Reading Next:

THE TROOP by NICK CUTTER (REVIEW)

quickly: a troop of young teenage boy scouts are left to their own dangerous devices after their scoutmaster is killed by a mysterious virus (boys who are just like their fathers / strange men in the night / a young devil in disguise / insatiable appetites / bad weather out at sea / guts, guts, guts, and guts / the lifecycle of worms / the stank of peer pressure and performative masculinity / the government and all of its branches).

I was expecting some unsung masterpiece of horror but came upon a campfire story instead. Not a bad campfire story! Blood, gore, sabotage, and the fleshiness of parasitic creatures… but this won’t keep me up a night. Fun though, like something caught between a Goosebumps book and a Fear Street book. I wish the writing for the kids had been better. Their vernacular seemed outdated, like kids who grew up in the 80s. (I paused reading at Chapter 10 to check the date of publication.) Also, some of their topics of discussion seemed outrageous (how often did you discuss or think about what your parenting style would be for your children, AT FOURTEEN?) Up the age of the kids from middle school to high school or college, and so much more of the story would seem fitting.

★ ★ ★

"Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is Godʼs self-portrait."

Earthseed: The Books of the Living, Octavia E. Butler

MY DARKEST PRAYER by S. A. COSBY (REVIEW)

quickly: a formerly active marine is enlisted to solve the murder of a local preacher (men in uniform with anger issues / a woman all the men want / nosy old ladies / crafty and devious henchmen / blood-filled knee-breaking fist fights / hot and steamy hotel nights / churches with more money than god / local and state corruption).

this is a crime thriller that does the genre justice. it feels like a fast-paced car ride with that rowdy cousin who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. i picked it up late one night and couldn’t stop turning the page. nathan, a man who used to wear uniforms but doesn’t any longer, tries to solve a murder without getting himself killed. the writing is easy without being simplistic. there are just enough characters and just enough character development to fulfill your literary appetite without being weighted down by words. it’s adult, graphic, and bloody, without overdoing it. for all the broken bones and grittiness, it maintains an earthy and realistic view.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… this is the first crime thriller novel I’ve read since my joyous reunion with reading began. I truly found it entertaining, and I am excited to read more by Cosby specifically. As a true fan of the genre, Cosby placed several cultural references throughout the story, with a large portion of them referring to other crime novels and writers… something to explore when I need something else to read.

Since it’s a crime mystery thriller, I won’t reveal too much in the commentary. It was fun to wonder what happened next. Which is of course, along with the sweaty must of inebriated masculinity, a key element of the genre. 

I hate to be shallow, but it was the cover that got me. 

The story opens with our action figure of a hero, Nathan: a marine who is no longer active in the service; and an ex-policeman who left the force dishonorably, depending on whose honor system you use. He is a man who is not a stranger to violence but is mostly a gentleman on most accounts. By day he works at his cousin’s funeral home. By night, he shoots pool down at the local dive. But sometimes, when vengeance calls, he moves in shadows to exact the justice and revenge law enforcement is incapable of. 

After the preacher of a mega-bank mega-church dies under mysterious circumstances, Nathan is asked by two old ladies of the church to do some further investigation. They believe his history and familiarity with the aforementioned law enforcement would allow him to see something the local cops may have been trying to hide. Thinking this will be a quick job and easy money, Nathan opens a can of worms that results in several deaths and broken phalanges. Some people, Nathan makes sure disappear, never to be found again. Others he leaves for someone else to find and draw conclusions. 

This detective is not a detective, but, his time in uniform has taught him how to ask questions and get answers. This portrayal of the classic tragic noir detective has all the blood, booze, and hot passionate sex that you need… and it feels current. Not like some vintage paperback I found at a book barn. It is of the time. 

Will certainly be reading more S. A. Cosby soon.

"Blake would say that there are some places in the Universe where the Fall has not occurred, the world has not turned upside down and Eden still exists. Here Mankind is not governed by the rules of reason, stupid and strict, but by the heart and intuition. The people do not indulge in idle chatter, parading what they know, but create remarkable things by applying their imagination. The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression, but helps people to realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog in the system, not just playing a role, but a free Creature."

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

DEVIL HOUSE by JOHN DARNIELLE (REVIEW)

quickly: a true crimes writer moves into the building where the murders in his latest book took place (a writer questioning the ethics of his process / the past catching up with the present / lasting works of art / stories about stories / small towns outside of big cities / housing, drug, and mental health crises / mothers who love their sons / SATANIC PANIC! / swords, knights, and castle doctrines / the monsters are the people, but are the people monsters?)

This is not horror and hardly a thriller. There are no ghosts, demons, or spirits. There are indeed bumps in the night, but they come from the living. It’s a fresh take on mystery writing, but not really mystery either. It’s an exposition. We follow the main character, Greg, as he completes his latest true crime novel. The voices change throughout the story, so sometimes Greg is speaking to us, other times to someone else. The fun part of this story is the writing and the behind-the-scenes peek into the world of true crime. The not-so-fun part is the ending. 

John Darnielle’s writing spirals and descends. He takes his time moving around the subject, encircling it with details, getting closer and deeper at the end of every paragraph. Then, as you are rounding the last bend, the entire picture becomes clear from the inside out. It was like unraveling a beautifully woven ball of yarn, expecting a rare jewel at its center, but finding the end of a string instead. (Maybe, this is the entire meta point of this story… life is just a series of strings ending. Nothing special.)

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS

Some personal context… I came across this one because I was scouring the goodreads tag for “horror” and looking for interesting things that came out in the past year or two. The cover got me, as they tend to do. I rarely check the reviews before I read the story, but I always check after, just to see what there is I might have missed. I think I liked it more than most. As interesting as this book was to read, it didn’t deliver the THRILL I thought it would. It read like a poet writing a Wikipedia page… an intricate balance between truth and perception and the philosophy of cause and effect.

I recently read TROOP, and one of my gripes was the dialogue for the young teens that the story centered on. It felt so outdated and inauthentic. The dialogue, actions, and inner monologues for the teens at the center of DEVIL HOUSE were immaculate. Perfectly nuanced, and varied. The sophisticated unraveling of emotions and motivations is moving. He totally encapsulates the angst of aging. Now that I think about it, I actually would’ve loved to have seen John Darnielle do a version of TROOP.

The story is divided into 6 parts, and they each have different voices.

1: Chandler

We open with our good friend Greg Chandler, whose family lineage of kingship becomes a recurring thematic element in this story. He introduces us, right off the rip, to who he is, what he does, and his latest project. His agent has hipped him to the story of a couple of people murdered in an old porno shop in Milpitas, CA, outside of San Jose. 

He walks us through his process… one of immersion, invasion almost, that requires him to be in the places where these crimes took place. He, again with a nudge from his agent, devises a plan to purchase ‘DEVIL HOUSE’, which has been renovated, turned from a shop into a home, and is currently for sale. As he goes through the process of buying the house and moving in, he takes time to expound on the details of the case. He gives us an introduction to necessary persons and places, and at the end of Part 1, he tells us that what he discovered differs from the story that is told. He also tells us that he does not want to write the story he was sent there to write.

2: White Witch

Here, the story changes abruptly. Now, our narrator is no longer talking to us. Now, attention is directed to ‘The White Witch’, and we have become the ‘White Witch’ being addressed. (An interesting use of narration perspective, though I understand how some could find it jarring and confusing.) Eventually, we will come to know her life… a high school teacher who murdered two students while they were invading her home. Part 2 is a grand spiral around the details of her life leading up to the invasion and murder. In the open, she was just a school teacher. In the end, standing on the beach with bags of body parts, she has turned into the satanic WITCH living in the hills. Both in some real reality, but also in the minds of those always needing a villain to blame the evils of the world on.

3: Devil House

Our narrator returns to addressing us, and the White Witch’s story is paused. Now the focus returns to Milpitas, to Devil House before it was known as such. We get a grand historical overview of the influences that conspired to make the porno shop possible. This includes the history of the land and the landlord. However, the bulk of this part of the story is about the last occupants of Devil House, before our narrator Greg. 

We go back to it when it was MONSTER ADULT X, a porno shop on the side of the highway where 17-year-old Derrick works, unbeknownst to his parents who only want to best for him. MONSTER ADULT X (I’ll refer to it as MAX from here on out), is in its last days as the owner Anthony Hawley can’t keep up the rent payments.

Hawley closes the place down, but because Derrick still has his key, it is open to him. He hangs out there drawing and sketching. Then his friend Seth starts joining him. Then their homeless friend Alex, who’s been missing for some time joins them and lives there. Just at the tail end of things, Alex’s friend Angela pops in for some of the fun. 

This is their paradise, away from the impending world of adulthood and all its anxieties and broken promises. Things are fine until the landlord starts showing the place, in preparation to sell.

4: Song of Gorbonian 

A short and unexpected chapter, written in Olde English. Obviously, this is an imaginative prelude for some of the story’s later motifs and actions. Yet, it could just as well be a short story written during a reprieve Greg was taking from writing Devil House… or a rambling from one of MAX’s occupants during its last days… who’s to say? The Song of Gorbonian is a tale of a young king’s promise to avenge his father’s death and restore the gods of the old world.  

5: Devil House

In this part of the story, Greg updates us on the stories of MAX’s occupants. He catches up with modern-day Angela, Derrick, and Seth, all living different adult lives far away from Milpitas, having escaped any punishment, (but receiving tons of blame for the murders). The only one we don’t get an update on is Alex, who has managed to disappear. 

6: White Witch

Now we are back to the story of the White Witch, but not like before. Instead of standing in her place while Greg speaks to her, we are instead placed in the shoes of Jana, Jesse’s mother, one of the kids killed by Mrs. Crane, The White Witch. We are standing in Jana’s shoes as Greg reads (or summarizes rather) a letter Jana wrote. In reading this letter back to her, we come to understand the forces that shaped the life of the home invaders we met in Part 2.

In between the breaths of this letter, Greg is restoring Devil House to its former glory… breaking glass and pulling up carpets. 

7: Chandler

The perspectives change again. Now we are standing in the shoes of Greg’s childhood friend, as we reconnect with Greg after several years and he expounds on the new project he is working on, writing about a murder in Milpitas where he (we?) grew up. At the close of Part 7, we learn that this has all been a fabrication. Derrick, Seth, Angela, Alex… not one of them was real. At least, not in the form that Greg portrayed them to be in his book. The real culprits were likely men living on the streets, squatting for the night, running into the landlord, and reactions ensuing. 

Greg reveals his grand philosophy on what the public expects from true crime, and how the true story of Devil House would not satisfy the psyches of the consumers. Then the book fades out in a hazy memory of childhood, where the days were spent playing games.

Before I could complain too much about the ending, I had to remind myself that Greg told us exactly to expect: “What I learned contradicts the account I first read, which I understand to have sprung from the need for a certain sort of telling, a hunger for known quantities.” In other words, the salacious story of teens murdering to defend their clubhouse is something cooked up by the collective psyche, not by reality.

More than a fictional true crime book, this entire work seemed to be a rumination of the big machine of true crime itself and how we respond to these violent acts as a society. What do we want from these stories? Who do these acts of violence affect? At one end of a story, a person may look like a demon, but if we trace back all the influences and occurrences, we may find this person may have been someone else at some point… and if it is true that they were someone else, how much responsibility do we place on all the option-less choices people are forced to make, and on the uncontrollable forces that shape the boundaries of our lives?

PIRANESI by SUSANNA CLARKE (REVIEW)

quickly: a lonely but good-hearted soul discovers his only friend is not who he thought (marble walls and endless hallways / scientist magicians / kidnapping, lies, deceit / ancient forgotten wisdom / creative divinity / finding lost things / ornithomancy (divination by birds) / enemies kept close / reverence for the dead and their bones / the writing on the wall / the ocean and its tides / the wind and the clouds it carries / the forgotten sadness of the world).

A refreshing, delightful, and unique read that took me to a place far away from this world. This story is told through the journal entries of the beloved Piranesi, who spends his time fishing, collecting seaweed, and calculating the sea’s tides. You will come to know him for his effusive spiritual bond to the workings of the strange world he inhabits. He refers to himself as “the Beloved Child of the House”. In his 30’s, he has no wife, and knows of only one other person living in this world with him, who he refers to as “The Other”. There are thirteen more, deceased, but his kind offerings of food and conversation for them at their open-air resting places create life in their absence. He talks to the towering statues that line the walls of this World, and he talks to the birds who communicate things to him that he believes the House wants him to know. 

The writing is uncomplicated, well-paced, and well-structured. Combined with the story’s setting, a surreal earth-locked landscape, I found it to be a meditative and mysterious read. I kept thinking of the video game “Pandora’s Box (1999)”… a quietly unfolding puzzle of Hellenistic proportions. For a story that is so surreal and involves so many elements (fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and a teaspoon of crime), it was incredibly realistic and recognizable. Fantasy realism? This story has a mythic, fable-like quality that I can’t fully explain. It begins with a prophecy told to Piranesi by a flock of birds, and like any true prophecy, it immediately initiates changes in Piranesi’s world. Masterfully and subtly, there are contrasts between a real world full of sorrows and tragedies, and a quiet world where life’s forgotten ideas have become immortalized in statues… there’s the forgetting of oneself for another self as a consequence of being submersed in this ‘other’ world for too long… and also the processes of fate and prophecy playing out through hidden truths and sudden revelations from the subconscious. Like a forgotten fable, I hope to revisit this book sometime far in the future.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

THE EMPUSIUM by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: a sickly young engineering student hopes to find healing in a scenic mountain valley village where mysteries abound (gentleman’s houses / noises in the attic / spying eyes / fear of being seen / sex dolls and shrooms / wine at dinner time / men who think women are a different species / obscuring the vision, to see more clearly / long walks around the park / those looked upon by venus and jupiter / the soul as the weakest point / the inferior superiority of men).

The story opens like a Wes Anderson film, set in 1913 Poland, in a valley between two mountain ranges with air that is mythologized to cure the infamous tuberculosis. Before our dear Mieczysław can be cured, the malaise of life at the Gentleman’s House (where men smoke cigars with their weakened lungs, and talk at quite some length about the “lesser” minds of women) becomes a mire of shadows and secrets waiting to be unraveled. As expected, this idyllic 1900s mountain town is more than it appears to be. At night, after many men have imbibed in the psychoactive “schwärmerei”, the landscape seems to stare back at the onlookers. Every fall, men die violent and mysterious deaths, as if the surrounding forest is eating them and spitting them back out. As the summer season ends, Mieczy’s anxious concerns of being ‘seen’ intensifies.

★ ★ ★ ★ Mysteriously seductive.

Slowly, just as calmly as summer gives way to the decaying color bomb of autumn, this slow burn of a “health resort horror story” ends in a flush of fire. What begins as a medical retreat for our anxious and gentle-spirited protagonist evolves into an awakening of sorts upon the discovery of a cure for an ailment Mieczy had long been prepared to disregard as a permanent inconvenience. Mieczy will discover something that no amount of men’s postulations could destroy, and it is fantastic to watch. The astrology tidbits are delicious, and always a delightful discovery to happen upon when reading Olga’s work (as in The Books of Jacob, and Drive Your Plow…). The world of this story is both scenic and seductive… like a carnivorous plant that slowly digests you as you are hypnotized by its beauty. 

You walk with Mieczy up the steep incline of a forested mountain, always wondering where the path is taking you, until suddenly you reach the peak and overlook the edge at the marvelous view down below. A soft, then hard, autumnal horror story with an ending that would make J. K. Rowling’s eyes bulge as she combusts and then evaporates. 

SIDLE CREEK by JOLENE MCILWAIN (REVIEW)

quickly: stories of heartbreak, hard times, happiness, and folk magic, in the hills of West Pennsylvania (a creek with healing powers / cattle on the loose / child birth and death / grieving with nature / healing through helping / crazy old ladies / a father’s fight club / bad happenings in dark woods / working men / divination by egg shell / shell shock / secret obsessions / stolen babies). 

This book is a small creek-side town, packed into several stories from various lives. These people go to work, and their kids go to school. They stop at the local diner every so often, and they handle public matters privately. Some of the people live in the hills, hunting, trapping, and grieving. Some live in town, where they can gossip and shop. 

The writing is clear and direct, and the focus is always Life. The births, deaths, sicknesses… happiness, grief, and miseries. There is beauty in the perfectly captured mundane. Some of these stories are just moments, flash fiction (some maybe too short), whispers in time. Others are encapsulating and momentous pieces that could be expanded into their own works. Appalachian still-life in literature form.

I loved everything West Pennsylvanian, rural, and small town about this book. My favorites were You Four Are The One (young girls help a grown woman give life), The Loosed (a father is left to raise his sons alone), The Less Said (darkness in the woods), and The Red Boots (the violence of men’s obsessions). 

★ ★ ★ ★

BOYS IN THE VALLEY by PHILIP FRACASSI (A REVIEW)

quickly: a visitor in the night brings chaos to a catholic boy’s orphanage (a young priest in training / a dark child with many faces / contamination and contagion / evil whispering / demonic entities and unclean spirits / scarred bodies and souls / solitary confinement / starvation as punishment / founding fathers / crosses falling from walls / good vs evil, light vs dark / the compelling power of christ / the cleansing power of fire).

The snow of a brutal winter storm starts to fall, and like “The Long Night”, a battle between the world’s oldest forces begins. As the few adults in charge become increasingly debilitated, the fate of all the lives at the orphanage is left to the oldest teenage boys who must gather their limited life experiences to fight against incredible odds.

This is classic horror, of the demonic excorcism variety. No comedic relief, no quirky literary devices, and no rushed ending. I’m surprised this doesn’t have a Stephen King endorsement review, as they seem to be given out generously. (But I’ll take an introduction by Andy Davidson over a Stephen King review any day!) For a coming-of-age novel, it is remarkably honest about the hardships of abuse, abandonment, and death. Honest displays of grief and trauma, especially in horror stories, require a delicate hand. The plotting and navigating of these themes was well done.

★ ★ ★ ★

BELOVED by TONI MORRISON (REVIEW)

quickly: a self-emancipated woman is tormented by her past long after she’s made it to freedom (an ex-slave who has slavery living inside of her / children born in the shadow of trauma / a grandmother who can smell the future on the wind / jealous daughters who speak their minds / a house haunted by the dead / stolen milk and blessed berries / blood magic / the deep dark evil of slavery)

what a wild, lush, furious nightmare of a story. this is the story of Sethe, how she escaped slavery, and how she ended up in a house haunted by the ghost of a dead child. this is truly a southern gothic horror tale in every sense. there are psychological and physical traumas, some obtained from slavery and its perpetrators, some obtained from attempts at resisting slavery. there is magic, not the stereotypical “voodoo/hoodoo”, but something older, darker, and less defined. there’s injustice, southern lands, hard times, etc. at first, toni’s writing is like a dense forest, but once you find your footpath, the journey will carry you forward. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I’ve been on the hunt for truly thrilling stories that take my breath away and Toni Morrison’s work did more than that. This read was preceded by “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson. I chose it based on it being a classic of gothic horror, a sub-genre I love. I was disappointed by its lack of thrill, passion, or anything, other than Eleanor’s unraveling. 

Enter Toni Morrison. This is my first read by the late and great author, and it couldn’t have been any more perfect of an introduction for me. I’ll never hear “southern gothic” without thinking of BELOVED, which should be the staple of the genre (sorry, not sorry, Shirley J.). Rarely have I heard this work referred to as such. (If I had, I probably would’ve read it earlier.) I almost feel ‘honored’ to have read this book, though I’m not sure why. Maybe something to do with this incredible black writer penning a story so beautifully terrifying that people forget to call it ‘horror’. Maybe because she met and exceeded what I expected, exceeded what popular culture has had me to expect, and embodied that uniqueness that comes with being called Great.

We begin in a mess of spite and timelines. A blurred view of the world, and everyone in it. From 124, the home at the center of the story, we meet Sethe and the rest of her family who are, and are not there. We are given a brief survey of all that has occurred or been endured, from people running away to a haunting being born from the death of a child. Then, Paul D, a man she hasn’t seen in years, has found his way to her.

Time is layered in this story… at times in the present, at times in the past, sometimes glimpsing the future. Morrison moves through lives and their perspectives in a God-like fashion, without warning, but with the knowledge of all things that have occurred or will come. The way she gives details and expounds on storylines can be unsettling, at first, like coming into a dense and thick forest. Without some studying of what lies before you, it can be easy to get lost. She is a writer who gives glimpses of things before unveiling a fuller truth that towers and shadows and swallows. Sometimes these glimpses of the plot can seem like you missed something, but, artfully, the revelations in future pages have a way of connecting past pages, to form a continuous story.

From behind the eyes of Sethe, her daughter Denver, and Paul D (Sethes old friend and new lover), we come to know the history of Sweet Home (the plantation the family is from) and the history of the people who left it. Through their memories and inner reflections, they relay all we need to know about who they are and why. 

In short, they belonged to “good” white people, but things changed when their owner died and others came in to rule over them. Going from being treated like dogs, to being treated like less than that, prompted them to head to freedom. Most of the core trauma of this story is sourced in that transitional period between their old master passing away and them becoming their own masters out of desperation and survival.

Throughout this story, poetically, are piercing observations, questions, and philosophical dilemmas about slavery and the white supremacy and capitalism supporting it. Toni illustrates quite sharply how monstrous this process of dehumanization is, and how profoundly evil these acts of violence were. So evil in fact, it seemed to spread throughout the entire white race, able to make itself disappear and become known at any time, even in the most “good” of whites. It is an evil so big it seems impossible to have existed (and still exist). Like its appearance should have ended the world, like some demonic apocalyptic revelation from The Bible. (A Bible that has not served the slaves well, and Toni captures this black theological resentment perfectly.)

One of the most disheartening moments is when Grandma Suggs, renowned backwoods high priestess, forgoes her ‘gift’ of preaching. After living a tormented life and finally making it to a place where she is hers, she was collapsed by the intrusion of white men into her seemingly sanctified space. Their privileged appearance and sudden disruption cause Grandma Suggs to question all of existence, finally realizing, that there is no promised land. There are no sacred spaces for them. Maybe no God for them either. She forgoes preaching and spends the rest of what little time she has, thinking about colors. Something she never had time to do as a slave. When asked if she was “punishing God” by not preaching his word, she responds, “Not like He punish me”. 

Sethe is troubled by the child that she killed, a child that has haunted 124 since she died. Paul D is able to rid the house of the spirit, but that only leads to it manifesting in physical form… a girl named Beloved. She appears out of the river one day, sick and dying, and Sethe nurses her back to life. After gaining strength, Beloved proceeds to wreak havoc on relationships and resources. It takes Denver, Sethe’s daughter, to gather the community to rid the house of Beloved, the beautiful demon born of crimes against the flesh. 

That is the story. And I am reducing it to fumes for the point of this commentary, but it is such a rich reading I’m not really spoiling anything. This brief summarization and my recounting of a fraction of my reflections is pale compared to the full color of Morrison’s masterpiece. 

Also, I must say, the Everyman’s Library binding is BEAUTIFUL and comes with useful chronologies and a short biography of the author—and it is well bound! So much better than the penguin hardcovers I see in the library sometimes, which are often too tightly sewn. Just a random note. 

And again, I am HONORED to have read such a masterful work of horror and to have experienced this world built by Toni Morrison’s words. There’s an Everyman’s Library hardcover Song of Solomon, so maybe I’ll read that soon.