hb#6: what would Halloween be without nightmares? Well, we can't let that happen: Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror (ed.) Ellen Datlow

9781616962326
Tachyon, 2016 (November 1)
432 pp

advance reader copy from the publisher - thank you!!


Looking at the bigger picture, the choice of title for this collection is absolutely spot on, for indeed, the majority of these stories are truly the stuff of modern nightmares.

 Squirmworthy might also have been an appropriate title, since some of these stories were disturbing enough to the point where I had to put the book down, do something else, and then pick it up again.  There's no way I could have read this book in one sitting -- I'm sure that if I had, I'd have ended up with my own collection of nightmares and they still wouldn't have been as disturbing as what's between the covers in this book. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, and my guess is that for readers of modern horror, that's  a good thing. While personally I'd much rather curl up with a book of Victorian ghost stories or long-forgotten or neglected horror tales on the tamer side, I have to say that some of the stories in this book grabbed me  by the throat and just wouldn't let go.


My pick for best story here is one I've already read, but it is so horrific that I've never forgotten it.  "Little Pig" by Anna Taborska is the gut-wrenching tale of a mother who must protect her children and ends up paying a terrible price for their safety.  Oh my god.  Mark Samuels'  "Shallaballah" is another really good one, in which needing to get his face out there again, a famous soap opera star is taken to a strange clinic after a car accident disfigures his face. But is a comeback even possible? Admittedly I had to read this one twice, but the horror was all the better the second time.  Also requiring a second read was "Spectral Evidence," by Gemma Files.  The uniqueness in this author's storytelling method is to be applauded; it's one that owing to how it's written, must definitely be read between the lines.  A series of bizarre, randomly shuffled photos , helped by the "scribbles" on the backs of each  "appears to 'tell a story,' " of the deaths of two psychic investigators. One I've read before is Nicholas Royle's "Very Low-Flying Aircraft," the details of which I won't reveal.   It's a slow burn sort of horror story right up until the last minute when the lightbulb above my head goes off  -- my favorite type of creepy tale. And then we come to Laird Barron's "Strappado," which I have to say after reading it a number of times, still manages to scare the bejeezus out of me.  It's so good that whenever someone mentions Laird Barron, the first thing out of my mouth is "have you read 'Strappado'?"   Moving right along, I can't even begin to explain why I loved this story,  but "Was She Wicked? Was She Good" by M. Rickert had some particularly messed-up quality that appealed to me.  Here a little girl who is indulged by her mother has a terrible way of having a good time until her father decides he's had enough.

from slightlywarped.com

And now, for the rest of the stories. 

In "Sob in the Silence," by Gene Wolfe, a horror writer invites his old roommate and his family to his home, which has a rather sordid and cruel history. I will say no more. Brian Hodge's "Our Turn Too Will One Day Come" is another one I've read previously, a creepy tale about a horrific family legacy. Very nicely done, the horror builds slowly until we're all in on the secret.   "The Goosle" by Margo Lanagan puts a new, sad, and downright creepy spin on an old familiar tale, while Steve Duffy's "The Clay Party" does the same with a group of Donner Party-like travelers who put too much trust in their guide. The only negative here is that the author gives away the show very early on so I knew what was coming down the pike and just had to wait for it.  "Lonegan's Luck" by Stephen Graham Jones is different -- the next time a snake-oil salesman shows up in your town, run.  This one has an appropriate twist that brought forth a chuckle.

  "Mr. Pigsny" by Reggie Oliver details what happens when a man craves immortality and gets his wish. I've read better stories than this one by Oliver, but it's still disturbing.   Ray Cluley has an interesting tale here called "At Night, When the Demons Come By," a post-apocalyptic tale which, even though I'm not a fan of this sort of thing, was very much worth the read for two reasons: one, because of the demons themselves (one in particular),  and two (and more interesting),  it reveals how far people will go to ensure their own survival.  "The Shallows" by John Langan is an odd but good  story where a man's world changes forever and yet he continues on in his new, bizarre normal. I like Langan's work and this story is an example of why.  Considering that I detest zombie stories (haven't they been done to death???),  Dan Chaon's  "How We Escaped Our Certain Fate," surprised me with its poignancy.  Hats off to the author for making this one at least mature and meaningful.  I've already read Robert Shearman's "That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love," which is delightfully strange. This time around I paid much more attention and realized that the future might not be so rosy for a new groom. This one is just messed up -- in a good way.  "Shay Corsham Worsted" is a story that is horrific in its implications, but one which is also funny in a strange sort of way. A would-be home invader has no clue of what he's set into motion when he chooses the home of an elderly man as his next target. As serious as things are here, the fun here is in the bureaucratic rigamarole. "The Atlas of Hell," by Nathan Ballingrud is another really good one that I liked much better this time around, but to tell is to spoil so I'll leave it at that.

from Harmonic Concordance

Owing  to personal preference,  a few of the stories in this book get way more into real-life horrors than I care to go in fiction.  These stories are likely better suited for readers who like more edgy horror than I do.  While the writing is not an issue (it's quite good, in fact),  the subject matter and especially the level of violence in these particular stories just make for uncomfortable reading. When it comes to this sort of horror, I'd rather just say no thank you and move along to something more tame.   The following stories were probably the most nightmarish of them all, with the exception of my least favorite in this group, "Dead Sea Fruit" by Kaaron Warren, which just sort flatlined for me. It was more on the silly side than the horror side, and with apologies, it's the only story this book where I thought "why the heck is this one even in here?"   Lisa Tuttle's  "Closet Dreams" is most definitely the stuff of modern nightmare, in which a girl disappears, is held captive, and dreams of escape, only to find worse horrors than she imagined. Simon Bestwick is represented here by his story "Hushabye," where a man in his "thirty-something dread of failure and the dark" goes after a certain sort of predator ... I've read  "Omphalos" by Livia Llewellyn before, and wasn't exactly over the moon about it, but the tale centers on a young girl who desperately needs to find own her place to escape. Caitlin Kiernan's  "Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)"  is also a nightmare scenario drawn from the real world -- just downright creepy.  And last but by no means least,  "Ambitious Boys Like You" by Richard Kadrey is another one that's just a bit too over the top for my taste, wherein two young men decide to break into a house and get much more than either of them bargained for.

******

Nightmares is one of those anthologies where there's pretty much something for everyone. The only suggestion I might make for the future is to include more work by authors whose stories don't usually make it into these anthologies. In my very humble reader person's opinion, an anthology should work to showcase the best of what's out there, but when I'm seeing the same authors pop up over and over again in these collections,  it  makes me wonder who else may be out there whose work may be going unrecognized but who may be just as good of a writer as the ones reflected here.

As I'm quite fond of saying, horror is in the eye of the beholder and my favorites may not be to the liking of others.  In short, what I'm trying to say is that everyone brings something different to the reading table so this book isn't necessarily a one-size-fits-all sort of thing, but for me it's most certainly filled with enough quality material that I can easily recommend it to any horror reader.  It's a beyond-good collection on the whole, very satisfying and downright chill producing.

Thanks so much to Tachyon for my copy!

The Monstrous, (ed.) Ellen Datlow

9781616962067
Tachyon, 2015
370 pp

paperback (arc from the publisher, thanks so much!!!)

Just in time for Halloween (out October 15th), The Monstrous is a collection of twenty stories that, as editor Ellen Datlow notes are "Not your usual monster kills/destroys everything" tales, but rather stories that tend to focus on "how the humans react to the monstrosities they encounter."  Great approach, if you ask me, and there are a number of stories that are quite good in this collection.  As is also pointed out in the introduction, "monstrosity is in the eye of the beholder," a very pertinent little piece of wisdom.  Since this is an anthology of stories, a mixed bag, so to speak, not every story is going to appeal to every reader, and the concept of "monstrous" is also going to be different depending on whose brain it's being filtered through. Mine, for example, latches on to the "monstrous" in human beings -- I think that the monstrosities people are capable of are far scarier than anything a creepy tentacled thing could ever come up with. So I'll be up front and say that a lot of what you get out of this book depends heavily on what you consider to be "monstrous."  My idea may be totally different from anyone else's. Just keep that in mind.

Let me just say that for me there were some standout stories; there are four that would make your monetary investment in this book very worth it.   Two others are well worth calling to attention; there were only a couple or three I didn't really care for (again, based on my own approach to horror), and then there's the group in the middle, the ones I liked but I didn't feel were as good as the standouts or ones I marked as deserving honorable mention.

 - and now, first my best - 

First, the standouts: Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois have contributed an absolute stunner with their "Down Among the Dead Men", which thematically reminded me of Primo Levi's The Grey Zone. The action takes place inside of a Nazi concentration camp, begging the questions of  a) what it is that constitutes evil and b) what would anyone do to ensure his or her survival in a place designed for death.  One of the best stories in the entire book -- even if you end up thumbing your nose at the other entries (which you won't), this one is worth the price of the book on its own. Oh my god.

Another standout entry in this book  is Carole Johnstone's "Catching Flies," another one from Fearful Symmetries but one that I never got to ( I lost my copy which is not at all unusual around my house -- it's probably hidden among the multitude of other books in the shelves somewhere).   A young girl and her infant brother have been taken from their home after a particularly horrific event. To spare her, authorities don't want to talk to her about what happened, but little do they know that she already knows, and with good reason.  This one was a gut wrencher, although I won't explain why.  It is my absolute favorite story in the entire book.

Then there's "Jenny Come to Play" by Terry Dowling, which gets positively eerie as you're making your way to the end.  It begins with a woman who says she has to get away and hide from her sister, so she has voluntarily committed herself to a mental hospital.  Her doctor doesn't believe any of her story, thinking the woman is delusional at best.  But when the sister actually does come to find her, the story starts to verge into American Horror Story territory with a beyond-bizarre twist.

I'm going to also include Peter Straub's "Ashputtle" here, a tale about a  kindergarten teacher who believes that "to be lived truly, life must be apprehended with an adventurous state of mind." In keeping with the Cinderella aspect of this short story, Mrs. Asch sees herself as having been damaged by her wicked stepmother and the "figments" that materialize after her mother's death,  but also sees herself in much the same role with her small charges. As she rambles on through her story, she lets out that a little girl is missing, having "partaken of the great adventure."  Very creepy indeed; as I said earlier, it's the human monsters you really have to worry about; this one is particularly unreliable as a narrator. Loved it.

Two honorable mentions here: first,  "Miss Ill Kept Runt," by Glen Hirshberg, because I didn't get it until after a second reading. It's a masterful play on a familiar tale; here, a family is heading out of town on vacation at the same time as the little daughter's birthday.  From the back of the station family station wagon, this little girl begins to realize that something is very, very off -- and as events play out, she discovers that she's not imagining things.  I only picked up the cleverness after the second read.  The second one that deserves calling out is Christopher Fowler's "Piano Man,"  a kind of mishmash of horror and noirish elements that come together nicely in this creepy little tale.   I love Christopher Fowler's work, and he's done a fine job here in his story of a freelance reporter sent to New Orleans to write about the city's secret side.  Entering a bar called Stormy's, he discovers the story he really wants to write.  This one is just beyond cool. Then again, I love noir stories so I can't help myself.

--now all the rest--

The Monstrous opens with Jeffrey Ford's contribution, "A Natural History of Autumn" which I've read before, and which I like. If you've ever read weird tales from Japan, Ford sort of captures that same feel here in his story about a couple who go off to an onsen,  a sort of guest house built around natural hot springs. The scene is set for love and romance, but well, this is a horror story, so think again.   Dale Bailey's "Giants in the Earth" comes next. "The Lord is with us," says one member of a coal-mining crew while trying to blow open another coal seam deep beneath the ground, and he doesn't know how right he is.  While trying to see what's holding things up in the process, one of the crew makes an astounding discovery that he absolutely cannot believe he's seeing. But it's holding up progress, so it has to be gotten rid of.  Caitlin R. Kiernan splits her story "The Beginning of the Year Without a Summer,"  between a cemetery in Providence and a strange party at a home in Federal Hill.  A transplanted southern woman now teaching at Brown, birds and an odd book  feature in both parts. This one I'll probably have to read again since I have several question marks floating in my head, but the writing is so damn good.   The next one, "A Wish From a Bone" written by Gemma Files  is another one I've read in another Datlow collection, Fearful Symmetries.  It's kind of a modern pulpy don't-open-that-tomb kind of thing, where a TV film crew shooting a show segment somewhere in the middle east discover why they shouldn't have once they've done it.  Oops.  To be beyond honest, I didn't at all care for Livia Llewellyn's "The Last, Clean, Bright Summer" -- this one is truly monstrous and not in a good way at all.

Adam Troy-Castro writes an interesting story about a monster (yes, a true-blue monster) who knows only killing.  "The Totals" takes place in a diner where a group of joke-cracking monsters is hanging out along with a man in "Coke-bottle eyeglasses". In  many ways it's humorous, but ultimately even monsters need release at some point.  This one was so offbeat I couldn't help but like it. Connecticut is the setting for Kim Newman's contribution, "The Chill Clutch of the Unseen," another true-blue monster story in which an old retired cop with family history going back generations meets up with the last monster, who, like the rest of the monsters that have passed through, "came to town to make a last stand."  Brian Hodge returns to a Datlow collection with his "Our Turn Too Will One Day Come," which involves longstanding family secrets that the narrator has never been privy to.  It is only after a call for help from his sister that he discovers exactly what those secrets entail.  And, as he also discovers, his family is much like others out there, but in their own way.   I love the idea of a lineage of women holding family secrets. The next two were just gross, a quality I don't find fun in horror of any sort.   "Grindstone" by Stephen Graham Jones opens with a dying Derle wondering if the sheep that's about to give birth will produce a litter that will take after their old man, and sadly, as much as I loved the two novels I've read by author Adam Nevill, I just wasn't taken with his story "Doll Hands," which was just too much for me. I'm probably the only one on the planet who doesn't care for gross of any sort in my horror stories, but well, it's what it is.

Sofia Samatar is up next with her "How I Met the Ghoul."  In the fifth century, poet Ta'abbata Sharran had the dubious pleasure of meeting a ghoul;  later in the 21st century, a reporter meets her over a meal at an airport.  I read this story as a commentary on the "ghoul's dream" of  modern development laying civilization to waste. Not very horrific in terms of skin crawl, but it does make some very good points.  Skipping ahead to "Chasing Sunset," by A.C. Wise,  we encounter the son of a familiar figure whose father is dying and calling him home. Not a particular fan of this one.  Moving on, I've already read Steve Rasnic Tem's "The Monster Makers," appreciating it a bit more this time around than the last. It's the story of a family which "for ages" has been shunned, "thought to be witches, demons, and worse." While the modern-day son wants to live a normal life with his wife and children, the grandfather wants to ensure his children know and understand their heritage.  The two butt heads, but not before some nasty mayhem ensues.

 Last, but not least, is John Langan's "Corpsemouth,"  in which a young man, his mom, and his sister return to Scotland, the home of his parents prior to emigrating to America thirty years earlier.  He is beset by strange dreams, but even stranger is the story of "Corpsemouth" told by his uncle.  His cousin tells him it's malarkey, but is it really?  

******

So there you have it.  Would I recommend The Monstrous? The answer is certainly yes, but I'll repeat what Datlow says in her introduction:  ""monstrosity is in the eye of the beholder."  And that is definitely true.