Number 61- Boys In the Valley- Philip Fracassi

 

Last year I read an advance copy of Gothic and liked it enough that I went out and bought this by the same author.  I've seen this recommended on several Facebook horror groups  so I thought it was a good choice.

I'd like to thank everyone that recommended it. The second book in a row where I can use the phrase "Books like this are why I read horror fiction".

The year is 1905 and in a church run orphanage in a remote Pennsylvania valley, the coming winter will be dangerous for more than just the sub-zero temperatures.

In the middle of the night, the Sherriff and two deputies arrive with a dying man in tow. The man was shot whilst performing a horrific ritual. HIs flesh is covered with arcane symbols, and on his death something is unleashed. 

The boys start behaving strangely, forming rival groups, and dying violent deaths at the hands of their friends.

This is about as claustrophobic as horror gets. The orphanage is miles from anywhere and escape is next to impossible.  Once the violence begins, the book becomes almost unputdownable. Fracassi has created characters that you genuinely care about so when he put them under threat, the tension is unbearable.  The last 150 pages of this book are genuinely stress inducing in the best possible way). 

Although one of the priests is cruel in his treatment of the children, Fracassi thankfully never gives in to the lazy clichés that seem to be compulsory in stories about priests and young boys these days.  The terror of what happens once whatever was in the dying man is released is more than enough.

If the ending of this doesn't raise a tear or two, then there is something wrong with you. This is an easy 9/10 for me. go out and buy it.

Number 60- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke- Eric LaRocca

 

Now books like this are the reason I read horror fiction.

This is my first taste of Eric LaRocca but it is certainly not going to be my last.

This is a collection of three novellas/short stories.

The title story is certainly the highlight of the three.  It may well be the best piece of epistolary fiction I think I've ever read. All three stories are excellent.  But this one is just a level above.

We read the emails and Instant Message threads between Agnes and Polly, starting with a simple advert trying to sell an antique apple peeler. things quickly descend into one of the most uncomfortable pieces of fiction I've read in years.

The depiction of codependency  that builds up is masterly. The little vignettes that are dropped into the narrative are perfect little horror stories in their own right. in this story, they are stepping stones to a whole new extreme of psychological harm.

What have I done today to deserve my eyes?  I'm not sure, but I don't think this story is going to leave my brain for a long while.

The Enchantment- the second story in the book is a more straightforward narrative topped with an "oh my god how did I not see that?" revelation. 

A couple move to a remote island to try to recover from the suicide of their teenaged son. The death of the son is the only sticking point in the whole book.  His chosen method of suicide is not entirely practical, or possible to do by yourself. But that's a minor issue.

On their first night on the island, they're visited by a mysterious young man. From then on, things become more disturbing. Who is the young man?  What is his purpose? The answers are beautifully revealed.

The final story- You'll Find It's Like That All Over- is a clever little tale of social discomfort leading to something really quite nasty.

One of my favourite things about this collection is that it manages to shake this particular reader to the core without any excessive gore or any unnecessary violence. There are some unpleasant descriptions of death, but no overt gore. This is psychological horror at its finest. 

I love it. I will definitely be seeking out as much of his writing as my psyche can stand.

Number 59- The Melting Dead- Doug Lamoreux

 

The first book in my usual October horror marathon and I chose this classy looking tome.

On a small island in the middle of the Mississippi river, a meteor storm has unexpected consequences.

The radiation from the meteorite kills a family who then rise from the dead, but they're melting.  the only way to stop themselves melting is to sate their hunger by eating the flesh of the living.  Everyone they eat is affected by the same malady and soon there is a fight to the end for the rapidly shrinking number of humans left on the island versus the increasing horde of the Melting Dead.

This book knows what it's aiming for and it mostly hits that target so kudos for that. Mr Lamoreux is kind enough to let us know exactly which films he's homaging (or ripping off depending on how much you're enjoying the book) by namechecking them every time he does it. 

The new variant on the zombie cliché was a welcome thing. the writing... wasn't. This book needs an editor to pick up on the grammatical errors. Also the constant "this was like this bit out of that film" was wearying after a while. 

It wasn't funny enough for me to count it as a horror comedy. It wasn't scary enough to be an effective horror novel. It falls very much between two stools. 

There's a common aphorism that says that a bad horror novel becomes a comedy, and I think that might be what the writer was trying for.  He did write quite a bad horror novel. It's entertaining enough in its own terms, but I had to drag myself through the last half of the book.

But hey. with a title like The Melting dead and that cover, what was I hoping for?

Number 58- You Go home- Steven Sherrill

 

I'm more than a week behind on doing these write ups, and 3 books behind. So this one is going to be brief.

Much like this book.

This was my quick cheat read before I started on my usual October Horror reading. It's a collection of flash fiction by the rather talented Steven Sherrill- writer of The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.

I want to know what he was smoking when he wrote some of these.  There's some very weird stuff in here.

One of the stories has a longer title than the text of the story.

Things To Do With Dead Me is literally a list of surreal things to do with a dead body. 

It's a very quick book to read (it is a chapbook after all) and I was pretty confuzzled throughout. It's all very well written and strange and wonderful in its own weird way. I'm really not sure if "Like" is the right word to describe my feelings for this book. 

It's one I'll be dipping into on and off when I need a dose of something not quite right.

Number 57- Act of Oblivion- Robert Harris

 

The eponymous Act of Oblivion was the death warrant for the signatories on the death warrant of King Charles 1st

This is a historic thriller by the author of Fatherland, Pompeii, and The Ghost. It tells of the manhunt for the various escapees from justice- particularly two colonels who managed to cross the Atlantic and settle in the fledgling American state.

Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel William Goffe have managed to flee Europe on a ship bound for the new world. In London, Richard Naylor, Secretary to the regicide committee of the Privy Council has made it his mission to track them down.

In the foreword, Harris admits that Richard Naylor is a completely fictitious character, something that renders much of the book similarly based totally on Harris's imagination.  That's just an observation not a criticism.  This is, as he says in the foreword, a fictionalised account of their escape and the hunt.  the main historic events are all as accurate as they need to be.

I did find myself wondering why the two colonels still had their English army tunics so many years into their exile. It would have made much more sense after the arrest warrants were publicised across the Atlantic for them to simply take on new identities and merge into a new township where they weren't known. Instead they're still hiding in cellars and effectively prisoners wearing their increasingly old and presumably threadbare uniforms.

The middle section of this book was most effective, while the chase was still on and Naylor had tracked them to the New World. The last third was still good, but I was starting to doubt any of the details about the two colonels. The section dealing with the plague and Great Fire in London was a particular highlight of the book. 

Overall, this kept me reading and interested.  It's a solid read. I'm not sure it's a classic of any sort, but I'm glad I read it.

Number 56- After Dark- Murakami

Several years ago I read Kafka On The Shore.  I enjoyed the writing style, but when I got to the end I thought "Wut? was there a point to any of that?"

I finished this late last week and... well, it seems his writing is consistent.

The action, such as it is, centres around a small cast of characters up and about in the early hours in a Japanese city.

Mari is sitting in a small café trying to read and drink her coffee. She's interrupted by a young jazz saxophonist called Takahashi, and soon afterward by the a representative of a local love ho (love hotel where rooms are booked by the hour) to help with a Chinese girl who has been viciously beaten. 

Meanwhile, her beautiful sister, who has been asleep for three months, is about to experience a strange awakening.

I really liked the flow of language.  The prose was almost hypnotic.  I raced through this in two days.

 

However, when I got to the end, I felt like I'd been cheated. Spoilers ahead.  Apologies, but I can't explain this in vague terms.

 Strange things are happening to Eri- Mari's sister.  These things never intersect with the story of the characters outside her bedroom and her television, except for brief references to the office of the man who beat the Chinese prostitute. She finds herself awake in a situation from which there appears to be no escape. The next time we see her, she's back in her own room, on her own bed, with no explanation as to how she got there.

There's a fine line between being mysterious and leaving unanswered questions, and lazy writing because you don't know the answer yourself. This feels like Murakami took a running jump over that line. The resolution of that storyline felt so lazy that Snorlax is jealous (Japanese book, a Pokémon reference is allowed). 

The worst thing is, without that storyline, the book would have been 100 times better. It felt like weird padding for the sake of it. It added nothing in the end and was a net detraction from the quality of the book.

So basically, it's enjoyable to read, but don't expect to finish the book and think that it was a good story. Maybe there's something cultural that doesn't come across in the translation.  Maybe I'm too dumb to understand the parallels and subtext.  Maybe HM is a lazy writer who fudges details because he thinks it sounds mysterious. It's one of those three.