Introspective Horror, Par Excellence. Reviewing Michael Wehunt's "The Inconsolables"

It is a rare talent for an author to be able to perfectly balance the weird elements in their writing with the mundane; to scatter into what is deceivingly like our lives that which decisively is unlike it, and to do so just to the right degree. This is a delicate craft, and it's one Michael Wehunt masters in his latest short story collection The Inconsolables.

The title already implies it: All Wehunt's characters are in a state of uneasiness, they are looking for comfort and for solace, whether by reviving childhood interests after a separation, by adopting a stray dog after the death of a child, in hypochondriasis, or whether it's about a married couple who simultaneously reaches the midlife crisis, or a woman, lead by a crooked and scary cupid, confronting in a room all the men who have sexually assaulted her throughout her life, or the last man on Earth who will die, because he was born thirty-seven days before the dealine for immortality in a new world where it has been invented. They all seek to alleviate their pain. They carry sorrow with them, they are haunted, relatable in their confrontation with the weird and with their own monsters and demons. Their horror is highly introspective.

Two details jump forward in Wehunt's writing; firstly that he's not afraid to get meta. So much so that in A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping Into a Dark Room he imagines himself writing the very story the reader is reading, how Borgesian! His main character in Vampire Fiction seeks comfort in researching horror and vampire stories after his wife leaves him, to fill the hole she has left, to the point where fiction and reality start to merge, and the mythic blood sucker gradually materializes.

His second tendency is the abundant use of metaphors. It is a special kind of pleasure to read an author who is good at encrypting, giving you images to be interpreted and deciphered and reading Wehunt definitely gives that special kind of pleasure. Take, for example The Tired Sounds, A Wake, which is about a couple going through a rough patch bumping into mimes in various situations. These encounters are creepy and surreal, even ridiculous to a degree, and turn into something almost normal, and when you think about it, you'll remember that more than anything mimes stand for silence, thus echoing (or not) the couple's own inability to communicate with each other, their own silence.

Did I already mention that they're creepy too?

There's more to Wehunt's horror though. The Pine Arch Collection offers found footage and chills through emails; The Teeth of America deals with the Qanon movement and the equation of beliefs and hard facts; It Takes Slow Sips has a stalker getting a taste of his own medicine, and finally the almost science fictional An Ending (Ascent) merges a dystopian vision with personal pain.

The Inconsolables was so far the best single author collection I've read this year and Michael Wehunt is an author I'll keep an eye on in the future. Although I've read this book through my kindle unlimited membership, I absolutely want to have a physical copy which I'll immediately order now. Highly, highly recommended.