Loved this – the best book from Wild Hunt Books’ Northern Weird Project so far. As in her excellent debut Bear Season, Gemma Fairclough uses differentLoved this – the best book from Wild Hunt Books’ Northern Weird Project so far. As in her excellent debut Bear Season, Gemma Fairclough uses different formats (letters, blog posts, an interview transcript and the framing device of a non-fiction narrative) to fabulous effect. Main narrator Richard is trying to find out what really happened to his sister, Julie, who took her own life shortly after spending time at a mysterious ‘wellness retreat’ in the Lake District. It’s unputdownable, thoughtful on themes of chronic illness and wellness culture, and also incorporates the Northern theme seamlessly. Reminded me of Plunge Hill: A Case Study and Come Join Our Disease. Fairclough is the real deal, a proper talent, can’t wait to read more from her.
I received an advance review copy of The Retreat from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books....more
Read this way too early (it doesn’t even have a cover!!), so will save a proper review until closer to the publication date, but rest assured: it’s a Read this way too early (it doesn’t even have a cover!!), so will save a proper review until closer to the publication date, but rest assured: it’s a banger. I am so thrilled Harriet Lane has returned to writing fiction after such a long break, and this is everything I could have hoped for. An obsessive narrator, a slow-crawling tension, hundreds of razor-sharp observations. Can’t wait to read this again and think/write more about it.
If you’re coming to The Off-Season expecting the pulse-quickening weirdness of the other Northern Weird Project books, adjust your expectations. JodieIf you’re coming to The Off-Season expecting the pulse-quickening weirdness of the other Northern Weird Project books, adjust your expectations. Jodie Robins trades overt strangeness for a more delicate, emotional magic, making this a quieter but no less affecting entry in the series.
At its heart, this is a story about a father-son relationship. Tommy has returned to Blackpool, his hometown, to look after his ageing, widowed father. Tommy and Al’s dynamic – understated but deeply felt – is the strongest part of the book. Robins captures the unspoken weight of shared history, the push and pull of love and duty, the way grief settles into the cracks of a family.
On a winter’s day, as they prepare for yet another funeral, a mysterious group arrives on the seafront, and in their presence, Al is motivated to reveal something deeply buried. The weird aspect here tends towards the whimsical, and I admit I’d expected more of a ghost story, but the atmosphere and setting are well realised. Robins’ off-season Blackpool is haunted more by memories of better days than by actual ghosts. If you’ve ever visited a seaside town in the dead of winter, you’ll feel the damp chill in your bones while reading this.
If you’re looking for something gentler, introspective with just a shimmer of the otherworldly, The Off-Season delivers. It’s softer and more personal than the other books in the series so far, exploring the things we never say (even to family) and how second chances can arrive in the most unexpected of ways.
I received an advance review copy of The Off-Season from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books....more
Leo, a postgrad with a chip on his shoulder, is dragging himself back to his Northern hometown on one of those Sprinter trains (if you know, you know)Leo, a postgrad with a chip on his shoulder, is dragging himself back to his Northern hometown on one of those Sprinter trains (if you know, you know). The journey is exactly as miserable as you’d expect: endless delays, an insufferable fellow passenger and, possibly, something weird lurking outside in the dark. Leo’s trying really hard not to think about the Gangral, a childhood horror story that still freaks him out. Then the weirdness escalates: a doppelganger, a phantom phone, the kind of creeping dread that Wesolowski does so well.
(Don’t) Call Mum is part of Wild Hunt Books’ Northern Weird Project, a new series promising ‘novellas from authors based in the North of England and who are also engaging with the North as setting, subject and character’. Keeping the story almost entirely on the train works brilliantly – it’s claustrophobic, eerie, the definition of a liminal space – the perfect setting for a slow slide into the surreal. Wesolowski’s talent for invented folklore is on full display, and the choice to stay in Leo’s perspective is a smart one: not only does it amp up the paranoia, but it exposes his own insecurities and prejudices along the way. Great stuff, can’t wait to see where the series goes next.
I received an advance review copy of (Don’t) Call Mum from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books....more
(4.5) Absolutely disgusting... I loved it! I could not put Brainwyrms down – I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next, I galloped thr(4.5) Absolutely disgusting... I loved it! I could not put Brainwyrms down – I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next, I galloped through it, even though at times I was nauseated and/or cringing away from the page. This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of thrilling writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and whatever it means to be virtuous, if it even means anything. I know it sounds basic and borderline patronising to call it ‘fearless’, but it really is fearless and so brilliantly weird. Especially when it takes turns into more experimental style choices, with the stage play section (active monsters) being a particular high point. Brainwyrms confirms Rumfitt as one of our most important contemporary horror writers. It’s a book that gets right under your skin (sorry). Never before have I immediately and desperately wanted to reread a book that repelled me.
I received an advance review copy of Brainwyrms from the publisher....more
From the moment I started reading Death of a Bookseller, I was absolutely lost to the story – sucked down into it so completely I couldn’t think aboutFrom the moment I started reading Death of a Bookseller, I was absolutely lost to the story – sucked down into it so completely I couldn’t think about anything else. Alice Slater has written a novel that sinks in its teeth and refuses to let go; I buzzed for days after finishing it.
Roach has worked at a beleaguered branch of Spines, a chain of bookshops, since she was a teenager. Solitary and obsessed with true crime (specifically the killers rather than the victims, whose stories she generally finds boring), Roach scoffs at ‘normies’ and spends much of her time listening to podcasts about famous murders. When a new team are brought in to reverse the shop’s fortunes, she meets a very different type of bookseller: the wholesome, stylish, friendly Laura. Fixating on the fact that Laura also reads about serial killers and writes poetry with dark themes, Roach starts fantasising about a friendship. But the two women’s clashing views about the ethics surrounding true crime turn Laura against her... something Roach is very reluctant to accept.
The narrative switches between the perspectives of the two main characters – a surprise to me, as from the blurb I’d assumed Roach would tell the whole story. At first, I was sceptical: could Laura’s viewpoint possibly be as interesting as Roach’s cynical, scathing voice? Would the story become lopsided? But Laura’s chapters bring a depth and complexity to her character that ultimately unlocks the power of the story.
Sometimes Roach sounds like such an insufferable not-like-other-girls, sometimes Laura sounds like a tryhard London literary type – there are points where both of them will make you roll your eyes. Yet as dark as Roach’s story gets, it’s hard not to extend compassion to her, because the narrative is always extending compassion to her too. It’s the same thing with Laura: she’s often an absolute mess, and we see how her behaviour parallels Roach’s in ways she’d no doubt be reluctant to admit – but we get why. If at first it seems clear that Roach is the dark and Laura the light, somewhere along the line both characters are painted such similar shades of grey that they blend and bleed into each other.
Something I also want to mention, that might easily get lost amid the irresistible momentum of the plot, is the power of the settings. I particularly loved Roach and Laura’s workplace, the bookshop itself. I could truly feel the atmosphere of the place: both cosy and decrepit. The story unfolds in the run-up to Christmas, and the writing absolutely nails the magic and the horror of being wrapped up in non-stop work at that time of year. (It’s also so good on the specifics of working in retail that it unlocked memories I hadn’t thought about for over a decade.)
My literary recipe for Death of a Bookseller would involve: the razor-sharp character studies and themes of obsession and envy in Looker and Kiss Me First; the heady atmosphere of The Poison Tree; the deliciously nasty underbelly of Boy Parts and Eileen; and the spiralling, unstable mood of Animals or Problems – especially as the story reaches its climax and the protagonists seem bound for disaster.
This is, naturally, a bookseller’s book. But it’s also for anyone who considers themselves a reader; likes true crime; anyone who hates it, or is disdainful towards it; anyone who has ever worked in a shop, or in customer service. And it’s also stealthily a book about grief. Like its characters, Death of a Bookseller contains more layers and subtleties you might first assume. This is a thrilling story of obsession with a dark, sticky soul – and it’s also so much more.
I received an advance review copy of Death of a Bookseller from the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton....more
The stories in Terminal Zones take place in a Britain, and a world, in literal meltdown, on the precipice of violent destruction – but they often takeThe stories in Terminal Zones take place in a Britain, and a world, in literal meltdown, on the precipice of violent destruction – but they often take place in its seemingly dull, innocuous corners: the car park of a DIY store, a motorway bridge, an area of urban marshland. These are tales of creeping strangeness and unease that vibrate with the possibility of collapse, a constant danger lurking beneath the (mostly) commonplace settings and wry humour.
My favourite was undoubtedly ‘The Slime Factory’, a near-future conspiracy story with an unexpected, unforgettable climactic scene that ensures you’ll never look at a certain children’s cartoon in the same way again. (What with this and Dan Coxon’s ‘All the Letters in His Van’, I feel like there’s definite potential for an anthology composed entirely of this type of story...) Some of the stories were not new to me: I loved revisiting the deceptively sinister car-park world of ‘Meet on the Edge’, and found ‘We Are the Disease’, a chilling tale of infection on board an icebreaker ship, somehow so much better on a second read. (Perhaps it just hits different post-Covid.) ‘A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes’ and ‘Bin Day’ are both fantastic portraits of pathetic characters whose obsessions consume them utterly.
I received an advance review copy of Terminal Zones from the publisher, Influx Press.
‘To get to Hell,’ he says in a low voice, ‘they take you through America. There is a door behind a door.’
Olga, happily settled in the USA, receives a ‘To get to Hell,’ he says in a low voice, ‘they take you through America. There is a door behind a door.’
Olga, happily settled in the USA, receives a phone call from a man she hasn’t seen for many years: Nikolai, who went to prison as a teenager for stabbing a woman in the Soviet housing block where he and Olga both grew up. This is the starting point for a story told in fragments, one that switches perspective and moves beyond the possibilities of reality, one in which death means displacement rather than a definite end. Sex and violence are entwined in the piercing sentences of A Door Behind a Door, written with the dreamlike lucidity characteristic of Moskovich’s work. Despite all that, this may be the most conventional novel she’s written thus far, with its dysfunctional families and loop-like structure: its experimental touches are anchored by moments of both the banal and the tragic.
I received an advance review copy of A Door Behind a Door from the publisher, Influx Press.
Okay, wow. If you read Tell Me I’m Worthless, prepare to be haunted: for days after finishing it I was infected with its story, sick with it, couldn’tOkay, wow. If you read Tell Me I’m Worthless, prepare to be haunted: for days after finishing it I was infected with its story, sick with it, couldn’t stop thinking about it. There are so many moments, observations and images from this book that have crawled inside and made themselves at home under my skin.
Three years ago, three girls – Alice, Ila and Hannah – entered the House, a corrupted, haunted place. Hannah never came out, and in the aftermath, Alice and Ila’s relationship is radically transformed. Once best friends and lovers, they now barely speak and have somehow come to occupy opposing ideological standpoints. A bit later, we find out that each of them believe the other to be guilty of violent and degrading assault, though it seems they can’t both be right. The only way out of it all is for Alice and Ila to return the House, and however horrifying that idea is, they are inexorably drawn back.
Sometimes, at the end of everything, the only option you have is to make it worse.
Tell Me I’m Worthless is something entirely new. It’s a haunted house story unlike any other, and it’s also about fascism and trauma and guilt and gender and what it’s like to try and perform an acceptable impression of a functioning human being after bad shit has happened to you. It’s electrifying. It’s disgusting. It’s hot. It actually made me fucking THINK. It’s the best book about what it is to be a woman (specifically in modern Britain) that I’ve read in years, possibly ever. It’s the most radical horror novel of the year and probably the decade.
People who spend a lot of time talking about books, including me, are probably guilty of saying something is ~like nothing else I’ve ever read~ far too often, but that truly applies here. The only thing I can think of that I’d perhaps stand it next to is Gary Budden’s London Incognita, which has a similar punk spirit flowing through its veins, but the fact that Tell Me I’m Worthless is written specifically from a queer/trans/female perspective makes it feel that much more radical.
I might write more when I reread it – which I definitely will. Honestly, I’ve struggled to find the language to describe how good it is and how it made me feel; it’s an experience. Just know that if you are at all interested in horror, this book is essential reading.
I received an advance review copy of Tell Me I’m Worthless from the publisher, Cipher Press.
Lucie McKnight Hardy’s first novel, the startling summer horror story Water Shall Refuse Them, was one of my favourite books of 2019, and I think I miLucie McKnight Hardy’s first novel, the startling summer horror story Water Shall Refuse Them, was one of my favourite books of 2019, and I think I might actually have screeched aloud when I read she had a short story collection coming out. Dead Relatives is a collection of unsettling short stories exploring themes accurately summarised in the blurb as ‘motherhood and the fragile body, family dynamics and small town tensions, unusual traditions and metamorphosis’.
It opens with a tour de force. In ‘Dead Relatives’ we meet Iris, who talks to her ancestors, has never left the house she shares with her Mammy, and is preparing for the arrival of ‘the Ladies’. The situation is perhaps less bizarre than it initially appears – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t strange and horrifying in other ways. Longer than any of the other stories, ‘Dead Relatives’ is a triumph of voice, Iris’s slyness and angst radiating from the page. Much shorter, yet just as effective, are ‘The Pickling Jar’, a darkly funny story set in a village with a very odd custom, and ‘Cavities’, in which a woman’s determination not to be fooled has deadly consequences.
Because I’ve been following the author’s work keenly since her debut, some of the stories were not new to me, for example ‘Jutland’, a disquieting and devastating tale of motherhood; the dark modern folk horror ‘Badgerface’; and ‘Resting Bitch Face’, a devilish unstitching of unhappy marriage. I was particularly happy to revisit ‘The Devil of Timanfaya’, about crumbling family bonds on a Mediterranean holiday, and ‘Wretched’, a prescient dystopian story in which desperate people do terrible things to survive.
The more I read, the more I came to feel that Dead Relatives is more like an anthology than a collection, connected thematically more than stylistically. I could see ‘Badgerface’ in Tim Cooke’s landscape punk collection Where We Live, ‘The Pickling Jar’ among the unnerving culinary tales in Anna Vaught’s Famished. The range McKnight Hardy demonstrates here is incredibly impressive; not many collections can segue from historical fiction to contemporary horror to near-future dystopia successfully. What might her second novel be like? I have no idea, but I’m even more excited to read it now.
I received an advance review copy of Dead Relatives from the publisher, Dead Ink.
What an incredibly vibrant and imaginative collection! Walking on Cowrie Shells is a document of the Cameroonian-American experience in ten irresistibWhat an incredibly vibrant and imaginative collection! Walking on Cowrie Shells is a document of the Cameroonian-American experience in ten irresistibly spirited stories, a passport to another culture and, sometimes, other worlds. Nana Nkweti writes with the imagination of a Sayaka Murata or Irenosen Okojie fused with the type of inventive language that has delighted me in the work of Joshua Cohen and Ali Smith. My absolute favourite was ‘Rain Check at MomoCon’, about a girl attending a comic-con with her frenemies and crush, written in utterly dizzying and exciting prose stuffed with references and wordplay – I could have read a whole novel written in this voice/style. I also loved ‘Night Becomes Us’, scenes from the life of a nightclub bathroom attendant, and ‘Kinks’, a thoughtful exploration of the personal significance of culture and heritage (and also publishing, kind of) through the lens of an increasingly toxic romantic relationship.
I was surprised to find the literary, slice-of-life stories worked better for me than the experiments in genre: the one I thought I’d enjoy the most – ‘It Just Kills You Inside’, about a PR guru hired to put a spin on a zombie crisis in West Africa – was actually my least favourite; I liked the protagonist/narration least out of them all. (But ‘The Living Infinite’, a fantasy tale about a 200-year-old water spirit’s love for a human man, is vivid and touching.) Nkweti’s website includes playlists for each of the stories, plus a very entertaining blog post linked to ‘Kinks’, which only adds to the sense that this is a book alive beyond the constraints of its form.
I received an advance review copy of Walking on Cowrie Shells from the publisher, The Indigo Press.
Biting short stories of life in London: dating, protests, house parties, art and writing; missed connections and failed relationships. A bit like BBiting short stories of life in London: dating, protests, house parties, art and writing; missed connections and failed relationships. A bit like Boy Parts in that it’s really good at depicting what it sets out to depict, really good at portraying characters and cultural scenes but my god, I am SO fucking glad I don’t know any of these people. Highlights are the opening story, ‘Change :)’, in which a WhatsApp group quickly descends into chaos; ‘Pain in the Neck’, the hilarious tale of a gathering gone wrong and an unfortunate injury (loved the narrator’s switches from rage to resignation and back again); and ‘Pro Life’, about a group of 90s teenagers being awful, as teenagers are.
I received an advance review copy of Man Hating Psycho from the publisher, Influx Press.
Wow, this was like a stinging slap to the face. I mean that as a compliment. It’s about a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his friend’Wow, this was like a stinging slap to the face. I mean that as a compliment. It’s about a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his friend’s younger cousin, and that’s all you need to know, because this isn’t a story, it’s a feeling, or a string of them: the aching nostalgia of walking streets you used to know well and now find changed; the numb pleasure-pain of tracing over memories of good times long gone; the sick excitement of violence anticipated. There’s not a scrap of fat on Shah’s prose – it’s as bare and unforgiving as the bleak Midwestern urban sprawl its characters traverse. Ant says he wants to emerge from the funeral ‘core-shook and sparkling, death-ecstatic, fully diamond-hearted’, and that’s how I emerged from the book, shuddering and cold like someone on a comedown. Again, a compliment. To be read in one sitting.
I received an advance review copy of Whiteout Conditions from the publisher, Dead Ink.
Many of the stories in Damned If I Do are laced with a hint of the strange or absurd. Occasionally, this is overt, as in the first story, ‘The Fix’, wMany of the stories in Damned If I Do are laced with a hint of the strange or absurd. Occasionally, this is overt, as in the first story, ‘The Fix’, wherein the owner of a sandwich shop takes in a stranger who possesses an uncanny ability to fix everything: a fridge, a car, a marriage, teeth... ‘The Last Heat of Summer’ begins as an achingly nostalgic coming-of-age tale, then takes a sudden turn when a tiger escapes from the circus. In the sharp and funny ‘Epigenesis’, Alan Turing (no, not that one) experiences a personal revelation when a fish begins to speak to him.
Other stories have a warm, rambling feel, offering up compassionate and nuanced portrayals of working-class lives. In ‘Alluvial Deposits’, a hydrologist visits a small, unfamiliar town, where he must obtain the signature of a woman who is reluctant to allow him to access her property. This is a story in which the protagonist experiences violent, potentially fatal racism, but it also highlights the camaraderie and support he encounters among others. An unexpected favourite was ‘Warm and Nicely Buried’, a meandering crime story in which a body is stolen from a funeral home.
Perhaps the strongest story in the collection is ‘The Appropriation of Cultures’, a smart satire in which a black man decides to reclaim the Confederate flag – an action that proves to have far-reaching consequences. It encapsulates the strengths of Everett’s writing: humour, sharp observations, instantly authentic characters.
I received an advance review copy of Damned If I Do from the publisher, Influx Press.
What is it like not only to learn another language, but to live in it? As someone who can only speak/read English and has never been particularly goodWhat is it like not only to learn another language, but to live in it? As someone who can only speak/read English and has never been particularly good at languages, it’s not something I have spent a lot of time thinking about. But Polly Barton’s memoir is so thoroughly immersive that I now feel I know something of what it is to have the experiences she describes.
Barton didn’t set out to become a translator: she studied philosophy at Cambridge before applying, almost on a whim, for a programme to teach English in Japan, which saw her assigned to the small island of Sado. Fifty Sounds is an extended attempt to answer the question ‘why Japan?’, chronicling her experiences in the country alongside a guide to the entwined intricacies of language and culture. It’s a tale of self-discovery, of loving a country that often seems reluctant to reciprocate, of how learning a language can be a personal revolution.
There were times when I got nervous about where the narrative was going, feeling that I wasn’t up to the task of understanding it – philosophy often forms a framework for Barton’s understanding of her circumstances; she writes of the difficulties of explaining Wittgenstein’s work to a neophyte. But the writing is also so humane, and the result is both more revelatory and much easier to understand than any critical theory I’ve read, showing in practical, real terms how fundamentally language shapes one’s world. Barton takes these complex ideas and ties them down to the reality of a sentence, an experience, and in the process they come to make perfect sense (even to the neophyte, which in this case is me).
Fifty Sounds is an especially effective type of memoir: the kind that makes a part of you immediately want to do the thing it describes, while another part simultaneously rejoices in the fact that you haven’t done the thing and never will. It is also, unexpectedly, type of book I really needed to read right now, as I go stir-crazy living alone in lockdown; I would never have have guessed how much emotional solace I would draw from this story, which turns out to be largely about being an outsider twice over. And on top of being surely one of the most readable memoirs ever, it’s made me really keen to read more of Barton’s translations.
I received an advance review copy of Fifty Sounds from the publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions.
I don’t know whether we’re truly getting more good literary horror collections these days, or whether I’ve just had good luck in picking them out lately. Either way, Only the Broken Remain is a pleasing addition to the stack of such collections published within the past year, including London Incognita by Gary Budden, Where We Live by Tim Cooke and London Gothic by Nicholas Royle.
Coxon’s stories tend towards a theme – that of an outsider finding community, albeit of an uncertain sort, among other misfits, often eschewing reality as well as conformity. Sometimes this is inverted, as in ‘Baddavine’, a folk horror tale in which a group of villagers, tormented by the whispers of an unseen creature, form a mob to pursue it. My favourite story was ‘No One’s Child’, the richly, fascinatingly grim tale of a young evacuee forming a deadly alliance with a creepy cellar-dwelling being. I also really enjoyed ‘All the Letters in His Van’, which offers a macabre take on a certain kids’ TV show, and now I’ve finished the book, it’s this clever and devilishly funny story I find myself thinking about a lot.
I received an advance review copy of Only the Broken Remain from Sublime Horror, courtesy of Black Shuck Books.
I really liked Tim Cooke’s story ‘The Box of Knowledge’, which was included in volume 4 of the anthology series Tales from the Shadow Booth. In it, a gang of young misfits find an abandoned container and adopt it as a place to drink and do drugs; the story’s main strength lies in the building of a richly detailed world, especially in the character of the narrator, whose personality and motivations are quickly and deftly sketched out. Reading Cooke’s debut collection, it becomes clear that ‘The Box of Knowledge’ is a fragment of a bigger picture. Its narrator is the central figure of each of these loosely connected tales. The group of teen friends appears in several other stories, but we also meet the narrator as a younger child, and as a grown-up father of two.
The blurb positions Where We Live as part of the emergent microgenre of landscape punk – indeed, a focus on landscape is an obvious implication of the title. The stories are inarguably rooted in their setting of South Wales. They dip their toes into horror, though sometimes this is no more than a shadowy suggestion. Despite that, my favourite story was the most explicitly horrific: the dark, dramatic ‘Nights at the Factory’. This is a book to recommend alongside Gary Budden’s debut, Hollow Shores, and Lucy Wood’s The Sing of the Shore. I like the idea of a map of the UK composed of these weird, ambiguous collections.
I received an advance review copy of Where We Live from Sublime Horror, courtesy of Demain Publishing.
In the pub after the funeral, his father told him about the crash sites on Blackfell.
A man, his fiancée, and his father go on a hike together after thIn the pub after the funeral, his father told him about the crash sites on Blackfell.
A man, his fiancée, and his father go on a hike together after the funeral of the man's brother. The brother, Jimmy, is the only character to be given a name; the others remain symbolically anonymous. Tom Heaton has a way with sentences ('Nothing spoils a wedding like a dead brother'; 'He was within the space waiting to be filled, and it was unsustainable'), and there is something beguiling about the diversions within the story. Poignant and affecting.
I received a review copy of On Blackfell from the publisher, Nightjar Press.
As she makes her way home on a cold winter night, Kate notices a few things: a naked man standing in a winThe windows of Meridian House were all dark.
As she makes her way home on a cold winter night, Kate notices a few things: a naked man standing in a window 'as if he was lit up in a display cabinet', an indistinct image on her phone screen, a motorcyclist anonymous behind a black visor. In its first half, Michael Walters' story encapsulates the way it feels to walk alone in the dark, an experience that can be both threat and comfort. In its second, the strangeness ramps up, with doubled images and sinister encounters. It never feels implausible, though; there's an admirable restraint in the writing which makes the story's events all the more ominous.
I received a review copy of Signal from the publisher, Nightjar Press.