Scattershot reader of weird, horror, sci fi, fantasy, literary, and historical fiction, occasionally drawn to non-fiction dealing with history, science, and archeology, with an affinity for short stories and novellas; always looking for the off-beat and undiscovered, with a TBR stack a mile high.
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On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister …
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister …
A remarkable and complex novel, with an interesting metafictional structure; very high modernist while also realistic.
This sharp, funny collection of stories drawn from life begins in the 1950s in an …
Not having read "Giving Up the Ghost," I was a little puzzled by some of these stories, which are ambiguously autobiographical and playfully fictive at once; I'm going to need to read Mantel's memoir now to sort it all out.
This sharp, funny collection of stories drawn from life begins in the 1950s in an …
An interesting collection of semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional stories that revolve around class, culture, childhood, and family in the north of England.
At the turn of England's century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of Rawblood, young Iris Villarca is …
At the turn of England's century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of …
I really enjoyed this, though maybe not quite as much as I enjoyed her breakout "Last House on Needless Street", with which "Rawblood" shares some structural and thematic DNA, though I found "Needless" to be a little tighter and more focused. "Rawblood" is wonderfully gothic, though also set against the trauma of the First World War and the horrors of late 19th/early 20th century medicine and psychiatry. This would pair well with A. C. Wise's "Wendy, Darling."
Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders …
Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders …
Tonal whiplash - a mix of satire, slapstick, and social critique, with more than a little horror mixed in. I really enjoyed it, but it's not for the squeamish.
Bear is a novel by Canadian author Marian Engel, published in 1976. It won the …
A strange and sometimes unsettling book that explores the extremes of human and animal, civilized and wild, colonizer and colonized, loneliness and connection. Poetic and strange.
Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event called the Visitation that took place in several locations …
Nicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand …
Nicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand …
Grimy, grungy, oppressive, and haunting; plenty of existential dread.
Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event called the Visitation that …
I'm a little surprised I hadn't read this one already, and really glad that I have it under my belt - weird and disturbing, strong New Wave vibes through a Russian/Soviet lens, astonishing that it was published 14 years before the Chernobyl disaster.
"Amrapali Anna Singh is an historian and analyst capable of discerning the most cryptic and …
I liked the structure and general direction of this story - it was interestingly told, with subtle hints and a quietly unnerving atmosphere. It felt as though it lost steam toward the end.
"Amrapali Anna Singh is an historian and analyst capable of discerning the most cryptic and …
Heard about this on the MPR "Ask a Bookseller" segment, and saw that it was at my local library branch when I went to pick up some holds; about halfway through, it drew me in with its dreamlike story.