So, I definitely need to start wrapping up everything 2024 and to look into the future, and that involves writing the last short reviews of the year, focusing on the End of the Year list, and plan new challenges for 20. Hope you enjoy them as always, despite the abominable weather.
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Screenwriter Misha is flabbergasted when his Hollywood bosses ask him to kill off his gay characters. Not being quite out of the closet yet and not quite in peace with his own past, it is anything but clear whether he will fight for them or bury them...
An action-packed social horror, the cover description says, and yes, this is very much an action novel. Maybe it was my bad, but I didn't find much horror here. I like the persona Chuck Tingle, and I know he's been writing supernatural erotica before, but my first try at a horror novel by him wasn't very exhilarating, to be honest.
Too bad really, I love the premise, but the writing is a little too straight-up for me, I like it a tad more literary and with style, and the message really had no subtlety at all, it was all too spoon-fed. Maybe I should try something else by the author? I see people really liked Camp Damascus, so that might be a future read.
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez
I loved reading all stories, but of course I have my highlights; Different Colors Made of Tears, in which the employees of a vintage clothing store discover that clothes donated by a certain gentleman make the wearer feel exactly how his late wife, to whom the clothes belonged, felt before she died. My sister works in a store which rents historical costumes to filmmakers, and I absolutely adore visiting her at her workplace, as the sheer volume of clothes everywhere just gives an incredibly unique vibe, not comparable to anything, and to know that they have been worn by people, sometimes by people who are dead now... That's a feeling Enriquez captures perfectly in this story, the descriptions of the clothes and jewels were as spectacular as the dresses themselves must have been.
Another favorite is A Local Artist for the suckers of Lovecraftian horror, art horror and Thomas Ligotti - I'm not saying more.
This is definitely one of the best horror collections published this year and a big relief for me personally, as I wasn't a big fan of the author's last novel, Our Share of Night. Enriquez proved that she still delivers when it comes to short stories.
The Darkest Night: 22 Winter Horror Stories edited by Lindy Ryan
A decent horror anthology revolving around the darkest season of the
year; a lot of snow, festive time, Christmas celebrations, snowed in
remote cabins, etc.
My highlights:
Cold as Ice by
Tim Waggoner, in which a man finally finds the roots of his unsuccessful
dating life in the weird, horned creatures following his car during a
snow storm.
Mr. Butler by Clay McLeod Chapman – gut punch
psychological horror. An orphaned child, mistreatment through step
father and Mr. Butler to make it all good again.
In Nice
Nat Cassidy tells us what happens when children are told to be nice so
they'll get stuff from Santa, but what exactly is “nice”? Horrid things
happen when the term is up for interpretation.
Eggnog by
Kristi DeMeester is the absolute winner of this anthology! I'm not a big
fan of writings about the motherhood and nuclear family experience but
the situation DeMeester sets up in this short story about a company
Christmas party and one of those hated “work wives” has managed to get
under even my skin. %100 satisfaction guaranteed.
The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczuk
It is the year 1913 and Polish engineering student and tuberculosis patient Mieczysław arrives at the health resort Wilhelm
Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen. While the inhabitants of the guest house pass their time with long and boring and manly conversations on politics, war and women and enjoy the house drink "Schwärmerei", disturbing things start happening; a woman has killed herself, but was she ever real? A visit to the local graveyard reveals that every November a male patient has been dying - and it's October already! Slowly slowly an oppressive, almost nightmarish atmosphere spreads amongst the patients who both try to make sense of it as well as suppress their sexual needs in various ways.
Mieczysław needs to deal with more than one mystery, first and foremost his own.
If you know Tokarczuk's writing, you pretty much know what expects you in terms of style and writing - subtle humor, the horror of real life, local characters and folkloric elements, the focal point in her latest shifts to a feminist and gender affirming message she expertly conveys in this historical setting.
Tokarczuk really knows how to gradually build up her readers' resentment, astonishment, and even anger against these gentlemen on their high horses judging over the world, so much that it can become too much at times, but she does this long enough to give relieve with a wonderful twist towards the end of the story. If you don't know what "Empusium" is, don't worry, it is a term the author coined herself and it will make sense in the end.
It is probably useful to mention that this is a work, not based on, not imitating, but directly alluding to Thomas Mann's Zauberberg in that setting and main character are very similar, basically the same, but the story goes another path.
I still feel like re-reading this book, I'm still "schwärm"ing without even having drank the drink...
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