Review: "The Dark Dark" by Samantha Hunt

I feel like I am going to be repeating myself throughout this review of author Samantha Hunt’s debut short story collection The Dark Dark because a lot of the book’s myriad of problems were ones I saw in previous books that I have read recently, those problems being with the “literary horror” genre that it seems to fall into, with a few exceptions of course. I is a well-written book with a few sections within some of the stories being expertly executed and had a strong hold on my attention. But besides a few slim bright spots (which I will get to), I was overwhelmed by how boring and dull this book could be and how few times the strange amalgamations of off beat scenes actually added up to something brilliant or even cohesive. This would work for flash fiction, but with stories being 20 or even 30 pages long, they quickly wear out their welcome. I will pick out a few short stories that drew my attention, but it was, I am sad to say, slim pickings and none of them were homeruns. The first story “The Story of” about a woman named Norma whose struggle concerning whether or not to have a baby coincides with her husband finding out about his father’s secret life and the vagrant sister that comes with it, who is also named Norma. I knew reading this story that I was not in for a treat. Like I said, I loved bits of this book, but as whole it is a bland soup I struggled to choke down. Standouts include “Beast” about a woman who, when she falls asleep wakes up as a deer, “Yellow” about a shiftless young man who runs over the dog of a polite witch, and “Love Story” a rather entertaining pastiche of a failing marriage. Even these tend to be sloppily put together and when they are bad they are dreadful. Not an entirely offensive collection, but one I can’t say impresses me very much.

Rating: 3/5