Stewart’s debut is a collection of short horror stories from the Southern U.S., where ghosts, vampires and the darker side of humanity tend to reside.
Many of these stories can be labeled Southern gothic; most have a gloomy ambiance even when there’s no murder. Characters are unsettling, as with the titular bullied kid who isn’t bullied for long in “Timmy.” But Stewart, with an ample 56 stories, takes the time to examine other genres and does so with competence: There’s romance in “The Bright Side of the Moon,” in which an already-engaged man falls for the girl of his dreams; comedy in “I Write the Song,” with a dispute over songwriting credit that concludes hilariously; and a touch of the sci-fi in “Pally and the Quack,” one of the book’s best stories, in which a doctor in 1936 has a new device for combating cancer, with horribly detrimental effects. Although there are some contemporary settings, the majority of the tales take place in the mid-20th century, and Stewart incorporates the rampant racism and racial segregation of the time. The Southern flair never fluctuates, and the stories, in states such as Texas, Florida and Louisiana, are uniform; the warmer climate in the South, for example, seems inescapable, as the heat and humidity “bake the earth” and aren’t helped much by air conditioning. Likewise, first-person perspectives give the impressions of Southern locals telling stories to friends, almost like an urban legend. There’s the occasional vengeful spirit or creature, but the standouts in the collection often deal with evil found only in humans, including “The Lost Key,” about a young husband worried that a strange custodian has found his lost keys and will go after his wife, and “Six Clues to Marilyn Schaeffer,” in which cryptic notes may lead to a girl who’s been missing for 20 years. Each story has merit, and there aren’t any throwaways, but Stewart might have improved the book by cutting a few from the voluminous collection, perhaps to save for a later book. At this rate, maybe he already has 56 more lined up.
Quite a collection of dark gems; readers looking for somber tales with Southern flair need look no further.
Pub Date: May 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491730492
Page Count: 458
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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