Entertaining tales of the macabre, sure to cause shivers and indigestion.
Creepy things happen—and are frequently eaten—in these tasty gay horror stories.
Berman’s characters seethe with illicit desire and, often, ingest inappropriate substances. Among the narratives: A few survivors of an African apocalypse lie in wait for refugees to arrive at their desert lair and provide a source of food; a gay man in 19th-century Baltimore takes in a waif who has been bitten by Edgar Allan Poe—and starts turning into the lugubrious writer; a teenager at a wrestling camp struggles to suppress his appetite and his gay impulses amid a crowd of boys who are feeding strange presences within them; a photographer imprisoned for pedophilia gets out and falls in with an innocent-seeming rustic; a school nurse meets an old lesbian flame who says she can stay young forever—if she dines on children; and a Tulane fraternity pledge wins friends and influences people with a magic flask that holds unlimited quantities of whatever liquid a drinker wants most. Berman’s fables are skillful, well-turned genre pieces, full of moody atmospherics—“black is fashionable, black is everywhere,” he writes of a cabaret in Berlin; “black is the only option other than pale skin and shirts and the atmosphere of gray smoke that hides the ceiling”—and punchy prose in many registers, from Kafkaesque ambiguity to macho adventure. (“She wore a skimpy number that would have given the happiest of married fellahs nervous ideas. Those lips, red and plump, savored rather than breathed the air.”) The horror is initially psychological, building through allusion and rumination to sudden eruptions—“fireworks of blood stipple the window, silhouette his head as he begins what I first think is trying to eat the pane, but soon realize by the way he’s licking and nipping the window, is him trying to kiss his reflection”—and quieter, queasier tableaux. (“The kid is staring down at a dead squirrel on the asphalt, and starts to poke it…then the boy pries apart a piece of the carcass and shoves it into his mouth. When he starts chewing with his mouth open, a bit of tongue slips out to wipe at his cracked lips.”) The result is a satisfyingly weird and icky read with serious literary chops.
Entertaining tales of the macabre, sure to cause shivers and indigestion.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59-021225-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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