Macabre, bloodcurdling, funny, and shocking tales about things that go bump in the night.
A lifetime’s worth of nightmares, courtesy of 31 horrific stories from novelist (DJSturbia, 2016, etc.) and screenwriter (The Crow, 1994, etc.) Schow.
With nods to cinema, urban horror, and genre satire, Schow offers a feast for fans of his “splatterpunk” stylings, culled from 40 years of outlandish work. However ghastly they may find most stories, readers will find a surprising amount of wry humor and subtlety here and there. There are a couple of outright classics in the award-winning “Red Light,” about a girl gone missing, and “Obsequy,” a very acidic take on the walking dead. There’s a monster mash in “Last Call for the Sons of Shock” that finds Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Werewolf shooting the shit in a punk rock bar and a nod to the Creature from the Black Lagoon in “Gills.” Sure, there’s a love letter to Elvira in “Melodrama” and a full-on Jack the Ripper story in “The Incredible True Facts in the Case,” but there are plenty of surprising influences, too. “Watcher of the Skies” is a semisweet sci-fi story that’s not tonally far from Steven Spielberg. “Pamela’s Get” is a noodle-bending tale in which a character starts to question her own genesis. “Calendar Girl” offers a nightmarish account of one man’s obsession with a bewitching centerfold girl. “A Gunfight” is a spot-on homage to the Parker novels of Richard Stark/Donald E. Westlake, while “Sedalia” is a full-on Western, albeit one with “ghost dinosaurs.” “Life Partner” and “Jeff and Linda (aka “The Perfect Couple”)” offer stories of disintegrating relationships that read like Tom Waits songs. “The Five Sisters: A Fable” isn’t far from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman stories, while “Not From Around Here,” “Plot Twist,” “The Shaft,” and “Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” leave horror fans with the wetwork terror that Schow has mastered so well.
Macabre, bloodcurdling, funny, and shocking tales about things that go bump in the night.Pub Date: March 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59606-861-2
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Told through the points of view of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia-this perceptive first novel by poet Alvarez tells of a wealthy family exiled from the Dominican Republic after a failed coup, and how the daughters come of age, weathering the cultural and class transitions from privileged Dominicans to New York Hispanic immigrants. Brought up under strict social mores, the move to the States provides the girls a welcome escape from the pampered, overbearingly protective society in which they were raised, although subjecting them to other types of discrimination. Each rises to the challenge in her own way, as do their parents, Mami (Laura) and Papi (Carlos). The novel unfolds back through time, a complete picture accruing gradually as a series of stories recounts various incidents, beginning with ``Antojos'' (roughly translated ``cravings''), about Yolanda's return to the island after an absence of five years. Against the advice of her relatives, who fear for the safety of a young woman traveling the countryside alone, Yolanda heads out in a borrowed car in pursuit of some guavas and returns with a renewed understanding of stringent class differences. ``The Kiss,'' one of Sofia's stories, tells how she, married against her father's wishes, tries to keep family ties open by visiting yearly on her father's birthday with her young son. And in ``Trespass,'' Carla finds herself the victim of ignorance and prejudice a year after the Garcias have arrived in America, culminating with a pervert trying to lure her into his car. In perhaps one of the most deft and magical stories, ``Still Lives,'' young Sandi has an extraordinary first art lesson and becomes the inspiration for a statue of the Virgin: ``Dona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us like Jesus into the heathen.'' The tradition and safety of the Old World are just part of the tradeoff that comes with the freedom and choice in the New. Alvarez manages to bring to attention many of the issues-serious and light-that immigrant families face, portraying them with sensitivity and, at times, an enjoyable, mischievous sense.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-945575-57-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
PROFILES
APPRECIATIONS
The thirty-one stories of the late Flannery O'Connor, collected for the first time. In addition to the nineteen stories gathered in her lifetime in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) and A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) there are twelve previously published here and there. Flannery O'Connor's last story, "The Geranium," is a rewritten version of the first which appears here, submitted in 1947 for her master's thesis at the State University of Iowa.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1971
ISBN: 0374515360
Page Count: 555
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1971
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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