Thrills, chills, and otherworldly spectacles: a rare anthology that delivers on its superlatives—and then some.
Fifteen stories—more from the A-list, several from the B—get down and dirty with the new McSweeney’s genre compilation.
Last year’s McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales proved that you can actually gather a group of fine writers (or Michael Chabon and the cool folks at McSweeney’s can) and get them to turn in a collection of ghost stories, mysteries, and thrillers without the least dash of condescension. This second volume proves no different, with a superb roster of talent and some creepy, inky illustrations from “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola, to boot. The fun begins with a solid entry from Margaret Atwood, “Lusus Naturae,” about a young girl, shockingly transformed into a literal freak of nature, who hides in the woods and frightens the local children before the inevitable approach of villagers with torches. Roddy Doyle proves adept in the genre with “The Child,” about a man haunted by a spectral young boy. Quickly deciding that this must be an unknown offspring of his, he cycles through his memory of lovers, but the boy’s preternatural pull can’t be denied, a well of dark retribution soon to be unleashed. Stephen King’s “Lisey and the Madman,” about the assassination of a famous author, is entertaining if occasionally too familiar, featuring many of King’s usual tropes (though its air of autobiographical verisimilitude gives an unusual chill to some of the lines). One of the more impressive entries is from pulper Poppy Z. Brite, whose “The Devil of Delray Street” is a well-nuanced and unsentimental piece about a young New Orleans dweller’s haunting by a ghost or devil. Brite’s matter-of-fact approach to some honestly terrifying scenes makes them all the more powerful. Strong entries from China Miéville, David Mitchell, and Charles D’Ambrosio (plus a good but less impressive one from Joyce Carol Oates) round out a first-rate collection.
Thrills, chills, and otherworldly spectacles: a rare anthology that delivers on its superlatives—and then some.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-7874-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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