Review: "When the Nines Roll Over" by David Benioff

I really hope, after reading such an excellent collection, that David Benioff will divide his work between movie scripts and novels/short stories, cause the more people like him pumping out plot driven stories with heart and insight is nothing but good news to those who love to read. I first read his work last year with The 25^th Hour (both the movie and the book are excellent and compliment each other well). That book is simply amazing and really established him as one of the best modern storytellers along with more famous names like Chabon and Lethem. His stories are never hard to read, easy to understand and you are never bogged down with inane details or confusing literary techniques. They also have a very cinematic quality, and should translate easily onto the big screen. I wouldn’t be surprised if City of Thieves, his other novel (which I did not like at first, but my opinion might change after this book) isn’t being developed for a major motion picture as we speak. For now, we have this wonderful short story collection that is every bit as good as his wonderful novels. They vary in what the settings are and range from the hilarious to melancholic. Some of the standouts include “The Devil Comes to Orekhovo”, which has a newly enlisted Russian infantryman must make a drastic decisions to either save the life of an old woman or risk his life and his friends anonymity of their hideout in the house they just found. It has fantastical elements and is never boring, even if you do not like war stories. Itself could make an excellent movie. My favorite, and possibly saddest story is “The Barefoot Girl in Clover”, which has a former high school football star who lost his glory in a horrific neck injury, recall a girl he spent the day with when he skipped school. He tries to find out where she is, and when he does, it hits the reader like a gush of icy cold wind. Most likely because everyone has faced a similar situation when recalling our pasts, and knowing it is unchangeable. Very few collections I have read recently have been as easy to read and flow as smoothly as this one. It is also a lot more readable, since it offers some thing new and compelling with each new story, and there is definitely something here everyone will like. So go out by David Benioff’s books, and hopefully it will encourage him to write more.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "A Dark Matter" by Peter Straub

This was my first venture into Peter Straub haunting and menacing world, and I have been missing a lot. He is probably the second most well-known American horror writer, next to Stephen King, obviously, and both represent, through their writings a certain kind of mindset and experience that is characteristic of modern life. But while Stephen King embraces the modern age in the way his sentences are put together in a simple way and contain modern pop culture references, Straub is of the old school of a Lovecraft or Poe, where tension and atmosphere work to give the reader the kind of nightmares that remain with them even when you wake up and the sun is shining. Both styles kind of compliment each other (they wrote two books together) but they remain very different from each other, and I like them both for what each one does to push the boundaries of what can scare us. This novel, his most recent, begins when Lee Harwell, a famous author, overhears a crazed maniac spouting gibberish in coffee shop he is eating at. The man’s ramblings activate the memories he has of the time in college during the 60’s when his group of friends, one of which became his wife, fell under the spell of a guru named Spencer Mallon. This parasitic relationship ended with a botched séance in a meadow that resulted in one of the member’s horrible dismemberment. Lee does not know what exactly happened on that infamous night. And now, forty years later, a determined Lee is going to find out what happened, and his journey will bring him into contact with the sad lives his friends now lead, and the terrible possibility of what might happen to him. This novel works in a similar way to a novel I read earlier this year called Slippin’ into Darkness by Norman Partridge, but this is a lot more slick and while that book was very gritty and nasty. It essentially is part of a sub-genre of fiction called ‘the nostalgic death trip”. These kinds of stories/novels deal with a past that is at the same time unattainable and actively destroying the people that are a part of it. They are changed for the worst by a past event, yet they, of course, cannot do anything about it.  I like these stories a lot because the morals in each one ring very true to life, and they are always chock-full of cool plot twists. The people in the novel’s situation, whether they are committed to an insane asylum, or have become a horribly empty person who destroys anyone’s life the happen to come in contact with. A series of stories told by those involved lead Lee to the truth of what happened that night, and it is a truth that is represents a painful sense of change while also coming with a sense of joy and hopefulness. But a lot of this stories magic is in getting to that truth. I highly recommend this novel by a bona-fide horror master. I eagerly await many more trips to his dark and mysterious universes.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Death Instinct" by Bentley Little

This novel, while not as lackluster as Dominion and not as fantastic as Dispatch, this is definitely one of the more unsettling things I have read. It has the same icky mood and tone that something like the film version of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door or Pet Semetary had, where you constantly having second thoughts about the fictional journey the author or authors are taking you on, because not only is it going to open up dark places in the characters, it may just do the same to you. This novel, one of the few Little novels that does not rely on any kind of supernatural happenings, concerns the life of Cathy, who lives alone with her aging father. A missing crazed brother who disappeared years ago, and murder-suicide that happened across the street still haunts her and keep her from moving on in life. While she is content with her life and friendship with Jimmy, a neighborhood kid, things take a very dark turn when an aloof woman moves into the infamous house with her mentally challenged son, and a series of gruesome murders begin to occur, all leading back to the house across the street. This is a very violent novel, more so then Dominion, but while in the context of that story, the violence was humorous, here, it is dead serious. There is a really nasty death involving pins and needles that is astounding in its uniqueness and horrifying in it’s implications.  There is a general lack of anything optimistic in these people, which kind of rubs me the wrong way but can never ruin a story. Also, the killer is pretty easy to figure out, and when you do, the idea behind it is probably the scariest part of the book, and makes you thankful it is partially an untruth, at least I think. While not a masterpiece of shock literature, this book still packs a wallop, and anyone who like there stories dark, sleazy, and wet with gore, should enjoy this piece.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Willful Creatures" by Aimee Bender

A pretty above average collection by a very whimsical writer. She reads sort of like George Saunders if he wrote fairy tales. Bender’s stories are actually more personal than his, which seem to focus on the absurd nature of the actions and come to represent greater truths about capitalistic societies, which can be overwhelming at points. But the weirdness in these stories come from something more inward, and affect only a few individuals A boy is born with keys for fingers, and finds out, with equal amounts disappointment and joy, what they open up in “The Leading Man”. Another story, “Fruits and Words” is about a woman, who owns a shop where the fruit is frighteningly delicious and words have very real, tangible bodies and are really expensive. Some of the stories do kind of fall flat, but these are usually the shorter ones that focus more on a gimmick than a story. These stories do occur a few times in this collection, but thankfully it does not derail the whole book into a ditch of goofy yet shallow writing. It is definitely not the best collection I have read ever, but it does have its qualities. It really goes to show the reader how well Bender can balance the insane with the humane. No matter how silly or sometimes stupid the premise or details are, we never lose cite of the human element, whether that be loneliness, a need for gratification, or the universal need to fit in. Behind the quirky situations, which, thankfully are in no way annoying or too cutesy, are real problems and real people, which sometime come to reflect the many odd yet natural ways we deal with the everyday world around us. I do recommend this collection, because while this is by no means my favorite collection of short stories, there is a big audience out there that will love this dearly, as they should.

Rating: 4/5