A terrific, must-have collection.
Vast two-volume anthology of horror and supernatural fiction, precisely divided along lines drawn by the modern American experience.
Editor Straub’s first volume gathers tales that express the sense of “instability” that developed from the erosion of the 18th-century faith in reason and essential human goodness, resulting in an implicit consensus of doubt and fear. Standard classic stories from such masters as Poe, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James and Edith Wharton are inevitably and rightfully displayed. (Wharton’s “Afterward” is magnificent.) But many readers will be most intrigued by several truly impressive sleepers. Among the best of these are Harriet Spofford’s deliciously ironic “The Moonstone Mass”; Sarah Orne Jewett’s understated, dialogue-driven “In Dark New England Days”; Stephen Vincent Benét’s stunning re-creation of the traditional folktale “The King of the Cats”; and Henry S. Whitehead’s improbably persuasive Haitian voodoo tale, “Passing of a God.” Volume Two’s contents reflect confused and perturbed reactions to radical changes in people’s daily lives and the larger world around them during periods of instability beginning around the time of World War II and extending into the dizzying technological changes of the past quarter-century. A handful of dated or overwrought clunkers (from Tennessee Williams, Anthony Boucher, Stephen King, et al.) aside, this is a valuable selection of excellent, often deeply disturbing stories. The choicest include “Smoke Ghost,” Fritz Leiber’s brilliant paranoid’s-eye view of industrialism run amok; Shirley Jackson’s subtle, moving “The Daemon Lover”; Davis Grubb’s neatly twisted piece of American Gothic, “Where the Woodbine Twineth”; Jeff VanderMeer’s nightmarish Korean War story, “The General Who Was Dead”; “Stone Animals,” Kelly Link’s sublime creation of an eerie alternative reality; and “Family,” one of Joyce Carol Oates’ best pieces ever.
A terrific, must-have collection.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59853-047-6
Page Count: 750
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2009
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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