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Book Review: Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet

Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet
W.W. Norton and Company, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0393285543
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, and Audible audio

When Anna discovers she’s pregnant, her husband Ned wants nothing to do with her pregnancy and insists she have an abortion: when she chooses not to do so, he becomes hostile and absent in their relationship, spending all his time at work. In the hospital, in the first moments alone with her new baby, Anna has the first of many unexplainable auditory hallucinations. Having dismissed ear infections, neurological issues, mental illness, and demon possession, she learns from the Internet that at least she is not alone: there are others who also hear voices. Rather than getting drawn in, Anna decides to keep a diary of what she hears, and keep the voices to herself. After years of being alone with the voices and her little girl, Lena, she leaves Ned, and goes off the grid so he can’t find her and take back their daughter, Lena. Now Ned is running for office, though. Ironically, he needs his family back to promote his pro-life, family values agenda… and he’ll do anything he needs to, to make that happen.

This sounds like a fairly straightforward narrative, but it’s really not: while I started out wanting to believe Anna, she is an extremely unreliable narrator, and becomes more and more so as the book continues. Even she starts to doubt her perceptions, and it’s hard to tell whether this is because Ned is gaslighting her, or because she harbors paranoid delusions. Did she ever actually leave home? How long is Ned’s reach? Are her friends during her escape real people, and if they are, are they even sane? Are the voices evidence of God, or the absence of God, or something else? The only thing we know for sure is that she has a deep love for her daughter that transcends anything else that happens. And some very terrifying things do happen. If we trust Anna’s perception of what Ned is capable of at all, he is not just a narcissist, but a genuinely frightening force able to tamper with the brain, and, through that, our sense of reality.

Readers looking for a straightforward, fast-paced narrative won’t find that here. However, those who enjoy the puzzle of a compelling psychological thriller with a plot complicated by an unreliable narrator, or fragmented reality, with a taste of an apocalyptic future, will find a lot to chew on here. Recommended.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 


Posted on November 2, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow

Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror edited by Ellen Datlow
Tachyon Publications, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1616962326
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Nightmares is a collection of stories chosen by Ellen Datlow as the best stories of 2005-2015. It is a companion volume to Darkness, a previously published anthology of stories chosen by her as the best stories written between 1985 and 2005. Not being as widely read in contemporary short horror fiction as Datlow is, I can’t say whether I agree with her choices or not, but I can say that the stories she chose do live up to the book’s title: in one way or another, they are all nightmares.

Datlow chose stories that take a variety of approaches to instilling horror, from the understated to over-the-top: you’ll find weird fiction, cosmic horror, twisted fairy tales, disturbing family secrets, ghosts and hauntings, Gothic horrors, body horror, incestuous relationships, and more than enough blood and gore. As a reader who prefers creepy and atmospheric writing to graphic descriptions, I found this book to be emotionally, mentally, and even physically exhausting. I received it as an ebook from NetGalley and am not sure how long it actually was, but it required several days for me to read it through. However, as a sampler of well-done short fiction in the horror genre, I think it is successful. Certainly, I have found that several stories have stuck with me even though a few weeks have passed since I finished it.

Standout stories include “Shallaballah” by Mark Samuels, a surreal tale that takes a disoriented plastic surgery patient through a disturbing Punch-and-Judy inspired hospital experience; “Dead Sea Fruit” by Kaaron Warren, about a dentist with a taste for revenge who destroys a man whose kiss drives girls to starve themselves to death; “Closet Dreams” by Lisa Tuttle, the story of a girl who was trapped in a closet by her kidnapper;  “The Goosle” by Margo Lanagan, a horrific take on the Hansel and Gretel story requiring the reader to have an iron stomach; “The Shallows” by John Langan, a tale of a gardener trying to keep going after his wife has died, his son has left, and tentacled aliens have begun their invasion; and “Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)” by Caitlin Kiernan, a bloody tale of a road trip of serial murders by vicious, incestuous, necrophiliac sisters that you won’t soon forget.

For those horror readers who enjoy variety in their short fiction,  Nightmares is an excellent way to discover authors they may not have tried out before. With her choices for this collection of short fiction from the past decade, despite her disclaimer, Ellen Datlow continues to show not just her enthusiasm as a fan of the horror genre, but her excellence as an anthologist. Recommended.

Contains: graphic gore and torture, cannibalism, incest, necrophilia, violent murders, disturbing sexual situations, body horror, rape


Posted on October 31, 2016 by , 2 comments

Book Review: I Can Taste The Blood edited by John F.D. Taff and Anthony Rivera

I Can Taste the Blood  edited by John F.D. Taff and Anthony Rivera

ISBN-13: 978-1940658728

Grey Matter Press, 2016

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

This anthology contains five stories, or “visions”, all written with the same title: I Can Taste the Blood. The editor gathered five authors, each presenting a unique take on the phrase, which originated from graffiti in the bathroom of a dive bar, which read “I can taste the blood.”

The first vision, by Josh Malerman, is the story of Rab, a traveler who begs for help at the home of Madmannah, Sammi, and their child, Aart. It is a windy night when the desperate traveler knocks on their door and demands shelter for a short time. At the encouragement of their visiting friends, they admit the stranger into their home. Rab then tells them the story of how he came to be in their humble abode, what is chasing him, the horrors that he faced in this person’s presence… and what he has done. Everything is not as it seems with the traveler, or with the entity pursuing him.

The second vision, by J. Daniel Stone, is one of violence, underground snuff films, and heroin. Bok can’t escape the clutches of Laurenz, an elderly German man with a taste for extreme violence who creates films to feed his urges. Bok discovers, through his lover Jared, that the old German’s films hold a transformative contagion. As a warning, this story is extremely explicit in its depiction of bloody violence, snuff film material, and sex.

Joe Schwartz presents a vision of a man who earns his keep as a hired strong-arm for someone known simply as Caretaker. The man and his partner, Joe, kidnap a young woman as she leaves her home. We get a series of short memories of crimes he has committed when he first started in the “business,” and snapshots of his personal life. As the story returns to the present, and the kidnapped woman, things don’t quite go as planned for the dastardly duo.

Erik T. Johnson’s vision tells of Canny, who is trying to cope with his strange mother and her death… I think. I read and reread this story a few times, and I’m still not sure what to make of it. It reads like a stream of consciousness piece, and Canny’s thoughts are incredibly disjointed. There are subtle, perhaps too subtle, connections between his thoughts. At times I felt like I should be getting more from this story than I was, but things just weren’t connecting for me. I will say it is very poetic, and there is a lot of rich imagery in this story. Just be prepared for an exercise in attempting to follow a lost man down the rabbit hole.

The final vision in the anthology, by John. F.D. Taff, is probably my favorite out of the anthology. Merle, a divorced father of one, lives in the small town he was raised in, where he knows everyone and everyone knows him. One evening at the local bar, his friend, Gun, points out a bandage on his arm. Merle doesn’t remember giving blood, but the alcohol he loves so much tends to make him forgetful. Things change that night, when the two men venture to the VFW for the weekly spaghetti dinner. Merle gets very sick, and experiences disturbing and hyper-realistic hallucinations. What happens to him in the following days is enough to make anyone crazy. He struggles with his illness, he sleeps for days on end, his ex-wife is a constant nag, and all he wants to do is see his daughter. Oh, and his hands are growing teeth.

I Can Taste the Blood is an incredible anthology, full of nightmare fuel. I don’t recommend it for squeamish readers, though. There are times where the material delves into uncomfortable themes, or it just gets gross. If you don’t like transgressive dark fiction, this won’t be your cup of tea. If you do, dig in. You won’t be disappointed. Recommended.

Contains: blood, gore, sexuality, torture, rape, body horror

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker


Posted on October 7, 2016 by , Reply
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