...the Soul of Wit - Latest Short Reviews

Ugh, I really didn't read a lot this past month, too often was I at the cinema watching movies, so unfortunately the short reviews are a little meager. In fact, I hope that will change since I received a TON of new reads which look amazing, so much that it will need some organizing and planing, but I'll get through, I guess. There are quite some amazing events coming up too, like the upcoming Thomas Olde Heuvelt reading at the Otherland on March 31st, and there's rumors (it's a little more than rumors, but there's no date yet) that Brian Evenson is here in Berlin and might join some discussions, and Caro wants to revive the Otherland Horror Book Club, and I have an interview in progress... Lots of things to anticipate there. Before, though, enjoy the short reviews, I did not love every book I've read recently, but they were mostly okay.

Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror ed. by Ellen Datlow

 

The name list of contributing authors is impressive. The editor iconic. The theme subtle, complex, exciting. The 21 short stories are reprints, means they have been approved already. So, Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror must be a sure-fire winner, right?

The horrors in this anthology are built upon human evil, derangement, trauma, and in order to get there, the stories make use of atmospheric narration, hold in suspense, and sometimes, unfortunately, turn to bathos and sentimentalism. As is the essence of anthologies, Fears too has its ups and downs, but covers a wide range from creepy grandfathers with outrageous secrets, toxic friendships, dysfunctional marriages, serial killers, encounters with murderers, to sharks.

To answer my initial question, the answer is unfortunately no. Despite its advantages, this anthology does never quite make it. There was maybe one short story, Priya Sharma's “My Mother's Ghosts” that impressed me, but the others didn't really do it, I'm very sorry to say.

It happens. I'm happy about every Datlow anthology and I'm already anticipating her next.

Ice by Anna Kavan

The oddness of Anna Kavan's Ice doesn’t stem so much from any incoherence in the plot than the disjointedness of the narration, leaving the reader unable to connect to neither characters nor universe, leaves them cold, as the title itself suggests. So why read such a book? Because it still does have its merits, it deftly draws a nightmarish world, being progressively covered by ice, a hostile secret government and the threat of nuclear destruction.

Suitably, I felt not very good reading this, as it kept on throwing flashes of the current situation of our world at me, I hated the interaction between the ice-maiden and the nameless lead character who keeps on bullying and mistreating her. It was a fever-dreamish, nightmarish read, but it gave me stuff to think about.
Finally, I appreciated the epilogue which explains what slip stream literature is, and although it sounds like totally my jam, this wasn’t quite. 

 

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

 

Definitely one of the oddest books I've read, Geek Love is about a circus freak (apparently geek means the same, I had no idea) family, who, in order to keep up the level of freakness, use drugs like amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes during pregnancy to purposely create disabled children that will be interesting enough for their shows: Arturo the Aquaboy who has flippers for limbs, Siamese twins Iphy and Elly, telepath Chick and our narrator the hairless albino hunchback Oly.

 

The storyline goes back and forth between Oly's life now, the way she lives near her daughter, who doesn't know who her mother is, and is outwardly "normal" but actually has a little extra limb, and the past life of the Binewskis, living the freak life across the backwaters of the U.S.

 

It was kind of a fascinating book, the lives, the ambitions, the relationships between different siblings were so normal as they were "abnormal", I like how this book plays with notions like normal, beauty or obscene, but it's an odd book which will probably never be my favorite. I still appreciate it.

 

JK-LOL by Patrick Barb 

 

Nasty comments signed with the infamous acronym JK-LOL are spreading throughout the net and the harassment has devastating and ugly consequences. But the troll behind the online personality is quickly found when things get serious and his online victims become real ones: start-up guru and family-man Ted Hideman who grabs the next chance to escape the cyber crimes department.

 

During his run, he gains an unlikely ally from the ranks of the police, but loses all face and reputation with his family, friends and work. Well, he does deserve most of it, but he's a coward who hides behind a nasty online persona and wouldn't really act on them, so what's actually behind the real-life attacks, and what's with the blackouts?
 

The book cover says: "It is a story about the ease with which technocratic capitalist society allows monsters to be made and to thrive." and wow, that's deep. What I mostly got from the book was action-packed escape scenes and a very unlikable lead character. For me, it was that ending that made this book worthwhile.

 

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

 

Young couple Charlie and Eve buy an old house in a killer deal with the intention of restoring and reselling it. One fine morning a family of five knocks on their door, the father claiming to have grown up in this house and he now wants to show it to his family. Eve, who is of a people pleasing nature and can't say no to anyone, lets them in and even joins in on the little tour the father gives his family. But as if the family's arrival activated something, really strange things start happening, and as the little daughter of the house hides in the cellar and won't come out, the family's stay turns longer and longer.

Due to a storm they end up spending the night there, and with Charlie leaving Eve alone in the house for some chores, their presence turns from an inconvenience into outright intrusive. Dangerous intrusive. An attempt to run from the house even further complicates things, and returning to it opens the gates to hell.

This book has its unsettling moments, but honestly it's not worth the hype surrounding it, as it neither explains nor reasons the nature of the happenings in the house. Is it a portal? Is it a house from hell? Something cultish going on? All of the above? I have no idea.

Stylistically too, this was a hodgepodge, a stringing together of tropes and themes and creepy pasta that were popular in the last decade; shape shifting house, sleep paralysis, the capgras syndrome and, and, and. Ultimately it generates lots of jump scares without an underlying substantial logic. It basically copies House of Leaves in form, but tries to give it a different, more mainstream purpose, and for me that didn't work really. But people are obviously crazy about it, look at the ratings, so you may want to try it out?