THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By SHIRLEY JACKSON (REVIEW)

"One thing seldom asked of those on whom disaster had laid its hand is what their future plans were before the flood. "

John Darnielle, The Devil House

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The story opens with our action figure of a hero, Nathan: a marine who is no longer active in the service; and an ex-policeman who left the force dishonorably, depending on whose honor system you use.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.

THE SHARDS by BRET EASTON ELLIS (REVIEW)

quickly: a group of rich white friends are too high to notice that the new kid may be a serial killer (an imaginative young writer / a vain but popular group of friends / a new kid with a dark past / valium for breakfast, weed for lunch, ‘ludes for dinner, cocaine for dessert / boys, boys, boys / endless supplies of sex, drugs, and rock and roll / hippie cults hiding in the hills / blood sacrifices and bodily ‘arrangements’ / ‘there’s someone in the house’ / where are the adults??!)

For just a moment, I was a young, hot, high, and wealthy white seventeen-year-old in ’70s-’80s Los Angeles… My parents are never home, every day is an orgasm, and I have all the drugs and euphoria I want. In my endless pharmaceutical high, a serial killer is playing mind games with my friends and me, and I’m barely sober enough to notice it is happening.

That is THE SHARDS. I am confident that if I were to give this hardcover copy a good shake, either a quaalude, a Valium, or a mist of fine white powder may loosen itself from the bindings. These are the substances that seem to hold the story and its characters together. There’s also a hearty scoop of graphic, disturbing, deranged, stomach-churning violence… a stark contrast to the ultra-sweet lives of these young rich kids. The reality of these brutal slayings is what makes the kids’ dissociation all the more real.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… this isn’t the book I originally planned on reading after “HUMAN SACRIFICES” by María Ampeuro, but it was actually the perfect follow-up. The world of the characters in María’s stories were soaked in the harsh realities of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. What better pairing than a story on the other end of the spectrum… rich white kids with Daddy’s money made from exploiting others!

This is my first Bret Easton Ellis book. All I knew about the guy before reading this was that he wrote AMERICAN PSYCHO. I’ve seen the movie, but I’ve never read the book. I actually owned the book for years, and it was destroyed in a flooded storage facility. Nevertheless, I ended up meeting Bret Easton Ellis’s work anyways. Not because I sought out his penmanship, but because, as tends to happen, I just had a good feeling about the book based on the cover, description, and number of reviews.

This book made me feel poor and ugly, and I think that was the point!

This is a story about a story. The book opens with a prelude in present-day LA as our narrator, Bret Easton Ellis, is driving around and sees an old classmate, which ignites panic within him. 

From there we are sent back to the summer before Bret’s senior year begins. He is a closeted bisexual man in love with his best friend Sarah, who is dating his good friend Thom (whom he is also in love with). He doesn’t seem to be in love with his girlfriend Debbie at all. An idyllic summer spent third wheeling with Susan and Thom ends once school starts and a new guy is introduced at the morning assembly… Robert Mallory. 

Immediately, Robert gets under Bret’s skin. Bret remembers seeing Robert months before he moved to L.A., at a movie theater, but Robert’s consistent denial of this drives Bret crazy. Taking time off from the different guys at school he is secretly intimate with, he decides to follow Robert after school one day. Robert catches him in the act of tailing him and any chance they had at a friendship is ruined. From here on out, it’s a game of cat and mouse between the two. (Or maybe mouse and mouse?)

The first major OMG moment is the death of Matt (a consistently stoned hottie), one of Bret’s ‘intimate friends’. 

As Bret watches Robert ease his way into the various friend groups on campus, he begins to see a side of Robert that is only noticeable from a distance… he notices the silent calculations that Robert is constantly making as if Robert is devising some secret masterplan. It’s then that Robert begins taunting Bret, dropping hints that he knows about the relationship between Bret and Matt. It’s also then that Matt starts receiving mysterious phone calls and notices that someone has stolen his pet fish and rearranged his room. In a state of psychological anguish, he accuses Bret of being behind it, due to some ‘gay’ obsession with Matt. Soon after, Matt turns up dead. Missing for several days, then found dead and mutilated in his own backyard. 

Bret meets with Matt’s father and learns the horrid details of Matt’s death. This makes the outlines of what Bret may be dealing with become more real now. No one cares about Matt’s death enough to notice the pattern that is forming. News articles begin to appear, daily, about missing girls, missing pets, mysterious home break-ins with furniture being rearranged, and late-night attacks. The police eventually put together a profile for a killer they are calling The Trawler. There are hints that he may be connected to a roving group of Manson-esque murder hippies that are terrorizing LA.

Bret makes the decision to divide himself between a true, hidden Bret, and a false, public Bret. Public Bret will play the role of a model student and boyfriend, while private Bret investigates Robert Mallory, whom he believes to be The Trawler. Valium, Quaaludes, and marijuana form the wall between the real and fake Brets. (Imagine someone breaking into your home, and you pop a pill and hide in a closet, falling asleep, and just hoping they pass you by.) Cue an endless string of parties, conversations, car rides, class assignments, and missed calls from Debbie (and The Trawler) that Bret floats through.

Fast forward past more missing women, Bret following Robert Mallory through the streets of LA, Bret being followed by a mysterious van through the streets of LA, Bret being taunted by The Trawler, Bret meeting with Robert’s aunt and finding out about Robert’s dark past, Bret breaking into Robert’s second home, Bret sleeping with Debbie’s dad, and Bret’s numerous attempts at telling someone what may be happening with Robert and being called crazy, etc. 

Eventually, we reach the foggy climax. After Debbie goes missing, Bret is convinced that Susan is the Trawler’s next victim. Robert’s next victim. He decides to take matters into his own hands. That night, Susan and Thom are attacked at Susan’s home by a masked assailant. Susan bites the assailant and he runs out (but not before disfiguring Susan’s breast, and Thom’s leg). Robert comes to the rescue, getting them help, and then heads back to his apartment. Bret arrives at Robert’s apartment soon after and a fight ensues that leads to Robert jumping to his death. Bret is alive and tells a version of the story that exonerates himself, and there is no one to dispute it. 

It is only in the denouement that it is revealed that Bret was the attacker that night of Susan and Thom’s attempted killing… and this is where I started to come down off the story’s canna/lude/coke/valium high… We find out that Bret is Susan and Thom’s attacker after Susan recognizes the bite mark she left on her attacker’s arm, casually peeking out from Bret’s long sleeve Polo. He breaks her hand and threatens her, to keep her quiet. (It’s only years later that Bret finds out Susan immediately told Thom about what she saw on Bret’s arm).

Coupled with this jarring reveal, we are also told (through a letter written to the press) that The Trawler is neither Bret nor Robert. The Trawler is independent of both young men but is indeed a part of the cult roaming the hills of LA. They claim that Robert Mallory was ‘their God’, and the mutilated bodies were ’sacrifices’ given to ‘the God’. Then I just sat with the book closed and wondered what I had just read.

I went back and forth on whether I felt this deserved 4 or 5 stars (like my opinion matters LOL). What gives me doubt is the execution of the ending. As bulky of a book as THE SHARDS is, the writing was actually pretty easy to follow. It flowed frictionlessly from one page to the next. I didn’t even mind all the extraneous storylines because they flowed, and added flesh to the characters. However, the last few chapters ended in such an odd package of revelations and reveals that it almost seemed as if a different writer had tried to finish the story with Bret’s voice.

Now, I must also say, that after reading the book I did a lite Google search on Bret Easton Ellis, just to see what he’s up to today. Unsurprisingly, he seems to be exactly the man I’d expect him to be after growing up as a well-to-do SoCal private school kid (i.e., his book White, 2019). He has not escaped the haze of privilege and wealth, that tends to blind those with his upbringing, from the complex harsh multi-ethnic multi-cultural struggles of the world. I wasn’t disappointed though. Just confirmed. Only a privileged asshole could write so excellently about vanity, insecurity, and recreational pharmaceuticals. 

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). 

★ ★ ★ ★

reading next:

THE TROOP by NICK CUTTER FLUX by JINWOO CHONG HUNGRY GHOSTS by KEVIN JARED HOSEN DEVIL HOUSE by JOHN DARNIELLE THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by BRENDAN SLOCUMB THE SHARDS by BRET EASTON ELLIS

YOU LIKE IT DARKER by STEPHEN KING (REVIEW)

quickly: a perfect collection of stephen king short stories (men with unearthly talents / madness and murder / stolen lifetimes / psychic dreams and punished deeds / balancing bad luck and good / grandpa’s still got it / an unseen invasion / angels on airplanes / dogs are friends, gators are not / strollers full of rattlesnakes / gentleman scientists / a man with all the answers).

Well yes, Stephen, I *do* like it dark. What a delightful page-turning collection of short horror stories with a wide range of subgenres… detective suspense thrillers… sci-fi alien invasions… and even a couple of heartfelt dramas.

My favorites were Willie the Weirdo (a grandfather and grandson share a suspiciously strange connection), Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream (a nightmare gives an old man hell in real life), On Slide Inn Road (a family encounters a couple of hoodlums on an abandoned backroad), The Turbulence Expert (a man uses his perception to change fate), Rattlesnakes (a man on vacation grieving the death of his wife becomes entangled with a haunted woman), and The Answer Man (three encounters with a man who knows everything changes one man’s experience of life and time).

I’ll have to admit this is my first King read (and a perfect introduction) though I’ve seen all the movies, shows, and miniseries based on his work. On paper, like on-screen, the stories felt distinctly American™. Like the feeling of eating a double-meat cheeseburger and fries, then washing it down with a ridiculously gigantic can of Coke. Fast, but filling, and oh-what-fun my taste buds had (though my arteries may clog if I overdo it…).

★★★★★ So fun.

RUN MAN RUN by CHESTER HIMES (REVIEW)

quickly: a witness in a cold-blooded murder case is stalked and hunted by the gunman (1960’s new york city vice patrol / a bigot with a badge / working the night shift / automats and lunch counters / crossing 110th street / crossing the blue line / cats vs. mice / “did he use a silencer or was he silenced” asked oprah / going by way of Fat Sam / double crossing and double-talking / hot head with a hot rod / stairwell chases / parking lot shootouts / man against the world).

Jimmy is a Harlem youngster working nights at a cafeteria factory when a drunken maniac detective is overcome by white psychosis and kills all of his co-workers in cold blood. By a stroke of amazing grace, he survives the attack, but his survival places him in the crosshairs of a certified psycho who is set on eliminating all witnesses.

Don’t pick this up if you aren’t ready to sprint. This one-day read is a fast-paced NYC crime thriller full of race-based angst, socioeconomic division, and catchy 50s and 60s one-liners. Reading between the lines of this action-packed thriller, you’ll find poignant observations on race and interesting opinions on gender. Add a tablespoon of sex, jazz, and liquor, and you’ve got yourself a good time.

★ ★ ★ ★ Short, fast, and loud.

THE SALT GROWS HEAVY by CASSANDRA KHAW (REVIEW)

quickly: an everlasting mermaid and her undead companion must defeat a village of evil children and the magicians that control them (why do immortals fall in love? / children of the corn / bad things come in threes / grotesquery and gore galore / men and their ignorance of anything not man / the hunt / taming by mutilation / winter ice on scaled skin / what’s in a heart? / unmasking the wizard / remembering forgotten powers / regenerating lost parts / the essence of a man is a ball of shit in his gut).

What a strange, romantic, bloodthirsty fantasy this was. A sea siren is siphoned from the sea by a Prince, stripped of her teeth, her voice, and forced to be a tradwife. Two daughters are born from this inhumane union of land and sea, and their mother watches expectantly as her daughters devour the Prince’s kingdom bite by bite. Walking over the piles of bodies her daughters have made in their hunger, she finds herself at the beginning of a spectacularly bloody journey where she will fully restore herself, including regrowing her teeth and regaining her voice.

A short read jam-packed with $50 baroque vocabulary words that make the short page count feel heavier than it actually is. In the future, I’d like to return to this book and read it very slowly.

★ ★ ★ / ★

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.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

JULIA by SANDRA NEWMAN (A REVIEW)

quickly: a woman’s daring sex life in a totalitarian regime leads to confinement and freedom (this is a man’s world / cameras and monitors everywhere / facetime before Facetime™ / overalls and soot / a boot in the face / thought control / see nothing, say nothing / “no touching” / people disappear / yes means no / hate means love / Big Brother becoming Big Father / cheese like rubber, bread like leather / child spies / handsome airmen in handsome uniforms / dark windowless underground prisons / government-sponsored torture / nightmares turned reality / all regimes are the same).

This is a retelling of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, from the perspective of the character Julia. Though the landscape was familiar it felt like there were so many new elements to explore, thanks to Newman’s refocusing of the story’s lens. The gray days, civil self-censoring, and grand governmental illusions are still there, but what Newman highlights is a world that is not just anti-women, but anti-Feminine. The daily assault on women and the collective feminine (those faculties we need dearly for introspection, intuition, reception, caretaking, community, and creativity) is relayed to us through Julia’s own story of growing up watched (and touched and used and forgotten). No women’s rights, but no poetry, thinking, feeling, remembering, loving, or caring either, says Big Brother, always watching. 

With this new view of the story, the smell of blood is sharper (on the street after a bomb tears off a child’s arm, or in the dungeons where they torture pregnant women and the elderly). The design of Big Brother’s Love (Hate) is clearer (double, triple, and quadruplethink… every relationship is a set-up). The heartbreakers are the moments when the wizard’s curtain is pulled back and the evil isn’t anything special… just a man. Made of flesh and feelings just like any other living thing. Subject to thirst, hunger, pain, aging, and death. How despairingly bleak it is to realize that the causes of your and the world’s tragedies are men who make decisions like kids fighting over toys on the playground. 

★★★★