Malpertuis, by Jean Ray

 

9781939063702

Wakefield Press, 2021

originally published 1943

translated by Iain White

246 pp

paperback

Sometimes you just find that book that you know is not only unlike anything you've ever read but also makes you wonder just how in the hell you're going to find aything that ever tops it.   This past summer I had the great fortune to have read all four volumes of Belgian author Jean Ray's short-story collections published by Wakefield:  Whisky Tales, Cruise of Shadows: Haunted Stories of Land and Sea, Circles of Dread and The Great Nocturnal, and fell in love almost immediately into the first of these, but it is Malpertuis that's really won my soul as far as Ray's work goes.  

This post will not be a long one since the secret of what lies at the very core of the mystery of the house named Malpertuis should remain exactly that until discovered by the reader.    Divided into two main parts, the story begins with a short introduction written by a thief who had discovered pages of "yellowing, scribbled papers" in a pewter tube while pilfering a monastery.  As he sets out to "sift, to classify, to eliminate" the "work of colossal size,"  he also happened upon a "little notebook, in a neat scholarly hand,  bringing "the number of collaborators to four"  people responsible for the account as a whole. In putting it all together,  now, as he says, this thief-slash editor is "obliged" to add his name 

 "to the role of those Scribes who, without their knowledge (or almost without it),  have given Malpertuis a place in the history of human terror." 

After a brief introductory chapter detailing a shipwreck, the story begins in earnest with the narrative that "constitutes the kernel of the story, around which "the appalling destiny of Jean-Jacques Grandsire that the whole horror of Malpertuis revolves."   And now we're off and into Malpertuis itself, where Jean-Jacques' Uncle Cassave is quite literally on his deathbed with his family all around.  He is obviously a man of great wealth, but his family will not inherit any of it unless they all come to live in the house until their own deaths, and to sweeten the deal they will receive annual allowances.  They may not make any changes to Malpertuis, and there are a few other conditions as well, including that the last surviving inhabitant in the house will acquire Cassave's entire fortune.  

Notably, while this is Jean-Jacques' account, when the name of that house first arises, he becomes anxious:

"Malpertuis! For the first time the name has flowed in a turbid ink from my terrified pen! That house, placed by the most terrible of wills like a full stop at the end of so many human destinies -- I still thrust aside its image! I recoil, I procrastinate rather than bring it to the forefront of my memory!"

He continues:

"What is more, pressed no doubt by the brevity of their earthly term, human beings are less patient than the house; things remain after them, things -- like the stones of which accursed dwellings are made. Human beings are animated by the feverish haste of sleep tumbling through abbatoir gates -- they will not rest until they have taken their place under the great candlesnuffer that is Malpertuis."

There is obviously something terribly wrong about this house, but I had absolutely no clue as to just how wrong things were going to become.  After being plagued by bizarre visions, strange sounds and other occurrences, Jean-Jacques at one point comes to believe he's caught up in a "dream, a nightmare," begging "For the love of God, let me wake up!"  But this is no dream.    While it may sound as if this is prime haunted-house story material, perfect for relaxing curled up in your easy chair while reading,  for me that was definitely not the case -- it is so much more, well beyond your standard fare, with one character describing Malpertuis  as a "kind of 'fold in space...' " and an "abominable point of contact."  

As is the case with his short stories, Jean Ray writes here constructing layers upon interconnecting  layers as he gets closer to the heart of the tale of Malpertuis.   The result is an atmosphere of lingering dread, bleakness and full-on uncanny created by a blending of elements of the mystical, the mythical and the Gothic, leaving the reader with the feeling that perhaps you ought to mentally hold on to a ball of string or lay breadcrumbs as you navigate the labyrinth that is both this house and this story.   I realize that it may not be for everyone -- it does take a lot of patience and time spent thinking through this puzzle of a book and although I thought I'd sussed it a couple of times, what happens here went well beyond anything I could have possibly imagined.  The Wakefield edition has an excellent editor's afterword by Scott Nicolay that by all means should be left until after completing the novel unless, of course, you want to wreck things.  Malpertuis is a wild ride of a novel that I can most heartily recommend to readers of the strange.   I was completely entranced, off in another world altogether as I read it.   

Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories

 

9781949641578

Two Lines Press / Calico

215 pp

paperback

I think I'm finally back from my long hiatus caused by the when-it-rains-it-pours syndrome that seems to plague my house every so often and just knocks me mentally on my can.  I've declared June a drama-free,  stress-free month here so it may actually last a while.  

I don't remember where I first heard about this book but I was so excited for its release that I preordered it back in December of 2023.   Through the Night Like a Snake is volume of ten dark and beyond-edgy stories written by "an ensemble cast of contemporary Latin American writers,"  with each translator's name featured prominently at the beginning of each new tale.  It is also the ninth in the  Calico series of books published by Two Lines Press, which as posted at the blog at the Center for Translation, is 

"dedicated to capturing vanguard works of translated literature -- curated around a particular theme, region, language, historical moment or style ..." 

As also stated on that blog post, the series is an opportunity to learn from translators "what's being left unread by English readers," which is the bottom-line draw for me.  

 In the editor's introduction to this volume (not included in the finished product but so generously provided by Kelsey at Two Lines Press via PDF),  Sarah Coolidge refers to a subgenre called  "narrativa de lo inusual," a phrase coined by literature professor Carmen Alemany Bay. I'd come across this term last year while reading Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night, while looking up different articles about the author.   Alemany Bay is quoted by Benjamin Russell in his 2022 article in the New York Times entitled "Women, Horror and Fantasy Capture Everyday Struggle," saying that  the "depictions of normal life" offered by these writers  "aren't intended to heighten the effect of the fantastic or supernatural; instead the unreal is used to sharpen readers' view of what's true." The style reminds me somewhat of reading  Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny, where she also used the strange to bring real-world horrors more clearly into focus.  

 I'll offer just a few examples of what's in this book, beginning with the first story.  I've always believed that an anthology should start with an offering that points to what a reader can expect from the rest, and if the idea here is to examine modern anxieties of the realities of life in different parts of Latin America, then  "Bone Animals" by Tomas Downey (translated by Sarah Moses) definitely succeeds.  After reading that one, I couldn't wait to get on with the rest.  In this story, a family has been "moving from village to village" over several months, "unable to find shelter or work," and they've just been asked to leave the school where they've been sleeping. Luckily, they are told about a shack that doesn't belong to anyone -- a "single room, just a roof over our heads, really."   They survive by living off the nearby land, and soon discover  a "small, carved animal, almost hidden ..." at first a bobcat, then a piranha, which "could have only been carved by an impossibly skilled hand."   They are cleaned, collected and displayed in a corner, and soon multiply with more discoveries.  However, as the collection begins to grow, things begin to take a dark, thoroughly unexpected and frightening turn.  "The House of Compassion" by Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude, also starts on a normal note, but then takes off in a direction that I guarantee nobody will expect.    I was so in awe of this the author's writing that I immediately bought two of her books, I'm a Fool to Want You and Bad Girls, also translated by Kit Maude.     Flor de Ceibo (named after the national flower of Argentina) is a travesti sex worker in a rural area on the Córdoba Pampas, where the highway is plagued by a large number of car crashes; as we're told, "the side of the road is littered in crosses." After getting caught robbing her clients one day, they come after her, and during a chase through a cornfield, she collapses.  The next thing she knows, she is waking up at the convent of the Sisters of Compassion, where the nuns are taking care of her  and also a number of dogs -- evidently the convent doubles as a sort of dog sanctuary.  When she's feeling better and is ready to leave, the  dog Nené has asked the nuns to keep her there is not allowed to go.  Believe it or not, it gets weirder and more mystical/horrific from there.   I had to read this story twice and it still kept me awake after finishing it, and it turned out to be my favorite.    "Rabbits" by Anotonio Diaz Oliva (ADO -- translated by Lisa Dillman) is another fine tale, set in a commune/cult in Chile during the time of the Pinochet government.  A former member looks back to his experiences there,  a place of "old fogeys willing to sacrifice anything, even their families, to avoid confronting what was happening on the outside ..."  while slowly revealing the truth of what happened on the inside.   A story by Mariana Enriquez is also included here with her "That Summer in the Dark," translated by Megan McDowell.   In this story, as in Our Share of Night, Argentina's past is part of the contemporary moment.    It is the summer of 1989 in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Las Torres, a time of rolling blackouts due to a lack of funding. As the narrator notes, it was also a time of "energy crisis, hyperinflation, carry trade, due obedience, pink plague ... and there was no future."   It was during that hot summer that she and her friend "got obsessed with serial killers" bemoaning the fact that Argentina hasn't had any.  It's only when a murder hits close to home that she feels things shift, with "the crime" that "did us all good."   

Considering that there are only ten stories in this book, these authors manage to cover a wide scope of issues that range from the political to the personal, engaging with issues that are not only relevant within geographical boundaries, but which also, in some cases, take on universal importance, especially for women. At the same time, the actual horror content is solid enough to please readers of more sophisticated work in the genre, so it's a win-win all around.  

Most definitely and very highly recommended.  I loved it. 

The Sanctuary, by Gustavo Abrevaya

 

"Nobody asks questions, and it goes on."

 

 

9781639640225

 Schaffner Press, 2023

 originally published in 2003 as El Criadero

  translated by Andrea G. Labinger

   177 pp

paperback

As I am never shy about saying, I love fiction in translation and so when something new comes along, I take notice.  This book, The Sanctuary by Argentinian author Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya, is the latest to have caught my attention.  I bought it for October reading based on the blurb that promises a mix of "crime thriller, detective story and horror novel," but what I actually got with this novel was completely unexpected.    

from Buscalibre

Álvaro and his partner Alicia are driving though the desert when their car breaks down, leaving them stranded.   Álvaro takes the opportunity to pick up his ever-present camera and describe their situation cinematically via his gaze through the lens,  à la John Ford or Peckinpah.  As he notes, "it looks like the end of the world, but it's just a road where twenty percent of cars have some kind of breakdown," with no gas stations and no other road traffic anywhere.  Álvaro's not too worried -- his keen sense of hearing asssures him that eventually whoever was driving whatever it was that he'd heard in the distance would soon be along to offer a helping hand.   He's right -- help soon arrives, and their rescuer  offers to call the mechanic in the nearby village of Los Huemules, aka Las Casas, named for the deer that used to roam there.   The problem is that they most likely won't be on their way to their destination until the next day, but, as the man tells them, there's a hotel where they can stay.  Eventually they arrive in Las Casas on foot and head to the Seagull, a "hot-sheet hotel" where the clerk warns them to be sure to be in before dark, but doesn't really offer an explanation as to why.  Despite their day, Álvaro and Alicia have a fun night together,   all caught on video, of course, but when he wakes up the next day, Alicia is not there.  Nor is she at the bar where breakfast is served, but the waiter does tell Álvaro that she had been there just an hour before, and had left with the town mechanic to see about the car.  Figuring she's likely back at the room by then, he goes back, and that's when he  notices that she'd gone without her bag, and that the previously-closed window was now open. Hitting the streets once again  in search of Alicia, he hears different accounts of sightings and several assurances that "nobody gets lost in Las Casas,"  but she is nowhere to be found, and he is told repeatedly to contact the authorities.  No luck there -- the lazy, corpulent mayor, the corrupt police chief and the head priest of the town who follows a bizarre, medieval dogma all tell him he should just go home, and the small handful of people who might be helpful have their hands tied because of fear of what those same authorities might do to them if they break their silence.   As the back cover blurb notes, Álvaro's quest to find Alicia becomes "increasingly desperate," and while following what few clues he has, he stumbles onto one dark secret after another that these people would much rather remain hidden.  Aside from the question of what happened to Alicia, he also wonders just what the hell is going on in this town. 

I really, REALLY wish I could say more, but I just can't.  

 Abrevaya skillfully blends tropes from crime fiction and horror in this story, and the sinister atmosphere grows incrementally throughout the novel, as does the tension surrounding both the case of the missing Alicia and the revelation of this town's secrets.  The opening scene and the subsequent benighting of this couple in a small town in the middle of nowheresville seemed all too familiar, reminding me of the plot of any number of horror movies or books featuring the same elements,  but it didn't take too long to realize that The Sanctuary moved well beyond  the standard setup into different territory altogether -- straight into the realm of allegory.   After a while, because of the clues offered by the author and the way in which this book was written, I couldn't help but connect Álvaro's search for the missing Alicia to that of a relative of one of Argentina's disappeared during the period of the military dictatorship (1976-1983), on a quest to get answers and only getting stonewalled or threatened.   That period left an indelible mark and lingering trauma on the minds of those who survived it and continued to do so to those who came after, and that reality, as mentioned in a recent Guardian article,  translates quite well to horror writing.   The way in which the author structured this novel is also actually quite ingenious.  In line with the epigraph from the Requiem Mass that opens the book, his chapter headings continue with parts of the liturgical structure of the Mass.  Going back to that epigraph, it reads as follows:

"Lacrimosa dies illa,

qua resurget ex favila

iudicandus homo reus,"

which according to this blog, translates to something along the lines of 

"Tearful that day,

on which will rise from ashes

the guilty man for judgment."

I won't say why, but the minute I finished this novel, I mentally saluted the author's highly appropriate choice.  

The Sanctuary is not for the faint of heart, it is absolutely gutwrenching at times, and it can be pretty out there as well.   However,  it is  intelligent horror fiction written with a clear vision and clear purpose, it is more than relevant to our own times,  and it is a novel that continues to stick in my mind and under my skin.   I started this book one night at bedtime and absolutely could not put it down for one minute until I had finished every page.  

Very, VERY highly and seriously recommended.  

The Secret Life of Insects, by Bernardo Esquinca

 

9781956321953

Valancourt, 2023

translated by James D. Jenkins 

illustrations by Luis Perez Ochando

198 pp

hardcover

I initally came across the work of Bernardo Esquinca in the first installment of this publisher's Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories.   His story  "Señor Ligotti" was a standout in that book, so when Valancourt announced the publication of an entire volume of this author's work, I was elated. 

This book ticks every box I have as a reader of the weird and the strange.  There  are no cut-and-dried solutions to the mysteries the author offers, leaving the stories on the open-ended side of things and allowing the reader's imagination to kick in and ponder the implications of what he or she has just read.    Many times, for me anyway, that's when the actual horror of the sitution creeps in, continuing to linger with me long after turning that last page.  In Esquinca's words, as quoted in the introduction by Mariana Enriquez,  ..." the best stories are like abandoned houses that nobody wants to stay in, but which you can't stop thinking about after spending a night in them."   That is exactly what you get here.  

All of the stories included here are terrific, but as usual, I have favorites.  At the top of my list  is "Pan's Noontide," which seamlessly blends together crime fiction, horror, mythology, modern environmental concerns and greed-based corruption to create an unforgettable tale.    Maya, a  woman with a failing marriage, has strange dreams, which she knows the psychiatrist she's seeing completely misinterprets.   At some point in the therapy, she realizes that the dreams are no longer nightmares but rather "a call."   In the meantime, her husband, a specialist in "classical mythology and ancient folklore" at the local university, has been called by an officer in the Homicide Division to assist him with what he believes is a "ritual killing"  of a forest ranger.    He needs Arturo's help to discern from photographs he has whether there might be "some symbolism" that might offer a lead or whether the police are simply "dealing with a psycho who thinks he's a conceptual artist."  Right away Arturo realizes that the pictures reflect a "clear reference to the god Pan," but he doesn't understand why the forest ranger was a target since Pan was a "protector of nature."   He also realizes that he's seen something like this before, and had just brushed it off.   This time around, he's definitely interested.   There are times when the author writes with a sort of Russian doll effect, with a story nestled inside of another story that in this case, can take you somewhere else altogether.  "Dream of Me" is a perfect example of this type of construction, highlighting another theme that is prevalent throughout this book, echoes of the past that find their way into the present.   The story revolves around a doll named Greta, sent by someone unknown and handed to the narrator by a detective who had been tasked to deliver it.  Evidently this was highly unusual, since finding his dolls was something done personally by the narrator, complete with "verifiable story behind it."  The detective knows only that he had received an anonymous phone call with instructions to track down the recipient, Daniel Moncada, who notes that it "is the first time a doll has come to me without my having to track it down."  He offers the detective double his fee to find the anonymous caller.  In and around the mystery of Greta's origins,  we get a peek inside of what appears to be Moncada's doll files.  It's not so much the dolls that are the focus of these stories, though, but rather the broken people who had owned them.   I have to say I tend to run from creepy doll tales because I just don't like them but in this case, Esquinca strays away from the obvious and makes this one such a very human story that I couldn't help but be affected on a gut level.    I also run from zombie-ish type things but "Tlatelolco Confidential" also defies stereotypes and injects the past into the present.   After the 1968 student massacre at Mexico City's  La Plaza de las Tres Culturas,  la "convergencia de tres etapas importantes en la historia de México: la prehispánica, la colonial y la conteporánea,"  a small group of soldiers waiting for the bodies to be taken away experience something incredible -- thirteen of the dead students rise up, "bleeding from their mouths and baring their teeth" with the intention of attacking the soldiers.  Firing on them again, the soliders succeeded in "re-killing" the students.  Even stranger, when the crew came to take the bodies away, they counted twelve, not thirteen bodies, something one of them would later "swear on his mother" was true before noting that "if one of them was able to get back up and escape, there's a goddamn walking corpse loose in the city."   Given the history of this location,  perhaps something hungry may have been awakened by the blood flowing in the plaza that day.  And finally, from my list of favorites is "Where I'm Going It's Always Night."   Everardo, who is driving along the highway in a van,  sees a guy with a backpack walking along the side the road, evidently not interested in hitchhiking, but he offers him a lift anyway.  In exchanging the usual conversation,  Jacobo, the passenger,  tells the driver that he is a spelunker and a bounty hunter, retrieving bodies of cave explorers who'd for some reason or other had died during their caving experience, unable to get out.   He's on his way now to do just that, heading to the mountains.  Or at least, that's what he claims.  

from El Giroscopo Viajero

 

Esquinca's stories are set in his native Mexico, and he incorporates his country's history, landscape and mythologies into his work, and bravo to James Jenkins for his excellent translation.   At the same time, his subjects are definitely human, sharing much of the same anxieties and apprehensions as the author's readers outside the borders of his homeland.    His work reaches depths that move well beneath the world we live in and uncovers hidden, unseen layers we don't see, as well as  the small cracks in the universe that his characters don't know exist until they tumble into them.   Even more so, he joins the ranks of my favorite writers whose work leaves me with the sense  that the old ground has somehow shifted along with my understanding of how things actually are.  The stories are fun with more than a hint of seriousness in what the author's trying to accomplish with them; they also acknowledge the influence of writers who came before him, as noted in the introduction, which you should definitely not miss.  

All in all, a fine collection of stories by an extremely talented writer, and a book I most highly recommend, especially to people who, like me, love quality translated fiction that makes you think.  It's downright creepy as well, aided by the excellent illustrations, so it's a book that will definitely appeal to readers of horror on the intelligent end of the spectrum.  

Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez

 

"You have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn't cursed. I don't know if I can leave you something that isn't dirty, that isn't dark, our share of night."

9780451495143

Hogarth, 2022

originally published as Nuestra Parte de Noche

translated by Megan McDowell 

588 pp.

hardcover

My introduction to author Mariana Enriquez was her short-story collection Things We Lost in the Fire, which I loved so much that I moved on directly to her The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, also exceptional.  I was super excited for the release of this novel, Our Share of Night and I have to say that I was not at all disappointed.  

It's a hot day in Buenos Aires Argentina as 1981 begins.  Juan has everything ready for the long trip he is about to make with his young son Gaspar to the home of his in-laws.  It's just the two of them, as Gaspar's mother Rosario had died some three months earlier, but Juan has decided that he needs the time with just his son.    Juan knows he must be careful as "the repressive forces were unpredictable," and that he needed to "avoid any incidents" -- after all,  Argentina was in the midst of the dictatorship period (aka the Dirty War) and the police and the army "kept a brutal watch over the highways."   On reaching the hotel where they will spend the first night, Juan, who suffers from a serious heart condition, has also taken precautions so that if he fails to wake up, Gaspar knows what to do and who to call.   It is also there that  Juan comes to realize that Gaspar can plainly see a strange woman in the hallway, not a living one, but an "echo," part of  "the restless dead" (i.e.  "discarnates," ghosts of the disappeared),   "moving quickly," because they wanted to be seen.  Juan sees them all of the time and has learned how to banish these visions;  it's something he'll have to teach Gaspar, but of concern at the moment is that he's realized that his son has inherited his own ability to see into "the floating world."   This is not the best news; Rosario's wealthy and very powerful family is part of  a longstanding "secret society" known as the Order,  and they have their own plans for the boy, beginning with a test to ascertain whether or not he is a medium like his father.   

While I won't give too much away plotwise, members of the Order, as the dustjacket blurb notes, seek "eternal life" or more to the point, the preservation of one's consciousness after death.  Juan's role as medium allows them contact with an entity called the Darkness which Juan refers to as "demented... a savage god, a mad god,"  and there are steep, atrocious and even inhuman costs to be paid in doing so.  It is not a role he relishes -- Juan feels trapped, and even worse,  he knows that he likely won't live long enough to protect Gaspar from the Order as much as he needs to.  He makes plans that he hope will safeguard his son long after he's gone, but the question here, as noted on the dustjacket, is whether or not Gaspar can actually escape what has been foreordained to be his destiny.  

The book moves back and forth through time and events before, during and after the dictatorship, following Juan's efforts to protect Gaspar, while simultaneously examining the horrific violence and human wreckage caused by the Order, a way to reckon with colonialism as well as the corruption and evil bred from wealth and power.  Horror is the perfect vehicle to tell these stories -- as the author states in an interview at Literary Hub (2018), 

"There's something about the scale of the cruelty in political violence from the estate that always seems like the blackest magic to me. Like they have to satisfy some ravenous and ancient god that demands not only bodies but needs to be fed their suffering as well" 

and in a 2018 article for the Freeman's Channel at Literary Hub Enriquez writes that she had asked herself

 "what were the first written texts, the first horror texts that I had ever read? They were the testimonies of the dictatorship.  Bodies disappeared. Common everyday houses which served as concentration camps in neighborhoods. The secrecy of it all, the negation of reality. Children in this time taken from their parents and given another name. It was phantasmagoric."

In Our Share of Night, she brings this "blackest magic" to vivid, horrific life; as with her other books, Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,  this one also reminds readers that the traumatic past has the power to linger and to haunt the present. While the dictatorship may have ended, there are still the scars and shadows to be reckoned with. You need not look any further than the recurring image of the child who disappeared inside of a house and completely vanished, never to be seen again, her disappearance affecting her friends and family for years to come. 

While not everyone seems to share my feeling about it, I loved this book. While I've kept any spoilers out of this post, trust me, there are more than enough horrors filling these 588 pages to satisfy any reader of the genre; there is also more than enough historical base and cultural lore to satisfy someone like me.  I do think perhaps it could have used some editing here and there, but all and all, it's likely going to be a novel I will never forget, one that made such a strong impression that I've had it on my mind since finishing it.  Very, very highly recommended.  

Fox Tales, by Tomihiko Morimi

"On short summer nights, in between the rice paddies, the foxes scatter."  

97819753354665

Yen On, 2022

published as Kitsune no Hanashi, 2006

translated by Winifred Bird

228 pp

hardcover

I don't remember where I first came across this title, but I do remember looking at the description and thinking that this book is so me:

"A collection of four spooky tales for the modern era, all tied to a certain Kyoto curio shop."

These stories play out in the streets of the city, and as the dustjacket blurb goes on to say, over the course of the book the author "offers an eerie glimpse into the beguiling and mysterious darkness of the old capital."   Eerie, most definitely.  Mysterious, an understatement. 

 If you're not familiar with Japanese mythology, in a nutshell, kitsune or foxes (according to The Collector) "possess many powerful magical and spiritual abilities, including shapeshifting, far-seeing, high intelligence and longer lifespans." They are also viewed as tricksters, and can be benign or benevolent.   There are any number of websites you can turn to such as Ancient Pages, Yokai.com or anywhere you can get to by looking up Japanese mythology or folklore. 

The title story, "Fox Tales" introduces the reader to Hourendou (and I do wish I could see the Kanji for this word to try to glean some sort of meaning),  a curio shop "the size of maybe six tatami mats."  The narrator, a university student, first met Natsume,  the proprietor of the shop, when he worked delivering bento lunches.  A year later, he was working at Hourendou, his job to watch the shop and make deliveries.  The story opens as he is delivering something to a strange man by the name of Amagi, who lived in an old mansion near the Saginomori Shrine.   Natsume reveals to the narrator that she should have gone there herself, but she doesn't like going to Amagi's house.  He, in turn, decides that it was his duty to take on the Amagi deliveries himself to "ensure that Natsume never went there again."  Things begin to happen when the narrator drops a particular plate in the shop and  is sent to Amagi for a replacement.   Natsume warns him that Amagi might "jokingly" request something, but "under no circumstances should you agree" and that he must not "promise him anything, no matter how insignificant."  Unfortunately he fails to heed that advice, and after the first trade he makes with Amagi, he soon finds himself involved in a trade involving a fox mask.  It's really at the this point that things take that turn to the strange and the weird, and all the while the narrator tries to understand how Amagi had "managed to sink his claws so deeply into my soul. "  Pay attention: this one lays many a foundation for what follows. 

"Kitsunebi" (foxfire) from Yokai.com

  In "The Dragon in the Fruit," a university student spends a great deal of time with a rather isolated and lonely senior student, listening to his numerous stories.  The senior has many --  as he tells the other, in the five years he'd been in Kyoto,  "some mysterious things have happened," and he proceeds to relate a few of his bizarre experiences in the city.  His tales encompass a woman in a fox mask, unique magic lanterns, the strange appearance of a "lightning beast",  a very real serpentlike creature with a face like a crocodile supposedly captured in the Meiji era,  and a netsuke of a dragon "coiled inside a piece of fruit," any of which he feels he might run into as he walks through the city.  

As the senior says about the people of Kyoto, 

"Most them are strangers, but I know they're connected by mysterious threads I can't even imagine.  And when I have the chance to touch one of those threads, it makes a strange sound under my fingers. I think that if I could trace them all to their source, they would lead to a mysterious, shadowy place at the very core of the city."

Holding that thought, the weirdness continues in "Phantom,"  in which a guy who enjoys "exploring the tangled backstreets" and alleys takes a job as tutor to a somewhat "laconic high school student" and becomes caught up in a hunt for a "phantom ..."  also described as "something like a spirit" in the area. Surprises are in store in this one, and the ending is not only eerie, but sinister and foreboding.    "The Water God" rounds out the collection, with a family which has gathered on the death of an elderly relative telling stories and sharing memories and family history that go back in time as they wait for a "family heirloom" to be delivered from Hourendou.  All I can say is 神聖なたわごと ...  this was my favorite story, as well the absolute weirdest tale in the entire book and one of the creepiest I've ever encountered.  

 Fox Tales just sucked me right in, with the combination of the author's skill in creating a dark, almost suffocating at times atmosphere as well as his awesome storytelling abilities.  This is the type of book I look forward to reading, where the mystery of it all pulls me in further and further until there is no outside world for the duration. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I love folklore of any kind, and  I actually got a bit more from this book than I bargained for in a good way, with Japanese mythology and folklore interwoven into each and every story.  Along with the strange connections to the curio shop advertised on the dustjacket, it is this element, I believe, that ties everything together and gives this collection its heft.  This book may not be for everyone, especially those readers who need explanations to make their reading complete, which leads my to my only criticism:  it might have been helpful to have added some sort of introduction for non-Japanese readers who may not have much familiarity with Japanese folklore.   

For me, this book was a great way to end the 2022 reading year,  and it's one I can recommend highly.  

A Different Darkness and Other Abominations, by Luigi Musolino

 

9781954321731

Valancourt Books, 2022

translated by James D. Jenkins

316 pp

hardcover

I am a passionate advocate of translated fiction and I am loving this latest wave of translated horror collections from Valancourt.  First they wowed me with their two world horror anthologies, and then it was the off-the-charts excellent  The Black Maybe, by Hungarian author Attila Veres.  My latest Valancourt read is from Italy, A Different Darkness, by Luigi Musolino, and it is dark with a capital D.   After having finished both books now,  if this is the direction weird fiction is heading, I'm all for it.  Keep it coming. 

 In the translator's note, James Jenkins (co-founder of Valancourt) says that he and Musolino jointly selected the stories to appear in A Different Darkness.  Some of these are from  Musolino's two-volume collection Oscure Regioni (Dark Regions), which we're told number twenty stories, "one from each of Italy's regions, each inspired by local folklore from that region."  A few were also selected from some of the author's other works as well, and together these tales were chosen "to represent the best of his work over his career, which so far spans about ten years."  They did a great job in the choosing  -- the horrors begin immediately and do not let up, keeping the reader in a squirmworthy state throughout.  Musolino is a master of the existential dread and the gloom that pervades all of these stories,  many involving  strange creatures that make themselves known now and then, but at the heart of it all, human nature is also scrutinized in these tales as the author zeroes in on human psyches that have somehow become (as he describes in the titular story of this collection)  "derailed from the tracks of normality." 

Since this is another book that a reader will experience,  I will very briefly list only a few of my favorites without going into any sort of detail so as not to spoil things for potential readers.  In order of appearance  "Black Hills of Torment" comes first on the favorites list, in which it is clear from the outset that something has gone horribly wrong in the small town of Orlasco. Money "doesn't matter one damn bit any more," a certain song plays over and over"  as a "neverending dirge" and has done so for a year, people are out of food and living on mice, leaving town is impossible and everyone finds themselves living in a "nonsensical seclusion."  As the narrator notes, "We have become a town of shadows. A non-place."   I won't say how things have come down to this point but it makes sense that Brian Evenson  likens this one  in his intro to a certain story by Jerome Bixby. In this case however, there are twists that makes it even darker.  This tale is bleakness and sheer hopelessness personified.      "Pupils" is outstanding, and in its own unsettling way,  revisits the Pied Piper legend.  In Italian it's  Il Pifferaio Magico, but here it's actually The Lord of Dust, who had "always lived in Idrasca, since before the town existed or had a name." He is  a "specter of the lost future," and took up residence in the book storeroom of the local elementary school. His task, as he sees it, is to "open their eyes, to make them become like him, to share what he knows" to stave off his loneliness.  Children love fairy tales, right?  The Lord of Dust decides that he will write his own ("fairy tales, as everyone knows, are terrible"), and after a year he finishes his book, invites the children to come to him "one by one" at some point in their day, and begins reading "to open their eyes."   Let the horrors commence.  Good god. This is probably the most pessimistic story in this book, but in its own way the bottom line is beyond realistic, which is pretty damn scary.    Finally, the spectacular titular story "A Different Darkness" is an utter mind bender, beginning with a visit to an empty apartment by the police.  At first it was a child who went missing, but police are now wondering where her missing parents have gone.  What they do find is an apartment filled with bizarre paintings that were "abstract, focused on a single subject,"  representing "an obsession, a disease, the product of a mind derailed from the tracks of normality."  

It seems that in these stories  Musolino has discovered a number of cracks hidden in the mundane world into which, often without notice, his characters fall, slowly making their way into a completely different and certainly unexpected darker reality if not directly into the abyss.    I will be honest and say that there were a couple of stories that were just too dark or gross for my taste that I didn't care for,  but it is most certainly a book that no reader of  intelligent horror fiction or weird tales should miss.  

 Brian Evenson hits the nail on the head about this book, when he says in his introduction that 

"Musolino is expert at making us feel the void yawning below us, waiting to swallow both us and his characters up ..."

which is a perfect description that encompasses each and every story in this volume from page one on.

Very highly recommended.  

The Black Maybe: Liminal Stories, by Attila Veres

 

9781954321694

Valancourt Books, 2022

translated by Luca Karafiáth

301 pp

hardcover

Yikes! I haven't posted anything here since July, but summer is the time of the Booker Prize longlist and that's kept me busy.  This year's candidates for the prize have been amazing so far, and two of them would have been right at home as posts here at OWF:  Percival Everett's The Trees brings back the dead in a quest for justice, while Shehan Karunatilaka offers a story that begins and then spends a lot of time in the afterlife in his The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.  Both were fantastic reads, my two favorites on the shortlist.    But on with this show, with The Black Maybe by Hungarian author Attila Veres, whose name you may recognize if you've read the first volume of Valancourt's World Book of Horror which includes his story "The Time Remaining."  

The ten stories that are found in The Black Maybe are truly some of the weirdest and darkest tales I've had the pleasure to encounter in a long while.  Like the very best weird tales, these start in a very recognizable world before ever so slowly making that turn that lets the reader know that we're definitely not in Kansas anymore,  as the characters who populate these stories have, consciously or unconsciously, crossed some sort of threshold taking them into the realm of nightmares.     In this case, of course, Veres' stories take place in contemporary Hungary, in both rural and urban areas, touching on very human anxieties and fears that exist no matter where his characters live.  In his introduction to this volume, Steve Rasnic Tem notes that the urban stories "feature protagonists whose obsessions intensify until a nightmarish climax is reached," and often contain a "background of rock or heavy metal."  The rural tales, he says, are "inspired by the realities of farming and keeping and slaughtering livestock," and they also create "weird cosmologies which at times resemble folk horror, but which push far beyond."   Whatever the location, I think the idea of "push[ing] far beyond" can be applied to each and every story in this book, all of which are beyond dark, fresh, original, and utterly squirmworthy.  In short, my kind of read. 

I won't be going into much story detail here, but the weirdness begins immediately in the first entry "To Bite a Dog,"  a great indicator of the strangeness yet to come in this collection.   And as much as I loved each and every story here, I couldn't help but find a few beyond-disturbing standouts that quickly became favorites.   The first of these is  "Fogtown."  While writing a book about the "underground music scene"  in his city which "would have been about the growing-up of a generation," Balázs Peterfy  becomes obsessed with an elusive band called Fogtown.  He'd heard stories about Fogtown but rarely from anyone who was actually there when they played, and he soon became "driven" to discover if the group really existed, hearing stories about people who went to one of their concerts who "were not the same afterwards."    Intending to add Peterfy's unfinished work as part of their own book, The Unpublished Books of Hungary, one of its two authors later regrets taking it on, since it started her partner "down a path that led to his end."  Thoroughly eerie and related via various forms of text, this is a good one. Seriously good.  Another particular favorite is "In the Snow, Sleeping,"  an utterly surreal (a word I don't bandy about needlessly) story that involves a couple taking a short vacation at a wellness spa. For Luca, it starts when she discovers an engagement ring in the pockets of her boyfriend Robi's jeans, which makes her a bit uneasy, but for some reason she can't put her finger on she is anxious and afraid about the vacation itself.  All I will say is that they hadn't quite arrived at the spa when things start to turn weird, but once they get there, the weirdness only escalates.  She wants to go home, but the boyfriend refuses to budge, until ...  Yet another story that kept me awake at night is "The Amber Complex."  This one is set in a town in Eastern Hungary, where "most people who are born here move away ..." and "miracles rarely happen."  Gabor is one of those people living there, and has always known that "the town is a trap," and that there was no escape. He tried to make a life elsewhere but ended up coming back, and by the time he was thirty had decided that he would become an alcoholic.  After witnessing a murder, he knows his time is limited when the murderer suggests they go to a pub on the outskirts of town, but a car pulls up in the nick of time, knocking the killer to the ground.  Gabor is invited along with the car's occupants to Zanó's wine cellar, where he and the others are to partake of a special tasting of something called a "complex." There are seven of these, ordered by color,  but they must be tasted in a particular order.  The final one to be poured is the Amber complex, but very few people have ever gone that far. There are very good reasons why this is so, but I will say no more.  

The book as a whole takes the reader on an unnerving, disturbing, and more often than not, a hallucinatory journey into terrifying spaces that exist somewhere on the outskirts of the mundane. These stories are experienced rather than just read, and a writer who can make that happen is definitely one to watch.   I loved The Black Maybe; it rises miles above the norm into its own space of brilliance.  It is definitely a no-miss for readers of the strange or the weird, and dark enough to satisfy any readers of horror fiction.  

  

Very, very highly recommended, and my appreciation also goes to Valancourt for making The Black Maybe available in English.  

The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 2 (eds.) James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle

 

9781954321069

Valancourt, 2022

336 pp

hardcover, #19

(read in April)

There is a review of this book by Sean Guynes in the  March 2022 issue of World Literature Today  where he writes that this 

"... anticipated second volume is the after-party everyone wanted and more ..." 

 I'm including myself in that "everyone" because I hadn't even finished Volume One before hoping that Valancourt would do a second book, just like now I'm hoping that they will do a third. If that's not a recommendation, well, I don't know what is.  

 

 

When the stories are as good as they are here, it's just plain difficult to single out a favorite, or even a group of favorites, but I'll try.  Bora Chung's story "The Mask," a dark tale of obsession, addiction and the undoing of a man and his family and translated by Anton Hur (who also translated her fantastic  Cursed Bunny) is in my top two, along with "The War" written by Wochiech Gunia from Poland.  "The Mask" begins "with a noise" that seems to be coming from the ceiling of a couple's apartment, but above them is only the roof.  On inspection though, the roof's steel door is not only locked but has a chain wrapped around its handles.  The husband eventually gets up there with help from a boy he thinks has been sent by maintenance,  and just before going back down sees a woman just standing there five stories up.  She comes to him, and just as he reaches out his hand to her, she's no longer there.  The roof noises stop but the wife later notices a dark stain that "had spread widely" on the wall in the master bedroom, accompanied by another noise that eventually she just tunes out.  Her husband, who works nights and sleeps days, also encounters the stain -- and his life and that of his family will never be the same.   "The War," translated by Anthony Scicsione is truly a masterpiece and I do not use that word lightly.  This one I won't discuss here because it's one that absolutely needs to be experienced, but after reading in the editors'  introduction to this tale that two of the author's "major literary influences" were Kafka and Ligotti, let's just say I was not at all surprised.   I read this one twice, and it doesn't get any easier the second time.  Another one that particularly stood out for me was Yasumi Tsuhara's "The Old Wound and the Sun," translated by Toshiya Kamei, which has more than just a touch of the surreal about it, concerning "a couple who died at the same time."  A woman falls hard for a "twenty-something kid" from Ishigakijima, and rents a vacation house on the island where the two meet on weekends.  Once things start rolling in the relationship, she finds not only that he's not all she thought he would be but also that he is haunted by the past.  It seems he'd been in a fight at some point, leaving him with an old wound "from his navel across his abdomen to his side under his ribs."  One night she wakes up to discover that even though there are no lights on, the room is "dimly lit;" on further discovery she realizes that the light is coming from his now-open wound.  What follows is, as the narrator of this tale reveals,  "bizarre, otherworldly and disturbing."  The less said the better on this one.   James D. Jenkins himself translated "Lucky Night," by Gary Victor from Haiti,  which comes from a collection called Treize nouvelles vaudou  (Thirteen Voodoo Tales, 2007), which is at this moment on a shelf in my house just waiting to be read.  I can guarantee it won't be a long wait after having read this story.   "Lucky Night" is the story of Kerou,  who has climbed "the ladder from the lowly post of assistant mayor in a remote Haitian village," making his way into the Chamber of Deputies and now running for a seat in the senate.  Throughout his political career, he has relied on the help of a certain Ti Pat, a "sorcerer" who tells him now that there is only one way to get the attention of "the forces" that would help him get there "without a fight."   He must look for "a beggar in the vicinity of a cemetery on the night of a dark moon," and from there he has to "sleep with the beggar" or else his career is over.  That is not an option for our senate hopeful who knows that once in office, his votes traded for cash would allow him and his family to "be free from want in this fucking country that he couldn't care less about." 

  In their introduction, the authors note that 

"American horror writers have been using Haitian themes in their work for decades, from curses to voodoo dolls to zombies.   But what would a voodoo-themed story look like if written by a Haitian author?"

Well, hats off to Gary Victor for letting us see firsthand.    Rounding out my top five is  writer Brazilian author Roberto Causo's "Train of Consequences"  another story translated by James D. Jenkins.  Sergio Lopes is journeying by train on the proverbial dark and stormy night, when he notices something weird.  Although he thought he was in the last car, looking out the window he sees another behind him, and makes his way there to check it out.  In a seat on the back wall he sees a man "who looked like a high-contrast drawing done in black and red" and that the car is filled with people smoking, "producing strongly scented crimson clouds.  That's not the strangest thing -- it seems that the man and the passengers in that car know not only who he is, but also that he'd been part of a crackdown on guerillas in Araguaia during the period of Brazil's military dictatorship that he'd been involved in torture and "summary executions" and more.  As he's told, they know "everything" about him, including the fact that Lopes is plagued by memories that he "can't get rid of."  Expecting that "someone connected with his victims" would catch up with him some day, he's sure that blackmail looms, but he's assured that it's not blackmail but rather "more like a business deal" he's being offered -- a Faustian sort of exchange that will allow him to forget.   The question is, what is his end of the deal to be?  As the editors state, this is a story that is "as timely as ever," given Brazil's political situation.  

 The remainder of stories included here are also very well done, and my vote for most disturbing goes to two stories which were dark, gut-stabbing ohmygod tales. Don't get me wrong: the writing was great, but these two tales went well beyond my horror-reading comfort zone. These two, "The Bell" by Steinar Bragi from Iceland and  "The Nature of Love" by Luciano Lamberti from Argentina,  were the reading equivalent of putting my hands over my eyes during a truly discomforting horror film scene.  These  you can read without any hint from me -- first, you wouldn't believe me anyway, and second, I don't think I have the stomach to go back and reread either one.  

With something for every horror reader, because after all, mileage does vary,  Volume 2 showcases the work of twenty-one authors from twenty countries (Brazil is represented twice) which, according to the Editors' Foreword, were originally published in sixteen different languages.   And M.S. Corley's illustrations are gorgeous, capturing in drawings some of the horrors found in this book.   As much as I loved reading this anthology and its predecessor, in the bigger picture, the best thing  is that these two volumes of horror fiction in translation even exist.  I am a huge, huge  advocate of works in translation, especially in the horror/weird genres which, unlike the books that make their way each year onto longlists for awards honoring translated literary fiction,  seem to be extremely underrepresented.  I would like to think things are slowly changing in this arena:  last year I was over the moon happy when Tartarus published Nicola Lombardi's excellent The Gypsy Spiders and Other Tales, then came Bora Chung's positively mind-blowing Cursed Bunny published by Honford Star, which ended up on not only the longlist for this year's International Booker Prize, but the shortlist as well.   So once again my grateful thanks to Valancourt for both volumes of World Horror Stories.  Anyone who has read Volume 1 will definitely want to make this after-party; as I said on my initial reaction at goodreads, Valancourt has once again knocked it out of the park.   

 Very highly recommended -- and I will be among the first to order Volume 3. Hint hint. 

ps/ Valancourt's international works can be found at their website here.  

Cursed Bunny, by Bora Chung

 

9781916277182

Honford Star, 2021

translated by Anton Hur

247 pp

paperback

I will just get this out of the way up front: I loved this book from the first story on down through the last, at which point I was so sorry that it was over.    I hadn't read any reviews of Cursed Bunny before reading it, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I bought the book last year.  Just a short while ago the nominees for the Booker International longlist were announced, and when I saw Cursed Bunny on that list, I grabbed it off my shelf, read it and fell in love.  It is the kind of book that once read stays with you for the longest time.    And let me say this up front as well -- Anton Hur did an incredible job translating Chung's work.  Not that I read Korean,  but I do know a great translation when I see one.  

The cover blurb reveals that the author 

"uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society,"

which is true, but these stories also take a look at the close connection between power, abuse and subjugation in many forms.  

Cursed Bunny, as also noted on the blurb, moves through and incorporates a range of different genres, "blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science fiction."  There is also more than a touch of dark humor at work here as well.   After a while, it starts to dawn on you that the characters in all of these stories seem to accept the strangeness or the absurdities of events happening in their respective, various worlds as just part of ordinary life, a factor that makes each and every story work and work well.   For example, in the first story, "The Head," there seems to be nothing at all remarkable about "a thing that looked vaguely like a head" speaking to a woman from inside of her toilet bowl, responding to her questions, with the rest of her family telling her to "just leave it alone" since "it's not like it's laying eggs or anything."   Then there's "The Embodiment," in which a young woman discovers she's six weeks pregnant from taking birth control pills longer than the doctor had prescribed.  One major theme of this story jumps right out at you from the start, when the doctor ask her about the baby's father and learns there is no one, and then tells her that she'd better "hurry up and find a man" who's willing to step into the role, or else the consequences will be dire.    In  "Cursed Bunny," a grandfather relates "the same story he's already told me time and time again" about his friend who had  "lost everything" after another brewery owner started a vicious "slander  campaign"  to eliminate his competition.  Grandfather was incensed, saying that 

"... for the alleged crimes of not being connected to powerful people, for not having the capital to make such connections, an entire family was smashed to pieces and its remains scattered to the winds... How can such things be allowed?"

But Grandfather has a plan to get even, and it's a good one, putting to good use his skill in the family's "line of work: the creation of cursed fetishes."   These first three stories not only set the tone for what's about to come next, but also impart to the reader a very physical sense of uneasiness and downright unstoppable dread that lingers through the last page.  

I won't go through each and every story because (as I'm so fond of saying), Cursed Bunny  is a book that really needs to be experienced firsthand and to give too much away would be a crime.  To mention just a few of my favorites,  "Snare" is an incredibly clever  take on the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs, moving well past the obvious theme of greed into family trauma. "Scars" has an almost  mythological feel to it, mingled with pure horror.  It starts with a young boy being  "dragged" into a dark  mountain cave  by men he didn't know while out "roaming the fields" one day and chained up.  He's not always alone --  once a month he is visited by "It," which "pierced his bones, and sucked at his marrow."  Years later, the boy manages to escape but because of the scars on his body, is treated like the monster he's fled from.   The worst though is yet to come, when he discovers the truth about why he was left there in the first place.   "Reunion," is one of the saddest, most poignant stories in this book,  and starts out by telling us that it is a "love story for you."  A young woman in Poland doing academic research meets a stranger one day in a plaza who tells her in his own language that he has been waiting for her and that he knew she would come.  It turns out they share something in common. Years later, she returns and meets him again, this time going with him to his apartment where he asks her to do him a certain favor before telling her about his life.  It is a beautiful story, the perfect ending for this book; I would also argue that it puts what came before into much clearer perspective.  As the woman realizes after listening to him,

 "once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it." 

Without saying any more about it, "Reunion" is one of the best modern-day ghost stories I've ever read, for a number of reasons.  

Cursed Bunny is definitely not for the squeamish, and won't be for everyone since there is plenty of horror and plenty of trauma to be experienced here, but  I have to say that while I found myself squirming any number of times, neither the violence nor the horror in this book can be labeled as gratuitous in any fashion.  This is an example of quality work that doesn't let up, and sometimes some of the worst anxieties or experiences that people must endure lend themselves to using horror/dark fiction as the perfect vehicles for relating them to others.   In writing her stories this way,  the author also forces the reader sit up and take notice of what's going on around them.  As noted in an article in The Korean Times, the "inexplicably frightening and bizarre elements" she uses "remind the audience of the very real horror and cruelty that exists in the world."  These stories are enigmatic and most certainly require concentration from the reader, but I'm used to that element being part and parcel of reading weird fiction so there was no problem there.  Cursed Bunny is also beautifully and intelligently written, its pull so intense that I didn't ever want to put it down.   

Highly recommended times infinity -- it's insanely good

************************

If you would like a very brief rundown on all of the stories in Cursed Bunny, you can find them here in translator  Anton Hur's "cover letter" to PEN/Heim which contains  the "outline and significance" for this book; or you can skip it until after you're read Cursed Bunny, which is what I did. 

Whisper, by Chang Yu-Ko

 

9781916277168

Honford Star, 2021

originally published 2018

translated by Roddy Flagg

287 pp

paperback

  I ran across Whisper while browsing through World Literature Today, one of my go-to spots for discovering translated books. Reading through the review by Sean Guynes (where that link will take you), the words  "literary horror fiction," "spooky stuff" and "ghost" were what caught my eye,  and I read no further than the second paragraph because I just knew I had to have this book and I didn't want to know what happened.  

When I started reading it, I couldn't stop, finally finishing at two in the morning but remaining completely wired from what I'd just experienced.  Sleep -- not happening. 

 

Taxi driver Wu Shih-sheng and his wife Kuo Hsiang-ying used to be happy, but after Wu was laid off from his job working for an electronics importer, their lives started taking a downward path.  To make matters worse, when he'd first started the taxi driving, he'd run over someone and the victim's family took him to court where as compensation he was ordered to pay over four million dollars.  Between that and the legal fees, they had to sell their apartment; although Hsiang-ying works more than one job, their reduced circumstances had landed them in a cockroach-infested iron shack;  their daughter left home and they haven't seen her since.   And now, as the novel opens, it seems their situation just might be getting even worse: after getting yelled at by her boss at work one day,  Hsiang-ying ran into a woman in the food court causing the customer's  "bubbling tofu hotpot" to fly, scalding the woman and disfiguring her face.   Hsiang-yang blacked out and was sent to the hospital by her boss, where she could think only about the compensation the other woman's family would demand and the loss of her job.  But as things turn out, these would be the least of her problems. Back home again,  Hsiang-ying hears "an ear-splitting burst of static" just before she hears someone saying something about "a great forest of bamboo" and the name Minako.  She then experiences something completely bizarre before a fall from a window sends her back to the hospital.  

Meanwhile,  Shih-sheng decides to take a break and parks his taxi in a local cabbies' spot.  Next to his car he notices a cab that has been "clearly long closed," and decides to take a look inside.  He discovers a cassette recorder in the glove box and presses play, hearing a man's voice "interrupted by regular crackling sounds" as well as the word Minako.  When he's called to the hospital after Hsiang-ying's fall, she begs him for help -- she's sure that Minako is going to kill her and their daughter.  Surprised at hearing that name, he brushes her off, saying she's mad,  but hearing her say the name Minako takes him by surprise.   Is there some kind of coincidence at work? Later at home as he begins to think about his wife, he begins to realize that "something wasn't right," bringing his thoughts back to the abandoned cab, the cassette tape and Minako.    By now, Hsiang-ying has been moved to the psychiatric ward where her conviction that she's going to be killed grows stronger, to the point where she's "screaming hysterically" and the doctors have to put her in restraints and  sedate her.  But there is no safety for Hsiang-ying here, and her roommate watches in sheer panic as Hsiang-ying fights whatever horrors are assailing her.    

Shih-sheng comes to believe that had he only listened to his wife then things would have been different, so he decides to get to the bottom of things.  Independently, so too does a social worker, Jui-yi who is working with Hsiang-ying's by now terrorized roommate who while in a deep state of shock begins calling out strange words, talking  about ghosts, and making references to a place named Mount Jade.   Indeed, it seems that all roads lead to this place, as by now Shih-sheng has also made a connection to Mount Jade and is determined to destroy the evil that he is sure has its origins there despite a warning to stay away since "the mountain is the gateway of the ghosts."  

Someone reading this post might wonder about how much I've potentially given away here, but don't worry -- we're only up to page 83 by this time and there is much, more that has already happened and which will happen before all is said and done.  The author has created a  truly eerie ghost story that weaves together Taiwanese legend and folklore, the severity of the problems faced by Taiwan's indigenous people, the troubled era of the Japanese occupation, and history that goes back to 1930s Manchuria and the Chinese mainland.   Taken together, all of these elements reveal how, as the dustjacket blurb so accurately states, "a past can still kill."   It also shows how the spirit world is alive,  surviving beneath the trappings of the physical world and that  it is definitely not a force to be messed with, and there is no doubt that he has captured the anxieties of a modern society.  There is much to be said about the author's skill here in using horror and the supernatural to reflect on the modern world -- this is no average ghost story but rather a strong departure into the literary zone. 

 I will say that I wasn't wild about the subplot involving Hsiang-ying's sister and her revenge on her cheating husband.  While it did make for some truly creepy horror moments and shows how natural it might be for people to turn to the occult for assistance, it could have actually been left out and I wouldn't have minded, because for me it was just too much as well as a major distraction in the reading flow and I became impatient to get back to the main story. And quite honestly, I didn't care.     I also thought the ending a bit off, but I won't go into any detail here to explain why -- it should be apparent to anyone who reads this novel.    However, I loved and was completely absorbed in the ghost story itself, as well as in how the past not only reverberates in but also shapes the present in so many unseen ways.  What a mind this author must have, and I will certainly look forward to reading anything more he writes in the future.  My manythanks to the translator, Roddy Flagg, and to Honford Star for making this work available to English-speaking readers.  

recommended, for sure.  

arachnophobes beware (part 3): The Gypsy Spiders and Other Tales of Italian Horror, by Nicola Lombardi

 

9781912586325

Tartarus Press, 2021

240 pp

translated by J. Weintraub

hardcover

Last year I read the first volume of The Valancourt Book of World Horror, and in their introduction the editors posed the following question to their readers:

"What if there were a whole world of great horror fiction out there you didn't know anything about, written by authors in distant lands and in foreign languages, outstanding horror stories you had no access to, written in languages you couldn't read..."?

It's a very good question; as those editors also stated, "... there's a much larger body of world horror fiction out there than any of us would suspect."    At the end of my post about that book, I noted that it is a true pity that "so much great writing is out there that remains unavailable to an English-language readership."   Valancourt, of course, has a second volume of world horror on the horizon, but I'm beyond delighted that  Tartarus has also opened the window onto that "whole great world of great horror fiction" with its publication this year of Nicola Lombardi's The Gypsy Spiders and Other Italian Horrors.  To Tartarus and to translator J. Weintraub, a huge round of applause for making this book happen.   

As Weintraub notes in the introduction to this volume, Lombardi grew up in an area of Italy the author once described in an interview as "a stewpot boiling over with folkloristic legend and dark tales of crime, filling the imagination with nightmares. "  It was also a place where "so very many ghosts" wandered "between fogs and immense desolate spaces, between woods and abandoned farmhouses." A fan of writers such as Lovecraft, Poe, Blackwood,  Bradbury, Fritz Leiber and Dino Buzzati (one of my favorite Italian authors) in his younger days, influenced as well by the stories told to him by his grandparents," Lombardi started publishing his own work in the late 80s.  

 In 2013 The Gypsy Spiders won "one of Italy's most prestigious awards for horror fiction," the Premio Polidori.  Originally published in 2010, this story (which is actually novel length) begins in  late summer of 1943, the year that an armistice with the Allies had been declared by the Italian government, a move which turned their former German allies into their enemy.  Michele, an Italian soldier now in a hospital in Albania after being wounded, decides it's time to leave the front and go home to his family.   On his return he discovers that his younger brother Marco has completely vanished, his family left suffering from the loss.  As we're told,

"He had lived next to death for months, side-by-side with it, and now that he had managed to escape and find shelter in, for him, the safest and most beloved place on earth, he realised that the horror had only preceded him there, to welcome him home."

But what he hasn't realized is that the true horror is only beginning.  

 In "Alina's Ring,"  a wounded soldier wakes up to discover himself in a farmhouse, being taken care of by a young woman named Alina.  He notices that "there was something not quite right" in her eyes; and that she "was determined to unburden herself of the thoughts that were cascading through her mind."  As they talk, he's looking for a "way out" -- and about this story I will say no more.   "Sand Castles" finds an elderly man returning to his beloved Villa Dora which he'd been away from since 1945, at age nine.    As Italy was "being rebuilt," his family took him to Bologna, where he'd rebuilt his own life right on through to retirement.  Now in his mind, it is time to go back to the Villa Dora, to give "destiny the chance to complete the plan designed for him."  When he finally arrives, he hears his old childhood pals "calling out his name..."   Weintraub notes that in these stories, it's "the actuality of the war and its aftermath that lead to madness, obsession, and significant 'collateral damage'," and in these three stories, all of  these elements scream loudly from the page.  

Six incredibly dark stories remain in this volume, nearly all of which are gut-level disturbing and much darker than I normally tend to go in the realm horror fiction, but god help me nothing short of a bomb blast in my living room would have made me put the book down while reading them.    I'll mention two here.  First, "Professor Aligi's Puppets," in which a young boy's fascination with puppet theatre takes a turn into nightmare territory, and "Striges," my favorite story in the book, which thoroughly chilled me to my bones.  In that one, a man looks  back in time to recall something he'd witnessed in his childhood that left a "kind of knotting" in his stomach (a similar reaction to my own with each step of this story, by the way) when he thought about his friend Francesco,  the "prisoner of a situation so horrible its true nature could hardly be fully understood."  As kids, Francesco and his friends were fascinated with spiritualism, flying saucers, divination and "on and on," fueling their imaginations with comic books, television, horror novels,  movies etc.  The trouble begins when Francesco reveals to his buddies that his mom is writing a "study on witches," and would be going on a trip throughout Europe.  As the narrator recalls, the boys got a bit of a charge over that, knowing that "whatever she might bring home would launch us further off the face of the earth," before offering his observations in hindsight that "she would be bringing us the burial, once and for all, of our childhood, and much worse." 

These are stories which demand more than just a quick read through, and which also need to be pondered on many levels.  While they are extremely disturbing, these stories reveal a major depth of insight into human nature on the author's part, as through his writing he makes very clear that, as noted in the introduction,  the source of evil can often be seen to stem from the "individual and collective hearts of men and women."  He doesn't have to resort to old, well-worn and tired tropes for cheap thrills here that quite honestly turn me off --  Lombardi offers his readers an eerie but sophisticated blending of the "uncanny and otherworldly" that slowly seeps not only into the lives of his characters, but under the skin of his readers at the same time. 

Absolutely brilliant and very, very highly recommended.  And Tartarus people: please consider more translated works in the future ... they would be very much appreciated.