Bizarre is the only word to describe these stories. The Bedlam Bible series, of which The Tower and White Fuzz are the first two novellas, revolve around a residential building in which the residents are trapped. Strange, monstrous things happen to them. They are often themselves the monsters. There is a sense of gothic madness in these tales.
In The Tower, we are introduced to the building, the Eighth Block Tower, where these events occur. The Tower consists of three stories: “Hypanogogia,” “The Invalids”, and “Under Green Brain”, while White Fuzz is its own standalone story.
I hesitate to tell you any more, because it really would ruin the surprise and shock of reading them yourself. Readers who enjoy speculative fiction, horror, or science fiction are likely to enjoy the otherworldliness of these stories. Collectively, they ride the border of horror and science fiction. Readers will find them reminiscent of Kafka and Kavan in that there is an internal insanity at play here. Or, if television is your thing, one might liken them to American Horror Story or particular grotesque version of Black Mirror.
The Lover is the perfect short story for the winter season (which is not Christmas related). Readers who enjoy feminist retellings of fairy-tales or spins on classics will find The Lover deeply satisfying and empowering.
I read this as an audiobook, which is something new for me. I’m not good with audio. books; they tend to put me to sleep. but I gave this a go and found it an interesting experiences. Half way through this short story, I opted to return to physical reading. I think I enjoy the narration in my own voice rather than. someone else’s.
The tale is a fantasy combining Cinderella with Beauty and the Beast, Red Riding Hood, and something about Woodsmen that I am sure exists in some Grimm or folk literature. It revolves around two sisters and a young man who simultaneously comes between them and brings them together — albeit awkwardly. Like most traditional fairytales its ending deliver a moral message.
Moreno Garcia is well suited to this genre, her mastery of the gothic form and its creeping horror elevates this simple fairytale to the level of a modern horror, gore, sex, crime and all.
If you’re looking for some light entertainment with a wicked twist, The Lover if for you.
Night Side of the River: Stories by Jeanette Winterson
I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of ghostly tales, but then, I may be biased; I’m a sucker for a good haunting. Of course, I did have my favorites.
I especially enjoyed “A Fur Coat”, “App-Arition” and “The Spare Room”, primarily because the haunted in these stories isn’t necessarily the living, but the dead haunting themselves or one another. Indeed, that was the attraction for me in Winterson’s tales: they challenged the concept of haunting, yet remained authentic to the trope of the traditional ghost story. Readers shouldn’t expect to be thrown into a new genre here; this is not speculative horror, but tried-and-true revised into immersive stories.
And, of course, the revelations in these stories are more about the living than the dead, which is ultimately the mark of a good short story.
The collection as a whole is fantastic, and follows through on this tightrope balance between showing the reader something novel and satisfying their hankering and expectations of the “ghost story” trope. In some stories, Winterson brings in an element of the contemporary through technology and devices we use today, in other cases, it is the characters’ quotidian lives in the present — marred somehow with an encounter with death and the dead — that makes it clear to the reader there is an anachronistic meeting of time here.
Winterson’s writing is superb, well-suited to the genre of the short story form. With few words wasted on exposition and an emphasis on characters’ thoughts, Winterson quickly immerses the reader in the story. It is everything a reader wants from this short form.
Halloween has passed, but Winter is upon us; put this on your list for this year’s gloomy, deathly season.
Anne Frank on Tour & Other Stories by George Thomas Clark
This independently published short story and flash fiction collection was a hoot! I laughed through most of it, and moreover, if I may be frank, it was an overdue belly of snortish laughs I emitted. This collection is the sort that encourages the emission of belly laughs. For readers who enjoy a bit of snark, a bit of cheek, and a good dose of make-believe, Anne Frank on Tour & Other Stories will deliver on its eponymous promise of a “What if… ” world.
The collection opens with a section dedicated to “What Ifs”, titled “History” and a delightful tale of vengeance, “Sally and Thomas.” The title characters are Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Readers, I will leave you to discover the thrill of this tale yourselves, but know that it remits a great deal of satisfaction. Other sections are themed, “Love”, “Need”, “Excess”, and “Final Acts”, the last of which offers a fictionalized glimpse into the lives of certain long-dead celebrities. Some stories are lengthy, though not exceeding more than a reasonable ten or twelve pages; some are flash fiction, punchy bites of a few paragraphs (or less!) Most depict landscapes and characters amply familiar to ourselves: “Speed dating”, “Must Sell”, and “Online Doctor” for example. We know the people in these pages (perhaps they are ourselves, or perhaps we hope they are not) and all their flaws and funny quirks. Most of these stories are hilarious photo-realistic caricatures.
Some tales are surprisingly sobering, offering readers a respite from their giggles; but these tales might hit closer to home than one expects. This may be Clark’s special skill as an author; the subject matter of some stories is dark and perhaps triggering for some readers (sexual assault and gaslighting), but Clark delivers these messages with both humor and a powerful, succinct punch. The result is that the reader is disarmed by their own humor and left with a fading whisper of a giggle to assuage them in the aftermath of the trauma they’ve just witnessed the characters experience. In other words, the reader may find themselves smiling, recognizing the landscape of the story — and then, BAM, Clark delivers a coup d’etat, and the reader may then feel a little guilty for having laughed only a moment before. It is a rare skill to cause a reader to twist internally and Clark does it well several times in this collection. This is not a collection of tales for the sensitive or morally righteous reader. Be prepared to say, “Oh. I didn’t think this was headed that way.”
Clark’s voice is that of a matured storyteller, and it is unique. Fans of Neil Gaiman may recognize the confidence and the trace of dry humor. Fans of Margaret Atwood will appreciate Clark’s wit. Fans of speculative fiction in the vein of Ted Chiang will notice Clark’s imaginative approaches to things that never happened.
Anxiety in the Wilderness: Short Stories by Kathleen Patrick
I’ll start with context, not about the book, but about how I came to review it. I don’t typically read independently published novels and books for a variety of reasons. But I decided to join a Facebook group, one which has an active review program organized by the administrators. On a whim and by chance, I joined in.
The process began with contacting the organizing administrator. Every reviewer wrote a short biography of themselves as readers.
Hello! My name is JoAnn. I'm located in the USA. I'm an academic in the humanities and a huge reader (it's part of the work I love to do!) I actively review books and galleys, both professionally and for my own pleasure. I review Non-Fiction and Fiction. I prefer physical print copies. For NF I read history and historical archaeology. In fiction, my preferred genres are: Historical Literary Fiction, Literary Fiction, Multicultural/OwnVoices, multigenerational fiction. I especially enjoy Asian-American, Immigration, BIPOC stories/themes. I do not gravitate toward romance, thrillers, horror, or contemporary fiction as much, but on occasional will read slipstream and mysteries."
Then I waited…
Each participating author scrolled through the post to find a reader they thought would match their novel or manuscript and commented below their name. [While some reviewers had several interested authors, I did not. In fact, Patrick had not selected me as a reader for her collection, but I saw her book offered to another reviewer and I asked the organizer if I could review it.] Reviewers could then choose three authors or books they wanted to review. The organizing administrator then connected the authors to the reviewers via direct messaging.
Anxiety in the Wilderness: Short Stories was one of the books I had the privilege to review. I am glad I got the chance to do so; Patrick’s collection of stories is well-worth the read and the price (at present USD $9.99 for the paperback, $0.99 for Kindle ebook, $15.99 for the hardback edition). [Indeed, Patrick’s collection of tales causes me to consider reading more independently published fiction.] The collection, at a total of 161 pages, comprises of seventeen stories and two poems, a few of which have been published in journals elsewhere.
The stories collected in this volume cohere under the theme suggested in its title. These are vignettes clipped from a variation of lives. Each story captures a personal moment of anxiety, ranging from the life-changing to the merely inconvenient. In these tales individuals lose some part of themselves or worry about the possibility of doing so: In Fire, a woman assesses what part of her life is measured in the material goods she owns; in Anxiety in the Wilderness what it means to watch someone lose their life forces a woman to review her value to her spouse. In other stories mothers look upon their children and weigh their love for them against their love for their husbands, wives question the strength of their husband’s love, children face the loss of a parent. Patrick’s stories reflect the small and large gravities in our lives like a mirror.
Like a reflection in a mirror, Patrick’s prose possesses clarity and crispness; in its simple lines there is an element of accuracy in her portrayals of human worry. This lends a literary quality to the collection as a whole. Patrick’s words are deliberately sparse, and in this, she allows the reader a rare privilege: To imagine themselves in the precarious positions the characters are in. It is this small inflection permitted to the reader which I find most appealing about Patrick’s work; she holds back from telling the reader what to feel and so the reader’s own fears organically merge with those of the characters in her tales. The effect is a profound empathy on the part of the reader for the individuals in these tales. Some of the stories left me with an intense poignancy, which I do not regret; this depth of feeling is a testament to the stories and Patrick’s skill as an author. The reader is left feeling “seen” and the result is one of both discomfort (from the anxiety around which the story revolves) and assurance that we are not alone in our worries. Like many of the tales here, there is a bittersweet end for the reader.
Patrick states these stories were written over many years; perhaps drawing from different periods and experiences in her own life. There is a breadth of experience in these stories, expressed in both the varied ages and genders of the characters Patrick produces, and in the range of events and concerns around which the stories revolve. Some stories focus on youthful worries: love, romance, ambition, belonging. Others hone in on more mature causes of unease: death, aging, marriage, adultery, loneliness. I appreciate this variation deeply; I think most readers will find at least a few stories that move them. This is a collection for adult readers across the age spectrum.
On a more personal level, I enjoyed “Letters Home”, “The Dancer”, and “Storm” most, though all of the stories had each their own attractions. There was not one story which I wanted to skip, nor one I disliked, none I found out of place, or which evoked less than a thoughtful pause at its end.
If you’re interested in purchasing Anxiety in the Wilderness, you can do so from Amazon. You’ll find it here.
Dr JoAnn LoSavio 