of the Junior Ganymede Club for Gentlemen’s Personal Gentlemen. The language and historical references could pass for original Wodehouse, if not for the aquatic creature in a tank in the basement, and the amphibious inclinations of Lady Alethea in the bathtub. The conclusion is both fitting and hilarious.

"The Hour of the Tortoise" takes us on a Victorian Gothic journey. If the author has missed a theme from that privately kinky, publicly repressed era I don’t know what it might be. Our heroine Chelone travels by train to her former home in the country, to visit her dying patron, a crusty old man to whom she may or may not be related by blood. Chelone was banished from the estate years ago and eventually earned her meager living by writing tales of erotic intrigue for a popular though disreputable magazine. Throughout the story Chelone weaves her Gothic fiction until the fate of our heroine and hers become inextricably entwined.

This darkly romantic story is worthy of a Bronte, except for the naughty bits written by our heroine for her demanding editor. The naughty bits are hugely entertaining, by the way. The language, setting, and characterization are flawless; all contribute to a keen portrait of an intellectual woman undone by patriarchal power. The madwoman in the attic has nothing on our fair Chelone.

In "The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins," Tanzer ranges over the ideas and influences shaping society during the Seven Years’ War. In Devonshire the ancestral home of the Lords Calipash sprawls across the countryside, dominating the landscape while reflecting a mania for architectural and garden design. Nothing is too ornate or superfluous to be considered worthwhile. The style of Tanzer’s prose in this section would please Henry Fielding, and readers are frequently reminded that the shocking events presented are intended purely as an example of unacceptable behavior. In other words, it is a romp and it is delicious fun.

For the novella "A Pretty Mouth" and the short story "Damnatio Memoriae" the author mixes anachronistic language with historically accurate detail and strikes a perfect balance. "A Pretty Mouth" takes place at Wadham College, Oxford in the 17th century. The boys who attend the prestigious institution are typical of their age and degree of privilege. Their nefarious adventures will strike a chord with readers fond of stories about school days. But this magical tale is a far cry from the idealized world of Harry Potter and his little chums. These boys woo and taunt and brutalize one another. Their secret experiments are matters of life and death–and sex. In a stunning reversal we catch a glimpse of the vast gulf between genders in an era when girls were expected to sew and sing while boys studied Greek and Latin and grew up to rule the world.

Finally, "Damnatio Memoriae" takes us to the shores of Britannia circa 40 A.D., where our hero Petronius stumbles through an unwanted trek led by a female barbarian. Along the way we meet the ideal Roman soldier, who turns out to be an ancestor to all of the Lords Calipash we have encountered in the previous stories. To find out where that trek leads and how the dashing and courageous Roman acquires the family curse, you will have to read the book. Lucky you!

For reviewing purposes I requested and received an advance reading copy of A Pretty Mouth from the publisher, Lazy Fascist Press.

A SEASON IN CARCOSA

edited by Joseph S. Pulver Sr.
292 pages, Miskatonic River Press

Review by S.P. Miskowski

It sometimes seems as if I have been writing this post for weeks, or months. Maybe I’ve been writing it all of my life. The details of my existence fade. The face I wear now is not the face I wore when I began. Or maybe it is the same face and I’ve forgotten.

My latest attempt at providing insight and perspective concerning A Season in Carcosa (edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.) has proved as futile as all the others. For the purpose of this record I resort to comparing my experience to a dream of many years ago.

Night fell as I ascended the burnished staircase to the Odd Fellows Hall. No longer a meeting place, the hall’s upstairs ballrooms were rented for ballet classes and theatrical experiments. In smaller rooms, narrow as cubbyholes, artists, performers, and practitioners of occult sciences resided as quietly as mice.

I searched every room, muttering apologies along the way. In one room a woman located a beating heart wrapped in a scarf inside a mahogany chest of drawers. In another a painter depicted a sunrise so real it was blinding and could only be approached by wearing protective goggles…

Let’s face it: Nothing I say is guaranteed to entice you to read this gorgeous anthology. But if you have reached this point in the post without grumbling or grinding your teeth, let us agree that you have unusual taste in fiction and a willingness to enter a writer’s world without reservation. This anthology, then, is for you. Layered and varied, with interlocking themes and images that shift and resonate long after you finish reading, A Season in Carcosa is for the adventurous lover of all that is strange lying just beneath the surface of life and art.

The works gathered in this volume are original. The writers are among the most imaginative artists crafting dark fantasy today: Joel Lane, Simon Strantzas, Don Webb, Daniel Mills, Gary McMahon, Ann K. Schwader, Cate Gardner, Edward Morris, Richard Gavin, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Kristin Prevallet, Richard A. Lupoff, Anna Tambour, Michael Kelly, Cody Goodfellow, John Langan, Pearce Hansen, Robin Spriggs, and Allyson Bird.

The prompt is The King in Yellow, a collection of weird tales by Robert W. Chambers, first published in 1895. Rife with characters on the verge of collapse, the collection reflected the fin de siecle clash between rationalism and emotionalism, positivism and decadence, while inventing a new literary mythology. A yellow sign, a king in tattered robes and a play with the power to induce madness are the icons of this mythology, and they recur throughout A Season in Carcosa.

The styles range from Bukowski bowery prose to the high-minded self-justification of an early 20th century composer. Yet they share an atmosphere of veiled sickness and ruined dreams. Most of the characters have become lost. Yet they obsessively continue their journey far beyond the loss of the object of devotion.

To decipher all of the permutations and implications of the icons and themes connecting Chambers’s stories to this anthology, you will want to read The King in Yellow. To wander in a state of dreamlike wonder from one odd room to another, discovering tantalizing literary beauty at every dark turn, simply open the pages of A Season in Carcosa.

For the purpose of writing this post I requested and received a digital reading copy of A Season in Carcosa.

THE WIDE, CARNIVOROUS SKY

and Other Monstrous Geographies
by John Langan
324 pages, Hippocampus Press

Review by S.P. Miskowski

The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies collects nine of John Langan’s stories, several of which have appeared in popular anthologies. They range in length from riff ("Kids") to novelette ("The Wide, Carnivorous Sky") and feature zombies, vampires, werewolves, and serial killers. Despite the array of fantastic creatures, Langan’s fiction unfolds out of the darkest recesses of human nature.

The title story centers on a vampire that spends its nights hovering in an impenetrable coffin above the Earth, and its days preying upon humans at sites of extreme conflict. Because it only ventures forth in the midst of carnage, its presence goes undetected. Only by piecing together their memories of battles in Iraq can a small band of U.S. veterans discover the vampire’s modus operandi and attempt to track and destroy it. The brilliance of the story is its seamless conflation of a supernatural occurrence, well-crafted action-adventure, and the hallucinatory effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris." is a brief and darkly humorous cautionary tale about the dangers of hitching a ride and the mysteriousness of strangers. "How the Day Runs Down" is structured as a theatrical performance in which a stage manager directs attention to various stories of a developing zombie apocalypse, all in the manner of the beloved Thornton Wilder play, "Our Town."

In this collection my favorite story is "Technicolor." Part of the appeal is the contrast between the "safe" academic setting and the disturbing undercurrents, which become more apparent with every passing moment.

Following a typical reading assignment, a professor leads a classroom full of students through his lecture on the themes embedded in Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Masque of the Red Death." Anyone who ever had to sit through such a lecture will recognize the professor’s mild boredom with his dull acolytes. His asides and sudden tangents perfectly evoke the atmosphere of the class, so that the author never has to resort to physical description.

The professor shows practiced patience with the half-hearted insights offered by people half his age, who are more interested in earning an English credit than in learning how and why Poe constructed his weird classic. Beginning with a recitation of the color scheme of the Poe story, the professor moves on to relate the extraordinary life history of a man whose writings supposedly inspired the master of the macabre in the early19th century.

Serving in Napoleon’s army, Prosper Vauglais barely survives the disastrous retreat from Moscow in 1812. In fact, his physical survival is a subject of some dispute. Later he is said to have led a band of occultists through some bizarre experiments in the Catacombs of Paris. Prosper Vauglais is such a wicked and superb bit of meta-fiction that I attempted not one but two Google searches just to see if he was based on any particular, historical individual.

The character’s writings interest Poe when he first discovers them in a Baltimore bookstore. Then, in the later years of his life, when grief and dissolution begin to overwhelm Poe, the oddly compelling diagrams created by Vauglais become an all-consuming obsession.

I won’t spoil the fun by describing how these two biographical stories–one the true account of a fiction writer’s life and the other a fictional yet believable account–are entwined. (Here’s a hint: Compare Prosper Vauglais, Poe’s Prince Prospero, the fate of Poe’s wife, and the myth of Proserpina.) The way in which Langan allows his themes to emerge in the framing story is nothing short of divine.

John Langan is an author whose work I read both for pleasure and because I learn something about the art of fiction in each story. With every tale he draws the reader inexorably deeper into a world of strange and terrible wonders, while expanding the conceptual boundaries of horror. His use of literary devices is assured, seemingly organic, and never self-conscious.

Above all, Langan allows each story to unfold naturally and at its own pace. No matter which trope or convention he employs, nothing is formulaic or forced. Every character conveys the feeling of a life lived fully, both on and off the page. Every story is vivid and surprising. Read this collection and you’ll see what I mean.

THE GRIMSCRIBE'S PUPPETS

edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
304 pages, Miskatonic River Press

Review by S.P. Miskowski

Thomas Ligotti’s fiction is not an acquired taste. Either you’re willing to travel these streets and face the stark miseries there, or you’re not. Most readers like a bit of optimism, even in horror fiction. Most writers build suspense on the possibility, however unlikely, that their protagonist will triumph. Ligotti’s characters live in a realm devoid of promise, confirming our suspicion that all, ultimately, is for nothing.

For an in-depth study of Thomas Ligotti’s work, read S.T. Joshi’s The Modern Weird Tale. And don’t miss T.E. Grau’s fascinating interview with Ligotti.

All I can offer are a few impressions. The guy walks some creepy territory. His stories are often dreamlike in tone, with a mundane setting and ordinary circumstances employed to conceal terrible secrets. His monster is made of tedium, loneliness, and futility.

The world Ligotti presents is largely unknowable and overwhelming. More information tends to distort rather than clarify our perceptions. Our lives are wasted trying to understand minutiae, cope with the people around us, and navigate vaguely defined systems we can never master. People are mysterious. Relationships are periods of resignation punctuated by rupture and destruction.

What I admire about this fictional world is its pitch-black integrity. Ligotti doesn’t pander to any expectations about how things ought to be. He isn’t in the optimism biz. He isn’t here to reassure anyone.

The Grimscribe’s Puppets is a new anthology of original stories prompted by (and honoring) Ligotti’s writing. More than twenty exceptionally talented authors have contributed dark riffs on some of the maestro’s themes. Included in this volume:

"Furnace" by Livia Llewellyn

If you’ve read Llewellyn’s collection, Engines of Desire, you know she’s one of the great voices in weird fiction today. She has an unparalleled ability to construct a vast yet tangible universe in which individuals are shaped by forces beyond their control. "Furnace" is a small masterpiece of frustrated passion, depicting the untenable dreams of a girl oppressed by maternal phobias and memories.

"Pieces of Blackness" by Michael Kelly

A man becomes terrified of the six-year-old boy he and his wife have adopted. The father’s odd habits emerge as more than rituals when we realize that the child reminds him of something from the past. The disturbing elements of this story glide into place as neatly as a bullet entering the chamber of a gun.

"Diamond Dust" by Michael Griffin

The protagonist works at a company where everything is in flux. Each night he returns to the apartment his lover has turned into a chaotic studio, where she builds monstrous works of art from chunks of furniture. An all-too-plausible combination of downsizing and over-investment seems to infect everything. Our hero stumbles from one strange encounter to another, wondering how much of his fear is based on paranoia and how much is justified. Griffin brilliantly captures both the mood of current day North America and the doomed atmosphere of Ligotti’s "My Work Is Not Yet Done." The story culminates in an epic scene of mass labor enslaved to an unseen, frightening authority.

"After the Final" by Richard Gavin

Weird fiction doesn’t get much better than this. Gavin achieves a miraculous sleight of hand here, turning a deranged psyche inside out with a masterful shift in perspective.

"Eyes Exchange Bank" by Scott Nicolay

A guy who’s down on his luck decides to visit an old friend who is probably in worse shape. The ruined landscape of a typical American town is presented naturally, the outcome of greed blighting every corner. The two friends go out for a pizza and a few beers, trying to reminisce without admitting the crushing despair closing in all around them.

Editor Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. commissioned the stories in The Grimscribe’s Puppets, published by Miskatonic River Press. The results prove that Thomas Ligotti’s influence runs deep. For readers (like myself) who appreciate fiction that doesn’t try to sell false hope, this is a good sign.

Note: For reviewing purposes I received a paperback copy of The Grimscribe’s Puppets from the editor.

LET THE OLD DREAMS DIE

by John Ajvide Lindqvist
416 pages, Thomas Dunne Books

Review by S.P. Miskowski

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Old Dreams Die was first published in Sweden several years ago. Recently translated into English and published by Thomas Dunne Books, the collection includes twelve stories, two of them sequels to Lindqvist novels.

"The Border" is an eerie and beautifully paced tale of self-discovery about a customs officer with an infallible knack for spotting smugglers. Physically and psychically scarred by a natural disaster during childhood, Tina has constructed a life of convenience, if not happiness, with a live-in friend. One day Tina encounters a strange traveler and experiences all the sensations that usually indicate she’s caught someone breaking the law. In this case, however, the traveler has nothing to declare. Tina’s mistake leads to an obsession with the traveler, who turns out to know a good deal about Tina and her mysterious origins.

In "A Village in the Sky," a lonely apartment dweller begins to notice slight changes to his home. First the building appears to list to one side. Then his neighbors stop answering their doors. At night, the lights in various units form odd patterns.

The narrator of "Equinox" composes crossword puzzles for magazines. Working from home, despite her family obligations she has plenty of time to housesit for vacationing neighbors. This is when her weird streak emerges. She enjoys rummaging through people’s homes while they’re away. She likes it so much that she begins to visit a deserted house, where she stumbles upon something quite horrible. Or is she less stable than she has led us to believe?

These three stories and "Paper Walls," a brief memoir of a terrifying moment in childhood, drew me immediately and inexorably into the lives of the characters. Lindqvist relies upon realistic, specific details to establish the every day world, and then begins to glide almost imperceptibly toward something very peculiar. In some cases, Lindqvist’s characters succumb to mental instability; in others, they find their actions reverberate in a different dimension and return to cause havoc.

Of the remaining stories, the most daring and original is the titular, final one. The others, including "Itsy Bitsy," about a delusional paparazzo, and "The Substitute," about former classmates who may or may not have brushed elbows with an inhuman entity, depend less on plot and more on mood. "Majken," in which working class women strike out against wealth and commercialism, strikes a more heavy, socially conscious note than anything else in the collection.

Never mind. Any quibbles with the mid-section of the book are answered by "Let the Old Dreams Die." Considering how much I like Let the Right One In, the brilliant vampire novel that made Lindqvist’s reputation, my refusal to skip forward to the last story is a tribute to my self-control. Or was I just afraid to see what the author might do with Eli and Oskar after they fled the Swedish suburb of Blackeberg?

The tale begins, "I want to tell you about a great love." But instead of picking up where we left off with Eli and Oskar, the narrator recounts the devoted marriage of train conductor Stefan and police officer Karin, a relationship the narrator refers to as "a miracle." It is the kind of passion–deep, unabashed, undiminished by time–the narrator himself hopes for but never finds. In the end he has to be content with being a friend and a witness to great love.

Brilliantly, the author has avoided a typical "where are they now" sequel. Stefan, Karin, and the narrator turn out to be tangential characters to the horrific events of Let the Right One In. We move forward with them, from the 1980s to the more recent past, when age and infirmity begin to take their toll. The narrator describes how his friends face looming mortality and grief, weaving into their love story an ongoing search for information about Eli and Oskar. It’s a masterful ode to love, offered by a lonely man. The events of the novel and the story intertwine in a deeper and more bittersweet depiction of the classic themes of romantic love and immortality. This is a satisfying end to a good collection, honoring the novel in its setting and its spirit.

Note: For review purposes I received an advance copy of the novel from the publisher.

THE MOMENT OF PANIC

by Steve Duffy
305 pages, PS Publishing

Review by S.P. Miskowski

Steve Duffy’s latest collection is The Moment of Panic, a PS Publishing edition with stunning cover art by Kai Otstak. The stories range over various geographic locations and an eclectic assembly of characters. Yet the author maintains sharp focus with what he calls, in Weird Fiction Review, "a fondness for weirdness that takes place in demonstrably real surroundings."

Given a choice between a whimsical setting and verisimilitude, Duffy chooses the latter and then advances the strange element of each tale to its most drastic, natural conclusion. This is why his stories are so unsettling. We feel that we’ve walked these streets. We’ve followed a map to a once-familiar house. We’ve stared at trees in snow, on a winter’s night, and wondered if the skittering movement between them could be more than an optical illusion. We can almost identify the source of our troubles in that movement, yet we dread the final reveal. This combination of the known and the unknown is what makes Duffy’s stories thrilling to read, and hard to forget.

There are no weak spots in this collection. I was impressed by the author’s craftsmanship and inventiveness throughout the book. More important, I was caught up in the perfectly calibrated "real world" he has created. I’ll try to give you a sense of each story in this volume without spoiling the marvelous plot twists.

"The Marginals"
A new employee gets a ride to a remote assignment and, on the way, the driver tells him what to expect when he arrives. Anyone can recognize the natural anxiety associated with this situation. But the author takes apprehension a step further. The narrator’s job is surveillance. His targets, viewed from the trailer where he’s stationed, don’t appear to move while he’s watching. And the logbooks on hand indicate that the job may be more mysterious, and more frightening, than he imagined.

With this first disturbing tale, the author establishes how he will examine the lives of his characters. We’re given the measure and the nature of spaces, both public and private, and their significance to each protagonist. Images of people going to unknown or unfamiliar locations recur throughout the collection, along with attempts at gaining perspective by looking at these locations and the people in them from different angles, or captured within a manageable frame (whether a doorway, a window, a mirror, or binoculars). Emotional or mental disorientation accompanies the navigation of strange places, trapping and changing the protagonist, and leaving the reader with a feeling of having made a narrow escape.

"The A to Z"
If you’ve ever dug through an address book in search of a half-forgotten acquaintance, you will understand the loneliness of Hugo during the winter holidays. When he spies a provocative message next to a map in his tattered street atlas, he decides to venture forth and reclaim a moment from the past. He vaguely recalls the debauchery of a drunken encounter with the woman who scribbled in his street atlas. With every step of the journey back to that night, however, Hugo remembers a bit more, and the memory grows less sweet.

"Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed"
Four people sailing a boat at night admire the impenetrable darkness of the water. When they rescue and try to identify a drowning man, they realize how far they’ve drifted from safety."Vulnavia, or, The Mechanical Princess"

Fans of Dr. Phibes, take note. Using the abominable gentleman’s cinematic adventures as a starting point, the author has extrapolated the automated Phibes world and the so-called lives of characters as they might have played out behind the scenes.

"Lives of the Saints"
A teenage girl is sent to live with her aunt and two cousins, who punish and starve her in a sanctimonious effort to curb the bad behavior inspired by a licentious uncle. No wonder the girl’s resulting revelation is based on the religious superstitions of her family. This is a deft portrait of ignorance and obsession forming intellectual boundaries.

"The Rag-and-Bone Men"
Winner of the International Horror Guild’s Best Short Story prize, "The Rag-and-Bone Men" is an elegant meditation on guilt. The protagonist has successfully blotted out the atrocities of war, along with his name and identity. But the agonies of the dead must be expressed, not forgotten.

"Old as the Hills"
A man is trapped in a snowstorm with an odd family, overseeing the coffin of a deceased patriarch.

"Todhunter’s Rock"
In a house on a cliff, a wealthy man awaits the arrival of his loving family. Meanwhile the elements of a Christie-worthy murder mystery are deconstructed as we meet each family member.

"A Serious Piece of Metal"
A maniac wielding an axe relentlessly pursues a man through every location in his painfully restricted life.

"Secrets of the Beehive"
A woman moves to a village and becomes part of a social clique there. She falls in love, for the first time, with a man who keeps bees and has a mysterious connection to them.

"The Suicide Wood"
Two young people travel by train and taxi to a remote spot famous for the number of suicides committed there. A beautifully realized story, it owes its reserve and severity to the author’s self-professed appreciation of Japanese horror fiction.

"You Are Now In Bedford Falls"
Duffy mines the dark side of It’s a Wonderful Life for all it’s worth. If you never realized the Christmas classic has a dark side, you need to read this sardonic story of temptation and endurance. I know I’ll be chortling with demonic glee, the next time an angel gets his wings.

Highly recommended.

THE CRONING

by Laird Barron
320 pages, Night Shade Books

Review by S.P. Miskowski

Laird Barron’s debut novel, published by Night Shade Books, opens with a fairy tale most readers will recognize: A miller’s daughter spins straw into gold with the help of a strange, misshapen man who demands equally strange payment. When the spinning is done the miller’s daughter marries the king, and must reward her magical benefactor with the gift of her firstborn son. The only escape from the contract is to guess the benefactor’s real name by the time he returns to collect the child.

Assuming reader familiarity with at least one incarnation of this fairy tale, Barron describes the arduous journey undertaken by the queen’s henchman–who is also her brother and lover–to ferret out the name of the benefactor. Barron’s spin includes profane and anachronistic language, a canine sidekick, and a gruesome discovery: The benefactor is not a one-off con artist. He is ancient and mysterious, insinuating himself into the lives and dreams of thousands of people. He is and is not what he appears to be. And he has henchmen of his own.

Following the fairy tale we pick up our main story. Don Miller and Michelle Mock are married and by all appearances madly in love. His area of expertise is geology, hers is anthropology. Over the course of five decades they travel together and separately to remote places all around the globe. They have children. They grow old together. On paper this seems like a perfect marriage. Yet something has happened to cause a permanent, subterranean rift.

Beginning with a bizarre event in Mexico in 1958 Don and Michelle have taken different spiritual paths. Apparently successful and well matched, their surface lives conceal what may be irreconcilable differences. Michelle has grown strong and independent while Don has drifted inward, developing weird phobias and sensing danger just beneath the skin of nearly everyone he meets.

In his two story collections, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories and Occultation, the author has explored the consequences of ignoring myth and recurring tropes when they emerge in the modern world. The Croning delves deeper into collective consciousness for the underlying themes that bind and separate individuals over the course of a lifetime. The fairy tale that opens the novel is not a diversion. The timeless fears that created the fairy tale form the underpinnings to a much larger myth, incorporating Cthulhu-inspired ancient beings as well as anthropological adventures, geological history, and a dynamic portrait of the war between the sexes.

Setting aside the complexity and weight of the narrative, this novel would still be a must-read for the unique style of the author’s prose. No one anywhere combines two-fisted noir with the best traditions of horror quite like Laird Barron. The result is rich with detail, broad in scope, and often shocking in its implications. In Barron’s universe the flutter of a butterfly’s wing is connected not only to a hurricane but to possible car crashes, probable shady business deals, nightmares emerging from the shadows to demand a seat at the breakfast table, and pretty much everything in the attic and basement of every house you’ve ever occupied. This is a writer who comes closer than any artist I can name in capturing the whole shebang of humanity’s place in the cosmos. If you think that’s a crazy exaggeration, you haven’t read his fiction. Read it.

NIGHTINGALE SONGS

by Simon Strantzas
210 pages, Dark Regions Press

Review by S.P. Miskowski

Everybody’s talking about Simon Strantzas. Okay, not everybody, but plenty of writers and editors are talking about Nightingale Songs, released in November. After years of publication in fine magazines and anthologies–earning that rare reputation among his peers as a writer’s writer, an artist whose desire for popularity has not tainted his aesthetic principles–Strantzas has suddenly hit the ground running with his third collection of short fiction.

Delightfully somber and full of doomed characters making dreadful decisions (in other words, painfully true to human experience) Nightingale Songs does not overshadow the author’s subtle and quietly disruptive previous collections, Beneath the Surface and Cold to the Touch. Instead it represents a natural evolution in the voice and preoccupations of a unique talent in modern fiction.

Beneath the Surface suffered from the unexpected demise of its first publisher, but was recently republished by Dark Regions. The second collection, beautiful in every respect, is now out of print and difficult to find. I hope Tartarus Press makes Cold to the Touch available as an ebook in the near future.

I want more readers to get their hands on Strantzas, but he’s one of those writers you can’t sell with a tag line, or even a review. You have to read his prose and allow yourself to be swept away by the obsessions of his characters, to appreciate his art. The devil is in the details, in the nuances, in the perfect choice of words and the illuminating juxtaposition of images. Like Nabokov, he doesn’t give you a theme and a cookie and a pat on the head. You have to read and think for yourself, and then you get it or you don’t. These days, how many writers have the nerve to send their work out into the world without explaining it to death?

In that spirit, I will not attempt to explicate these stories. It’s enough to know that they range in setting from a universally recognizable suburbia to the remote and ruined beaches of an oil disaster site to some strangely malevolent back roads at night. These landscapes are a projection of the characters’ state of mind but also a catalyst, provoking irrational and often desperate acts.

Sometimes the action of a Strantzas story is inaction, or a character’s inability to move from condition to action. The results range from a dreamy or hallucinatory tone to a sense of impermanence that all but overwhelms the reader. Nothing is certain, and nature is not on our side. Our most important plans are feeble against the vast, mysterious cosmos. Our purpose, if we serve one, is either unknowable or constantly changing. The message may be bleak, but the writing is thrilling.

Influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, and Ramsey Campbell, the author has been moving for some time toward a thoroughly independent worldview. With Nightingale Songs he offers that view without apology. Yes, it is dark, but it is recognizable too, containing the black-edged beauty of life as well as unavoidable horrors and intimations of mortality. If you love good writing that challenges, enthralls, and offers no easy escape, read Simon Strantzas.

THE GIFT OF HORROR: Happy Holidays!

Reviews by S.P. Miskowski

Brand New Cherry Flavor: A Novel of the Occult

by Todd Grimson
352 pages, Schaffner Press

The revenge story is my favorite kind, revealing as much about the nature of the perpetrator as it does about the targets of her wrath. And boy oh boy, do we get to know protagonist Lisa Nova! James Ellroy has called Todd Grimson “the hippest writer in America today.” If Ellroy wrote that about me, I’d be tempted to read the blurb every night before bedtime. Yet hipness can be a burden if you don’t have the talent to match it. Fortunately Grimson shows plenty of talent in this hard-as-rock-candy novel about an aspiring actress/director seeking revenge against the producer who messed with her personal American Dream. If you like some crazy with your Los Angeles cuisine, and a bit of magic realism with your outright horror, this is your flavor, right here.

 

Come Closer

by Sara Gran
168 pages, Soho Press

Amanda is under pressure. Her job at a successful architectural firm is exciting but stressful. The loft she is converting with her husband needs more work, and it isn’t as accessible as she would like. Still, things could be worse. Those weird noises she keeps hearing could signal the arrival of something supernatural, or the start of her own psychological unraveling, or maybe the emergence of Amanda’s true self. The one she doesn’t share with anyone, even her beloved husband. Because how could he understand the petty, dirty, mean things she sometimes feels an overwhelming urge to do? That’s all I’m going to say about this book. No. Here’s another thing. I love it. And here’s one more. Buy it. You’re already online. Buy it now.

 

Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors

by Livia Llewellyn
214 pages, Lethe Press

Batten down the hatches. At least two of the stories in this collection will scare the hell out of you. A few will hurt your feelings. I was inconsolable after reading “Horses.” Then I read the rest of the book, and my only question is: Why do I have to write the way I do, instead of the way Llewellyn does? Muscular, precise, violent, and agonizingly truthful, her fiction takes no prisoners and makes you wonder why you bothered reading all those other writers, the ones who ramble and whine about life while she delivers it, bloody and screaming, into your arms.

 

Dark Fiction

by David Kempf
356 pages, RealTime Publishing

An ambitious novel that centers on a Faustian bargain between a college student, the horror writing professor he admires, and some powerful supernatural beings who feed on human dread, Dark Fiction may be rough going for readers who are not in on the joke: Much of the text is provided by our undergraduate protagonist, who is not the prose stylist he believes himself to be. His sophomoric attempts at bloodcurdling fiction are author Kempf’s satirical take on student writing, especially genre writing. By the time the young wannabe has run through every cliche in the moldy how-to manual of horror, he is well on his way to becoming the next free ride for those supernatural thugs. His stories may lack style and coherence, but they are bursting with the manic energy that only a credulous and over-confident student can offer.

 

The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer
272 pages, Night Shade Books

Amelia Beamer’s refreshing and always surprising take on the undead uprising poses the question most of us didn’t know we were afraid to ask: What if the zombie plague was equal parts STD and MDMA? Set in and around San Francisco, The Loving Dead follows a small group of housemates as they try to stay alive–and, if possible, hook up–during the end of the world. It’s equal parts quasi-romantic sex comedy and dark horror; well worth picking up if you’re not afraid of risky storytelling, sexy dirigibles, and zombified Trader Joe’s employees. (Review by Cory J. Herndon.)

 

The Red Tree

by Caitlin R. Kiernan
400 pages, Roc Trade

Thanks to Lynda E. Rucker for recommending this novel at her blog. I love a good story about a writer and few novels present as fascinating a writer-protagonist as Sarah Crowe in The Red Tree. Self-exiled to a remote rental house in Rhode Island following a tragic personal loss, Sarah discovers a manuscript by the house’s former tenant. The manuscript covers the known history of an unusual and apparently ancient oak tree on the property. It also chronicles the strange events that occurred while the former tenant was doing his research. Soon Sarah is drawn into the history of her temporary home, where past and present overlap, and the natural world may collapse into something less natural but terrifyingly real.

 

Tooth and Nail

by Craig Dilouie
258 pages, Schmidt Haus Books

Two things make this zombie apocalypse novel stand out from all the other zombie apocalypse novels. One is its immediacy, and this is achieved through a formal convention; author Dilouie gains momentum by telling his story entirely in present tense. Second, the story focuses on the challenges faced by American soldiers who have been recalled from combat posts around the world to try and contain a rabid outbreak in New York. Now the soldiers must overcome existential angst to do battle with the fellow citizens they have spent their lives protecting. This novel has earned high praise from author David Moody (Hater, Dog Blood), and he knows the undead like nobody’s business.

QUIET HOUSES

by Simon Kurt Unsworth
200 pages, Dark Continents

Review by S.P. Miskowski

"Do you live in a haunted house? Have you ever been to a place and had an experience that you cannot explain? Do you have a story to tell? Serious researcher wants to hear from you."

In Quiet Houses Simon Kurt Unsworth has penned several hair-raising tales that could easily stand alone in a collection. He has knitted these stories of paranormal experience into a larger narrative using the researcher mentioned in the ad above as a through-line and a guide.

The researcher, Nakata, has motives that are hinted at while he goes about his business, and more fully explored in the next to last section of the book. Nakata is indeed serious about his work, but his professional commitment is matched by a personal desire for proof. In other words, he is harboring a secret from the past.

He begins by weeding out the prank callers and loonies who respond to his ad, and ends up with a handful of possibly verifiable cases. He then follows up on these reports of something unusual in "quiet houses," places where silence and inactivity have allowed an unexplained imprint to emerge.

The first case has a strain of melancholy that's hard to shake off. During his daughter's wedding weekend a widower stays at a hotel scheduled to close soon. There he encounters a ghost that responds to his grief like a magnet. The beauty of this tale is the way in which the ghost affects people nearby. The embodiment of mourning, this sad spirit repels joy and disrupts affection wherever it goes.

An elderly man provides Nakata with a letter from his adult son, who disappeared months ago. The son's letter describes a local house where he suspects an evil entity has attracted some of the children in the neighborhood, for nefarious reasons.

Later at a grassy amphitheater near an old church Nakata is first excited and then frightened by the presence of something unseen. This story, gracefully simple in its nature and exquisitely executed, will make your scalp tingle. We've all had peculiar experiences in unfamiliar outdoor settings. We've all done that double take, when we notice a shift in the landscape or a detail that wasn't there before.

Next Nakata visits a man in an institution. The man recounts how his crew of renovation experts suffered disorientation and worse during their review of a crumbling resort. Constructed by two famous designers who were lovers with strange ideas about the connection between nature and humanity, the resort has a will of its own. I especially like the physical details in this story. There are many chilling moments, somewhat reminiscent of the topiary scenes in The Shining.

Nakata sets up recording devices and light meters to investigate a former public bathroom said to be haunted. Alone in this cold underground bunker, he has an empathetic experience that almost overwhelms his objectivity.

In a flashback sequence we finally learn Nakata's troubling secret. He once enlisted two friends, the love of his life and a fellow researcher, in a dangerous experiment. What he discovered about the interplay between life and death has remained at the core of his work ever since.

While this section of Quiet Houses serves as a plausible back-story for Nakata, it is for me a less effective portion of the book than the individual case studies. We don't get to know Nakata's love, Amy, as a unique individual. In all of the other stories the characters spring vividly to life. They act on their own agenda, while Amy exists as a projection of Nakata's wish for happiness. This is an interesting idea, however, and more could be made of it in a future volume, if the central characters reappear.

Returning to Nakata's current project we find the researcher has been gathering these stories and scant physical evidence on assignment as a forensic expert. An attorney named Tidyman, who has been mentioned throughout the book, has enlisted Nakata to testify in a murder trial. As part of the defense Tidyman also persuades the judge to let jurors visit a former dairy farm where the murder took place. This fact-finding exercise quickly develops into a harrowing experience for everyone involved, and further informs Nakata's theories.

With or without Nakata's background story, the character displays enough fear and faith to make him compelling. He is conflicted, dogged by grief and guilt. He is hoping for confirmation of something more than mere existence "on the other side." He is the kind of character who could lead us to more places, in more collections, without losing his appeal.

Simon Kurt Unsworth's vital strength as a storyteller is his ability to build a concrete, specific, gorgeously detailed world in which things are perfectly recognizable, then just a bit off, then downright weird, and finally disturbing enough to make a reasonable person run for cover. In Unsworth's universe it's hard to discern the actual moment when things begin to slide toward the crazy and the terrifying. His monsters don't swoop in on bat wings and break the window. They glide smoothly on the surface of a shadow across the floor, and then stand upright.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR

Edited by Thomas Fahy
259 pages, University Press of Kentucky

Reviewed by S.P. Miskowski

A couple of months ago I read Thomas Roger's Salon interview with Thomas Fahy. The interview was so interesting that I was seized with a desire to read his new book.

Fahy and his fellow writers display impressive academic authority on topics ranging from "Ideological Formations of the Nuclear Family in The Hills Have Eyes" to "Zombies of the World, Unite: Class Struggle and Alienation in Land of the Dead" and "Grotesque, Sublime, and Postmodern Transformations in Patrick Suskind's Perfume." Given the background and professional credits of these scholarly authors you might think this is not going to be a light or entertaining read. I had the same feeling when I looked at the table of contents. Once I began reading, however, I was delighted to find that most of the essays are thought provoking and far more accessible than I imagined.

Highlights:

In "Horror and the Idea of Everyday Life: On Skeptical Threats in Psycho and The Birds" Philip J. Nickel poses the argument that "horror's bite...is a malicious ripping-away of...intellectual trust, exposing our vulnerabilities in relying on the world and on other people." This ripping-away is, however, far from detrimental to our wellbeing. In fact it is necessary for us to occasionally admit the delusion of our security in order to achieve "clarity about our actual situation" and to "realize that we can still go on, even in the absence of perfect certainty."

Thomas Fahy wrote "Hobbes, Human Nature, and the Culture of American Violence in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood." Fahy begins with Thomas Hobbes' assertion that a sovereign must provide moral justice in a world otherwise made chaotic by our natural tendency toward self-preservation at the expense of others. He then turns to the narrative of In Cold Blood to examine what happens in a close-knit society when the sovereign (in this case, the highly respected farmer Herb Clutter) is removed by an act of random, apparently inexplicable violence.

John Lutz considers the manner in which Stanley Kubrick opened up on a larger canvas the themes of masculinity, cycles of violence, and oppression in his adaptation of Stephen King's novel. This chapter is titled "From Domestic Nightmares to the Nightmare of History: Uncanny Eruptions of Violence in King's and Kubrick's Versions of The Shining." I strongly recommend the essay to fans who have seen the film numerous times, because I think you will find surprising, new insights into an adaptation that has been unfairly maligned by some critics over the years. It only deepened my appreciation for the ways in which Kubrick and his writing collaborator Diane Johnson took time to study the themes and motifs in King's novel. The team didn't simply shoot a movie version of the book. They created a richly layered, dynamic visual equivalent for every significant aspect of the story. Their version provided a historical and social context framing the domestic abuse, without sermonizing.

Anyone who rails against the genre because it presents disturbing and indelible images, or displays the worst of human actions, fails to recognize the valid and complex reasons why horror has lasted so long, and the extent to which it can both validate and challenge our deepest emotions. Seen together, the essays in The Philosophy of Horror demonstrate the range and diversity of purposes served by horror films and fiction.

DOG BLOOD

by David Moody
336 pages, Thomas Dunne Books

Review by S.P. Miskowski


Few horror novels have proven to be more attuned to their particular moment in human social development than David Moody's Hater and his sequel Dog Blood. One glance at today's news online or on TV is enough to provoke outrage in the average person. So how does the same news affect people who are already harboring barely concealed rage toward their families, their employers or lack of employment, and society itself? These individuals wake each morning in a state of irritation or anxiety. How many steps removed is this mental state from outright physical aggression? Every news cycle brings another variation on the answer to that question.

In Hater (2009), the first novel in a series which continues with this month's publication of Dog Blood (2011), author Moody dared to portray an apocalypse triggered not by a virus, climate change, or weapons of mass destruction but by human nature. The change, whatever it consisted of, flipped a switch in certain people, and they no longer felt constrained by rules, laws, or convention. Occasional rampages turned to frequent bloodshed, and then to constant attacks on other people. The condition was manifested in about one-third of the population, and no one could say why.

Hater arced perfectly from the continuous low-level violence we tolerate in the real world every day, to brutality on a massive, fictional scale. Most disturbing, the willingness of the novel's characters to commit heinous acts depended not on their sense of morality or their circumstances. The capacity for extreme violence simply emerged. There were Haters, who struck out with ferocious aggression. And there were those who ran away, were preyed upon, or gathered in groups to attempt a systematic, dehumanized retaliation against Haters.

Dog Blood picks up where Hater ended, in an all-out war between the Haters and the Unchanged. Danny McCoyne continues to search for his daughter Ellis amid the ruins of the town where his family lived until three months ago. His journey reveals odd factions and differences of attitude on both sides of the battle.

After three months of rationing and without the means to receive or even locate adequate supplies, the Unchanged are running low on food, water and medicine. The displaced refugees among them have given up hope of being rescued by an outside force, and are simply hanging on. But their will to survive is matched by the Haters' will to destroy.

Like any parent on a mission to save his child (never mind that she is a killer by now, if she is alive at all), Danny is relentless. This is a realistic element used by the novelist to keep Danny focused, but he doesn't sentimentalize it. If anything Moody sends up the idea of paternal love and protection. Knowing that Danny will move enormous obstacles to be reunited with his flesh and blood never distracts us from the fact that Danny expresses no great desire to locate the members of his brood who have not become Haters.

Along the way Danny takes note of a world caving in to madness. He reports it all with a keen, clear eye. His observations, free of any moral obligation, are fresh and exhilarating. He demonstrates the joy of pure action, the human will in survival mode. It's both breathtaking and painful to see.

Two threads balance one another in Dog Blood: Mark is one of the Unchanged and his pregnant girlfriend is panicking over their lack of adequate shelter and supplies. His progress is juxtaposed with the story of Danny's search for Ellis. Mark's chapters provide a third person omniscient view of the current situation, followed by Mark's third person limited perspective, all in past tense. Danny's chapters are in present tense, entirely in first person, creating the same close intensity that Moody built so well in Hater. We may not like Danny, but we come to understand him.

The action sequences are so beautifully paced that the reader might not notice the precise elegance of the language. Every scene propels us forward with a sense of inevitability, but without cliches. Every character is a sharply etched individual with a life history and a purpose. Nothing is wasted or taken for granted.

This apocalyptic tale abstains from pronouncements about the world while closely examining human behavior. The novel refuses to identify a source or triggering event that the characters cannot identify, and plausibly demonstrates that Haters recognize one another without an overt visual cue. Dog Blood is an audacious work of imagination and style whose exploration of rage is both timely and frightening.

OCCULTATION

by Laird Barron
300 pages, Night Shade Books

Review by S.P. Miskowski

Sometimes while reading Laird Barron's stories I become so immersed in the densely detailed, highly descriptive prose that I have to take a break because I feel like I might be going insane. Only the films of David Lynch affect me in the same way: Afterward, for a short time, I am able to see real objects and people but I have an eerie sense that nothing is what it seems. At any moment walls will talk and people will be sucked sideways into another dimension.

So why don't I just stop reading?

If I stopped I would miss some of the most original, thrilling and fully realized horror fiction in print today. Of course I would also stop waking up and staring at pieces of furniture, wondering: "Did that thing say something?"

Occultation is Barron's second book of stories. With his first collection, The Imago Sequence the author established credibility with elaborate horror tales of adventure and relationships gone wrong. He continues in that vein with this new book, but he has developed greater proficiency at the final fictional twist, the kink that puts everything that went before into new and more troubling perspective. For Barron, perspective is crucial. Consider the title of the book.

"Occultation" occurs when background objects become obscured by action or objects in the foreground. The term is used regarding computer-generated images when an up-close object or figure briefly eclipses changes occurring in the background. More than just the title of one of the nine stories in this volume, occultation is a significant theme throughout the book. As an event, it happens when the author introduces a strange element, allowing literary sleight of hand to change the direction of the narrative. It also happens when characters are distracted by something weird, so that they fail to recognize a major shift in their environment.

In "The Forest" two old friends meet while one of them is undergoing a shocking metamorphosis. The story was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award.

The story "Occultation" plays on a natural sense of dislocation felt by travelers staying at a motel. Beginning with a verbal game and an odd stain on the wall, the story accumulates an inescapable feeling of dread. By the time one of the characters spots something bizarre, it doesn't seem outlandish at all. But that isn't the end of the story. I dare you to read the last paragraph, and then turn out the lights and go to sleep.

"The Lagerstätte" (another Shirley Jackson Award nominee) is a melancholy study of survivor guilt. Through an intricate history of therapy, despair and reckless action, the heroine comes to recognize a place of destruction that inexorably attracts people who have already lived through the worst personal catastrophe.

In "Mysterium Tremendum" the most recent addition to a group of friends and lovers begins to unravel their violent history. The discovery prompts him to reach for greater maturity during a camping trip that turns into a savage, macho challenge.

The protagonist of "Catch Hell" knows that her husband pursues and photographs sites of pagan worship and sacrifice. But his current activities following the death of their infant daughter make her question her relationship with him, her fitness as a mother, and her sanity.

"Strappado" confirms every fear you've ever had about traveling at the mercy of guides more proficient in the local language and more daring in pursuit of dangerous forms of entertainment. Here's a tip: If you think you're out of your element, you probably are.

"The Broadsword" is a funky apartment building where a retired man begins to hear and see odd things. Doubting his mental acuity, he has to test the reality of his situation against the experience of his neighbors and against the demons of his past.

"--30--" reunites two colleagues to study inexplicable animal behavior and changes in vegetation at a remote site. At first the scientists live in a pristine habitat and receive supplies by air shipment. But soon they find their activities, both physical and mental, are breaking down as the boundary between their protected environment and the damaged world outside disintegrates.

"Six Six Six" is creepy, creepy, creepy. As in "Occultation," Barron adopts an uncharacteristically blunt prose style to present a more traditional horror tale. This one is set in an inherited house with plenty of family secrets.

In Laird Barron's fiction the world is not an illusion. It is concrete and it has dimensions we can describe. But it is not the only place where humans reside. Our internal landscape and the space we occupy physically are often at odds with one another. So if another world (the kind H.P. Lovecraft feared obsessively) seeps into this one, will we know it? Will we have the words to explain it? Or will we call it madness?

Occultation becomes available from Night Shade Books in May.

BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR

Volume Two
Edited by Ellen Datlow
350 pages, Night Shade Books (review copy)

Reviewed by S.P. Miskowski

Editor Ellen Datlow's most recent horror anthology features some of the finest prose stylists working in the genre today. The category is horror but these stories could easily appear in most mainstream literary magazines. That they are horror tales is almost incidental, because they are such meticulously well-written stories. Consider the shivers a bonus.

Datlow has drawn from a wide range of magazines in print and online, as well as chapbooks, collections and other anthologies. Her thirty-page introductory summation for 2009 shows just how much material she covers in her ongoing search for the best of the year. Most of the seventeen excellent works of fiction in this collection are guaranteed to leave an indelible impression. To name but a few:

"Mrs. Midnight" by Reggie Oliver portrays a smug TV personality in hot pursuit of an attractive young cultural advisor. Their attempt to save an old music hall from destruction unearths a weird history tied to the infamous Whitechapel murders.

Glen Hirshberg's "The Nimble Men" takes place aboard a small plane forced to land for maintenance during a flight to Toronto. Something is not right on the snow-covered runway but nothing is confirmed. As crew and passengers wait, the captain becomes ever more reluctant to venture outside for answers.

"What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night" by Michael Marshall Smith begins with a child's late night realization that her bedroom is not arranged as it was when she fell asleep, then becomes creepier and darker until it reaches a natural conclusion designed to inspire chronic insomnia.

Foodies beware: You may not completely recover from Micaela Morrissette's divinely wicked "Wendigo" in time for lunch, or dinner. But indulge yourself anyway, because the writing is absolutely delicious.

In "The Lion's Den" Steve Duffy takes an unlikely horror setting, a zoo in the suburbs, and explores the unspoken fears of staff members after a visitor's actions cause havoc. The mystery at the heart of this memorable story concerns our complex relationship with animals and with nature itself.

"Dead Loss" by Carole Johnstone is an exquisitely detailed account of a commercial fishing expedition. This marvelous, spooky tale has now been added to the long list of reasons why I do not swim in the ocean. Never. Not under any circumstances. Don't even ask. Carole Johnstone knows why.

"Strappado" by Laird Barron first appeared in Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, and is included in the author's forthcoming collection Occultation. Barron is fast becoming known for a unique voice that combines worldliness with an otherworldly assumption of disturbing mysteries well beyond the power of reason.

A university professor keeps a roomful of students mesmerized with his macabre theories on the origin of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" in the superbly arcane "Technicolor" by John Langan.

Stories by Suzy McKee Charnas, Steve Eller, Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, Norman Prentiss, Stephen Graham Jones, Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud, Edward Morris, Kaaron Warren and Nina Allan round out the anthology. I recommend this volume to all fans of beautifully crafted horror fiction.

HORNS

by Joe Hill
370 pages, HarperCollins

Review by S.P. Miskowski

"Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things."

With this line begins the ordeal of an imperfect protagonist. Within a few days he will be utterly transformed by exposure to the kind of knowledge we all wish for at some time. Now and then everyone longs to know what others really think. But be careful what you wish for.

Ig Perrish has horns. Not the kind his trumpeter dad and brother play. The devilish kind. They have sprouted from his head overnight, and the sight of them makes people--young, old, good and not so good--babble their deepest desires in his presence.

You might ask what someone with average intelligence and a single ambition could do with such information. You might also wonder how inventive a novelist can be, given such a premise. The answer to the first question: A hell of a lot. The answer to the second: Inventive beyond expectation.

Ig Perrish has spent the past year in emotional limbo following the rape and murder of his girlfriend Merrin. He was drunk the night Merrin died, and has sketchy memories of the events leading up to unconsciousness. Since that night he has compromised his life in every conceivable way, drifting without direction after being accused of the crime and then released due to inconclusive evidence.

Something is still terribly wrong in Ig's world and in his mind. People are keeping secrets in the tightly knit community where he grew up. The police still suspect him of killing Merrin. His family members are keeping him at a distance. But all of this will change when people encounter Ig's new condition and begin asking his permission to do the worst things imaginable.

This is Joe Hill's second published novel. Since the 2007 novel Heart-Shaped Box he has written numerous short stories as well as the comic book series Locke & Key (with artist Gabriel Rodriguez). His 2005 collection of stories 20th Century Ghosts has gained near legendary status, and with good reason.

No one working in horror today is more adept than Hill at locating the source of our most common fears, the kind that contort our every day lives. His writing is both merciless and compassionate, driving hard toward the painful truth in every story while holding fast to the desires of his protagonist. His fiction is imaginative and vivid without sacrificing the psychological reality of the characters. "Pop Art" and "Abraham's Boys" from 20th Century Ghosts display a depth of wisdom about human nature that most writers only find after many years of practice.

Heart-Shaped Box was a page-turner with a fine premise. A collector of weird objects finds himself in possession of a cursed item he can't seem to get rid of, a box that keeps forcing him to face his past and the most despicable things he has ever done. But the story felt a bit stretched, possibly a novella elaborated into a novel, while Horns just manages to contain the whole story between its covers. It is more complex than the first novel, and richer in physical and psychological detail. Best of all, the protagonist is a guy we can understand and recognize from our own lives, more so than the glamorous heavy metal rock star Judas Coyne in Heart-Shaped Box.

With passing references to the fictional Coyne's music, the work of Stephen King (Hill's father and The Man when it comes to reality-based psycho-horror), the Rolling Stones (nice Morse Code message on the book's inside covers) and a slew of contemporary icons including Karl Rove, the novel does not rely on any of these for its power. Ultimately the thing that has made Joe Hill famous and sustains his work and makes it a must-read wherever it appears is that he is a damn good storyteller. In fiction, no matter what else can be said about an artist, this is what counts.

THE SEANCE

by John Harwood
328 pages; Mariner Books (review copy)

Review by S.P. Miskowski

The Séance is John Harwood's second novel. It is every bit as cleverly crafted and meticulously researched as The Ghost Writer. In fact, The Séance is great fun. If it lacks the final, emotional kick that left readers of the first novel breathless and dizzy, blame the formal structure for driving a slight wedge between the reader and the author's most exciting character.

In The Ghost Writer Harwood made excellent use of letters over great distances, and the ways in which written correspondence can both reveal and conceal crucial information. He skillfully constructed certain relationships based entirely on these epistles, developed across many miles and many years.

The Séance takes a similar, epistolary approach. But here the form is rigid. Instead of punctuating the narrative with bits of new information, the journals and letters written by various characters divide the novel into distinct sections. There's nothing wrong about this approach. It's just that the first character introduced is by far the most interesting, and we lose her point of view on page 48 and do not return to it until page 236.

Between these widely separated sections--which comprise the history of Constance Langton--we meet a woman in peril and the family solicitor who loves and wants to protect her from a husband who may be wicked or simply terribly misunderstood. These characters, and the dangers they face as they are drawn into a web of supernatural inquiry led by a talented mesmerist, are far less sympathetic and less bewitching than Constance Langton. And the story played out among these characters--although the mystery at the heart of it is expertly drawn--is not as delightful as the first promising pages of the novel.

"If my sister Alma had lived, I should never have begun the séances."

So begins Constance Langton's journal in January 1889. With these words the young woman, who was five years old when her younger sister died of scarlet fever, launches into an explanation of why and how she came to be a sort of spirit guide. Her stated desire is to alleviate her mother's anguish over the loss of her favorite child. By forming a link, however false or real, between the grieving mother and the soul of her departed little girl, Constance raises her own significance and gains the attention she has always craved from a disinterested parent.

Delving into the paranormal societies of the day, Constance inadvertently triggers a greater separation between her mother, who is desperate to believe, and her father, a calculating man of science whose scorn for the occult is only one of many complaints against the women in his family.

The bulk of the novel relates the unhappy life and apparently cursed marriage of Eleanor Unwin to a renowned mesmerist, a charismatic man who may or may not have come into his family estate by nefarious means. Eleanor's trials are faithfully recounted by way of a journal, retained for years by a solicitor who suffered an excruciating personal loss. The mystery at the heart of the subtly connected, parallel stories may shed light on several family questions, which have plagued Constance since childhood. These complications and their pay-offs have the quality of distant, though exquisite variations on a theme. Yet I kept longing to return to Constance and her adventures among the half-crazy, half-opportunistic mediums and charlatans of 1880s London.

A thoroughly well written tale of mortal fear, greed and exploitation, and the soul-crushing compromises expected of young women in the 19th century, The Séance establishes one certainty: John Harwood is a writer of exceptional ability, who handles the psychological and supernatural implications of the ghost story with a bright and critical mind.

HOUSE OF WINDOWS

by John Langan
260 pages, Night Shade Books (review copy)

Review by S.P. Miskowski

English professor and well-known Dickens scholar Roger Croydon has disappeared. The tale his wife Veronica offers to a young horror writer, over late-night glasses of wine at the home of an acquaintance, is intended to describe if not explain the circumstances of that disappearance. In fact, no final explanation may be possible. The answers lie in the complex geometric structure of the house occupied by the Croydons, and in the harsh words spoken by Roger to his only son, Ted, just prior to Ted's death during combat in Afghanistan.

House of Windows is a remarkably engaging synthesis of the themes of Charles Dickens, ubiquitous tales of terror such as "The Monkey's Paw" and classic works of horror by Shirley Jackson, M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. To the author's credit, it does not read like a scholarly work, but a believable exploration of human weakness and parental grief. In the best horror tradition, John Langan creates a plausible landscape with recognizable characters in order to convince us of the possibility of the supernatural in every day life.

Roger's marriage to Veronica (one of his former graduate students) is the final straw in a lifelong conflict between Roger and his son. When that conflict erupts into physical violence, the two men part company--but not before Roger delivers a farewell speech which Veronica, in its aftermath, comes to see as a curse. Roger, although he refuses to admit the nature of his final words to Ted, begins to assemble a strange map, one intended to account for all conditions in the known world at the exact moment of Ted's death. Descending into this geometrical and astronomical endeavor, Roger is unaware of the forces his efforts are unleashing upon his home and his wife.

Langan is never overly explicit in his depiction of Roger and Veronica as they construct their own private nightmare. He doesn't explain what happens. Instead, he allows a character that is significantly flawed and morally ambiguous to guide us through the last days of an increasingly unhappy life. Like Eleanor in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Veronica is not intended to elicit the reader's sympathy. Rather, she reveals what she knows of events that have left her damaged beyond repair, and her knowledge is obviously limited. We catch glimpses of the emerging horror in her marriage, and we are meant to put together the pieces of this disturbing jigsaw. The scary scenes are that much sharper and unsettling because our imagination is filling in the gaps.

John Langan's previous published work includes the collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. He seems to be mining the territory shared by Joe Hill and Peter Straub--the meticulously described real world occasionally losing focus to reveal something quite horrible just beneath the surface. It might not be real. It might be an illusion or a psychological state, but it chills us nevertheless. Perhaps it would not be so frightening, if it did not follow our protagonist's movements with such merciless precision.

WINTERWOOD

by Patrick McCabe
256 pages, Bloomsbury USA (January 22, 2008)

Review by S. P. Miskowski

Novelist Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy; Breakfast on Pluto) examines the social and political arc of the past twenty-five years in Ireland as a parallel to the shifting fortunes and inexorable decline of his protagonist in Winterwood. The protagonist/narrator's attempts to leap into the competitive modern world exemplify the efforts of his country to do the same. At this and at a more personal level Winterwood is about the difficulty of extricating oneself from the ghosts of the past, and the pernicious nature of deeply imprinted, horrific childhood experiences.

When journalist Redmond Hatch returns to his former home in the rural town of Slievenageeha to write a colorful article about the folk traditions there, he meets a native named Ned Strange and immediately falls under his spell. Strange is a local favorite, with his country dialect, fanciful anecdotes and old Irish songs. His quaintness buys his way into the company of people who see him as a relic, a human time capsule conveniently preserving the history that they view as a novelty. But Redmond sees a different side of Ned when they are alone together, drinking. Ned reveals his belligerence, rage and cruelty--and a good deal of knowledge about Redmond's family life before he left Slievenageeha. Ned is one of several characters who impose themselves, physically and psychically, on children. Throughout the book Ned functions as a catalyst, a plausible character, a composite, a phantom, and a cipher. That McCabe is able to make all of this work indicates the virtuosity of his prose.

Redmond is a man who dearly wants to believe the things he tells us about himself. Like Ned, he has adopted a face that will allow him into polite company while keeping secret the nature he knows he cannot share. To speak the whole truth would tear him apart, and so he denies what he knows and keeps up the relentless patter of our age: the over-energized pep talk and TV-trained self-analysis that pass for conversation in the 21st century. He is a man who must pretend to be ever on the verge of turning over a new leaf. As he persists in his struggle to overcome what is insurmountable, he tries to convince us, and himself, that everything is fine, or nearly fine, or about to be fine.

This masterful study of a damaged mind fragmenting beyond repair comes from one of our most respected contemporary authors. Complex in tone and point of view, the book is both a social chronicle and a record of personal catastrophe.

McCabe takes the quaint veneer of a misrepresented and sentimentalized way of life and shows how nostalgia itself can mask and thereby allow a persistent evil. Redmond refuses to relinquish his gruesome optimism, and it gradually engulfs him. Mocked because of his background and family, he realizes that this is a repudiation of his deepest nature, but cannot offer an articulate, non-violent response. His wife calls his relatives hillbillies, and he laughs along with her, secretly mortified by the pathetic and brutal details of his impoverished youth. His tragedy, if we allow him so grand a conceit, is to be caught between what is expected of him in the world where he tries to live, and what has happened to him in the world he has tried to leave behind.

--S.P. Miskowski

THE IMAGO SEQUENCE AND OTHER STORIES

by Laird Barron
256 pages, Night Shade Books (publisher)

Review by S.P. Miskowski

Laird Barron is well known to readers of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Five of the nine stories in this collection were first published there. His work also appears in about two-dozen anthologies and numerous magazines online and in print. He's the winner of a Shirley Jackson Award for The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, and has received seven International Horror Guild Award nominations and five nominations for a Locus Award. If you haven't read much fantasy fiction lately and you're under the impression that speculative writing is dreamlike or disconnected from every day experience, Barron's fiction will change your mind.

The tales in this collection fuse the supernatural and the quotidian with disturbing results. Barron creates a world that looks, feels and smells like reality. Yet just outside this world, touching the edge of the picture and threatening to cross over into it, are the shadows and shapes of something dreadful. Like the conjured images of a Rorschach test, the longer you look at these shapes, the more ominous they appear.

I was amused but not really surprised to read that the author of these psychologically piercing stories used to raise huskies in Alaska, and that he had extensive martial arts training. The lower echelon political figures, cynical real estate tycoons, broken soldiers of fortune and former athletes and beauty queens who populate his stories resonate with a graphic sensibility writers can only gain from experiences unrelated to the literary arts. When these characters speak, it is with a weariness born of too much knowledge about the human condition. When they finally decide to act--and they seldom do so on a whim--it is with a grim understanding that the future may easily hold greater pain and horror than the present, for there is no end to horror in the history of our race.

From the aging paramilitary protagonist of "Old Virginia" to the guilt-ridden mogul in "Hallucigenia" there is a deep and adult sense of mortality that darkens even the most casual exchange. "Shiva, Open Your Eye" follows the spiritual journey of a serial killer whose self-justification is profound and global in its proportions. The compromised characters of The Imago Sequence and Other Stories search for lost works of art and hidden records in attempts to explain the inexplicable. Like a Werner Herzog film, their dangerous yet well documented adventures lapse into obsessive, nightmarish enterprises that lure them ever onward to their doom.

This is the only collection of stories I have ever read that actually entered my consciousness to the degree that I dreamed about its landscapes and characters. Chalk that up to the author's extraordinary prose style, which is densely descriptive; and his ability to weave hardboiled action reminiscent of Lawrence Block together with allusions to another dimension that would make H.P. Lovecraft shiver. Barron's universe walks and talks like this one, but it is haunted by a greater darkness just beyond our influence, and making its way toward us with an alarming determination.

THE LITTLE STRANGER

by Sarah Waters
480 pages, Riverhead Hardcover (publisher)

Review by S. P. Miskowski

The Little Stranger author Sarah Waters had her first success with another historical novel Tipping the Velvet. Her subsequent novels Affinity, Fingersmith, and The Night Watch have proven that she is a subtle and accomplished stylist whose extensive research allows her to write characters of different historical periods with the authority of an eyewitness. Waters' attention to detail is one of the most striking things about The Little Stranger, and it allows her to venture into highly speculative territory without sacrificing an inch of plausibility.

The novel is a literary ghost story set in England in 1947. When Dr. Faraday takes the place of a busy colleague and visits a sick housekeeper at Hundreds Hall, he can't help comparing the rundown Georgian mansion to his memory of the place when he saw it as a child. His mother was once the nursery maid there, when the Ayres family was socially prominent and the house was tended fulltime by more than two-dozen servants. As a boy, Faraday was so taken with the majesty of Hundreds Hall that he stole a bit of plaster decoration while touring the house with his mother. Now a middle-aged country doctor, Faraday is sad to see how far the Ayres home and the family itself have fallen.

Colonel Ayres, who was master of Hundreds Hall when Faraday was a boy, is long since dead. Mrs. Ayres still secretly mourns the loss of her first child--her favorite--to diphtheria. Her son Roderick has returned from the war shattered at the age of twenty-four, and daughter Caroline has come home to nurse Roderick and Mrs. Ayres for an indefinite period. The fourteen-year-old maid whom Dr. Faraday attends to is the only live-in servant, aided part-time by an older woman from the nearby town. The young maid, Betty tells the doctor that she isn't feeling well, but he decides that her malaise is a combination of home sickness and sensitivity to the decaying house with its many nooks and crannies and isolated, unused rooms.

Because of his duties in the community and his attraction to Hundreds Hall, Dr. Faraday is friendly with the family. He sympathizes with their reduced circumstances and becomes both their general physician and confidante. It's fascinating to watch the interplay between the doctor whose working class parents made enormous sacrifices for an education that ultimately separated the two generations, and the formerly entitled Ayres family forced to do cheap maintenance on their home and sell off parcels of land all around the estate just to make ends meet.

The author has contrived a situation in which two distinct classes communicate more intimately than they would otherwise have done. Their misunderstandings and shifting loyalties reflect Britain as a whole, after the war. A once powerful aristocracy is losing ground in a country struggling toward economic recovery and social change. Not everyone looks forward to such change. Surprisingly, Roderick and Caroline try to take their losses in stride. They see Hundreds Hall as an unavoidable burden. Dr. Faraday, however, spent his youth climbing the social ladder, and his admiration for the lost grandeur of Hundreds Hall is emblematic of his desire for something more.

During a somewhat embarrassing party the Ayres family throws together to introduce Caroline to a likely suitor, Dr. Faraday is suddenly made aware of the vast differences between himself and his newfound friends. The awareness causes him lasting bitterness. Faraday is not alone in feeling bitter. Before the night ends a terrible event occurs, and everyone involved regrets this last ditch attempt at saving the family through a fortunate marriage.

There is an element of mystery to everything that happens after this point in the story, and a superbly timed, gradual accumulation of dread. Strange things take place, and they are centered on a heightened sense of anxiety for each character. Waters presents most of the weird developments as secondhand accounts, told to Faraday by members of the Ayres household. In this way she captures the immediacy and fear of each event, while examining it through Faraday's objectivity. The result is both eerie and ambiguous. She gives us the essence of a character's fear and wonder, while maintaining a sense of mystery. We've all heard of places where strange and terrible things happen, and we've reasoned them away. Yet there is something at the heart of it, causing or inspiring fear.

Roderick feels that there is a presence in the house that wants to injure him for selling off the estate bit by bit. Mrs. Ayres, in her futility over the present and future, is drawn back to memories of a happier time when her first daughter was alive. This was the last time Mrs. Ayres herself felt truly alive, and lingering in this emotional state leads to one of the more horrific sequences I have encountered in contemporary fiction. It takes place, naturally enough, in the upstairs nursery.

The beauty of The Little Stranger is how deftly Waters has recreated a believable world of the past, with all of its clashes and conflicts, and further disrupted that world by introducing mysterious occurrences that might be supernatural or might be caused by extreme states such as despair, grief, envy, and unrequited passion. The story moves at its own pace, forcing the reader to play along. The novel is as much a study of a certain time and place as it is a ghostly tale. There are no broad strokes here, but the minute ones will make the hair on your neck stand up, and will encourage you to turn on the light before entering an empty room.