by Douglas Snodgrass ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 2019
Strange poems and an intriguing tale for die-hard horror fans.
Poetry and a novella mix biography, history, and horror.
Snodgrass’ “poetry novel” brings together more than 60 prose poems and a novella that centers on eerie, supernatural occurrences on the infamous Trail of Tears in 1830. The title poem, the first piece in the collection, alludes to Edgar Allan Poe and Rod Serling: “ ‘Nevermore!’ he cries alone. As you slip into life’s twilight zone.” It’s an apt combination for the poems that follow, which bear titles like “The Mummy,” “Poltergeist,” and “The Lycan.” The author crafts some disturbing and mournful imagery here, drawing heavily from pop-culture bogeymen and his own personal history. Between lines like “The freak show is coming to town; got Nosferatu and a very evil clown,” he pauses to dedicate slower, more somber pieces to his mother or grandmother: “I see your smile upon the wind when I close my eyes and go to sleep....I hope you are smiling—and Grandma, I’ll see you soon.” Reinforcing this alternating rhythm are the accompanying uncredited photographs, some of family members, others of desolate landscapes, and even shots of Snodgrass himself. The blend of popular genres and poetry is unusual and unexpected, but the author’s rather standard rhyming patterns tend to hold his pieces back from achieving something truly bizarre and surreal: “Are you an angel, or the devil’s slave? Or just a whisper beyond life’s grave?” This predilection for imbuing horror in unexpected places feels much more natural and effective in the historical novella Ouijawa: Trail of Tears, which follows a medicine man named Nvda Ama as he invokes supernatural forces to fight against the white Army and militia men cruelly herding his tribe out of their native lands in Georgia. Along with delivering some genuinely spooky passages, Snodgrass displays here some skill at perspective, playing with both the soldiers’ and the Native Americans’ inner turmoil during a horrific situation made even darker.
Strange poems and an intriguing tale for die-hard horror fans.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-7899-6
Page Count: 178
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2020
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
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The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2022
A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.
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31
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Narnia on the Penobscot: a grand, and naturally strange, entertainment from the ever prolific King.
What’s a person to do when sheltering from Covid? In King’s case, write something to entertain himself while reflecting on what was going on in the world outside—ravaged cities, contentious politics, uncertainty. King’s yarn begins in a world that’s recognizably ours, and with a familiar trope: A young woman, out to buy fried chicken, is mashed by a runaway plumber’s van, sending her husband into an alcoholic tailspin and her son into a preadolescent funk, driven “bugfuck” by a father who “was always trying to apologize.” The son makes good by rescuing an elderly neighbor who’s fallen off a ladder, though he protests that the man’s equally elderly German shepherd, Radar, was the true hero. Whatever the case, Mr. Bowditch has an improbable trove of gold in his Bates Motel of a home, and its origin seems to lie in a shed behind the house, one that Mr. Bowditch warns the boy away from: “ ‘Don’t go in there,’ he said. ‘You may in time, but for now don’t even think of it.’ ” It’s not Pennywise who awaits in the underworld behind the shed door, but there’s plenty that’s weird and unexpected, including a woman, Dora, whose “skin was slate gray and her face was cruelly deformed,” and a whole bunch of people—well, sort of people, anyway—who’d like nothing better than to bring their special brand of evil up to our world’s surface. King’s young protagonist, Charlie Reade, is resourceful beyond his years, but it helps that the old dog gains some of its youthful vigor in the depths below. King delivers a more or less traditional fable that includes a knowing nod: “I think I know what you want,” Charlie tells the reader, "and now you have it”—namely, a happy ending but with a suitably sardonic wink.
A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66800-217-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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