...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Finally did I collect enough short reviews to post here... I have been reading a lot of non-speculative fiction and the birthday week of the Hammett bookstore plus my regular day job finished my energy off, resulting in me not being able to read everything I wanted. But I'm still happy there were a couple of really good books amongst the ones I managed to read. So, here are the short reviews, I hope you enjoy them!

Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield

Elise and her boyfriend Tom spend their summer vacation in Minnesota to help harvesting sugar beets and boost her miserable finances. Tom's parents are loaded, but she's pretty broke. She also has an eating disorder, chronic anxieties, is a master pessimist, her confidence is on the floor, and she generally overthinks everything. And ever since she works the fields, an ugly rash started budding on her neck.

Fellow workers of her start vanishing, including her boyfriend and the charismatic Cee, which Elise has something like a crush on. But is it better to follow the siren song of the beet or to live in the hell that is Elise's head?

As exaggerated and satirical Elise's psyche may be, sadly I recognized so much of her in how I used to be some twenty years ago: the confidence thing, the messed up-ness, the constant monkey-brain, assuming everyone hates me... so I really felt for her, because it is hell being in those shoes (or, in this case, in those pink, boy-friend bought doc martens boots). I did like this book a lot and may even re-read some time.

The Reddening by Adam L.G. Nevill

After one miss (The Ritual) and one hit (Cunning Folks) book I've read by Adam Nevill, this one was going to be the make or break read and... I don't have any feelings about The Reddening one way or the other, and thus it wasn't the verdict book I thought it was going to be. Still a worthwhile read though, as Neville usually does everything right and is skilled in describing the monster, the story just didn't grab me, and I didn't really have any feelings one way or the other for the characters. 

The main characters are two women; lifestyle journalist Katrine who runs away from a stressful life and Helen, a single mother looking for her brother - both end up in a small coastal village in England where prehistoric remains of early humans and animals are found. Interestingly, the bones have also teeth marks on them and have thus been chewed on by humans, suggesting cannibalism, and even religious sacrificial. Just like in The Ritual, here too there are secluded townsfolk, which are literally red here, and they're not the only thing around that's red.

OK, so many many people absolutely loved this book, so it might be a me problem, but I thought it dragged a lot and had a pacing problem, the narrative jumps from present to past and back made me feel disjointed, but, as I said, many loved it, so maybe you will too!

Root Rot by Saskia Nislow

When their grandmother dies, a group of nine related kids, cousins, siblings, and twins, visit their grandfather's house for a longer stay. During their collective outings, lowkey unsettling things start happening, Like seeing weird stuff that looks like dead people etc, and then they start getting lost, but keep re-appearing, until we learn the source of it all ultimately.

This little book is very quiet, dry, with occasional scary scenes, until it turns downright terrifying in the last ten pages or so. The children don't really have names, they have designations, like “The Liar” “The Crybaby” “The One That Ran Away” etc. and I didn't really find any meaning in that, maybe I missed something, I still don't know why the characters are called that way and I wish that had lead somewhere, so that was disappointing. I kept waiting for something really smart turning up concerning the names but nothing came. Other than that I really liked it and found it genuinely disturbing.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

Three siblings return to their childhood home after the death of their parents. In two separate timelines we follow their past, their childhood in a haunted home that was hurting them, killing their pets, playing cruel pranks on them; as well as their present, their reluctant reunion, the funeral and their effort to make sense of what the house is about.

I adore Solomon's writing, but this venture away from their usual SF line, more into the horror/weird fiction territory was a little less brilliant for me. I'm sorry for that, as it seems also heavily marked by autobiographic strands, though it was still really good, it just didn't reach the usual Solomon bar (which is really really high).

I didn't see the resolution as to the haunting in the house coming, so the ending was clever and made sense.

Not a Speck of Light: Stories by Laird Barron

He's back from the darkness to tell us all about it in his new book, huzza!

Finally a new short story collection by Laird Barron, a collection nominated for this year's Bram Stoker Awards, so you just know it has to be good, right? RIGHT!

Divided into four, partly interconnected, thematic blocks each consisting of four short stories, Not A Speck of Light features 16 stories as dark as the title implies, but also as kooky and strange as long time readers will know. By kooky and strange I mean Edgar Allan Poe in puppet form, a recreated fake-town of Lovecraft's Innsmouth, aliens, dogs with souls, black magic, in addition to the recurring usual suspects, Jessica Mace, the Tooms' or Black Dog Security.

And yes, even in the most fantastic collections where every story is better than the other there will be personal highlights and lowlights, so here are my personal best of's; 

The Blood In My Mouth follows a very intense kind of character and his relation to the love of his life. Even though I don't feel like I have anything in common with the characters and I don't really relate to them, I like that they listen to The Cure and The Pixies, and the way they live, in a weird way, is such an "Americana" thing to write about, all of Barron's work is, but this one felt very authentic to me in that way, and I enjoy that.

Nemesis is about Larry, who sits in a room after a long walk, or in a Star Chamber (I couldn't decide which, maybe both at the same time), alternately, and tells how his father killed him, or just took out one of his eyes, but there are many versions to his story and it seems none of them are definite. 

Soul of Me is a quite touching account of various incarnations of a dog, Rex, the German Shepherd. This book generally reflects Barron's affection for dogs, and this story specifically really goes deep, emotionally.

The titular novelette, Not A Speck of Light, gives the final blow, fantastic piece of writing about love for dogs, black magic, creepy neighbors, and the darkness from which one returns. I guess I can say it is my favorite of the collection. 

So, all this and more is awaiting you, if you don't want to miss the short story collection of the year, grab it immediately. Do you want to bet it will win the Stoker-Award?