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Book Review: Passing Through Veils by John Harrison

cover art for Passing Through Veils by John Harrison

 

Passing Through Veils by John Harrison

Wordfire Press, 2023

ISBN-13 : ‎ 978-1680574234

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

Sometimes, the best stories have the worst narrators, at least in reliability. Spending time with the character who we travel through the book with, wondering how much is accurate versus that person’s perception, makes for an intriguing read-– if written well. Passing Through Veils has been compared to Gone Girl and The Haunting of Hill House, but John Harrison has penned a novel that forges its own path in Passing Through Veils, constructed with skill and insight, into a mentally unstable mind. Harrison has plenty of experience in entertainment, from writing episodes of Creepshow, to directing Tales From the Darkside, and the horror miniseries Residue, on Netflix.

 

The novel opens with a vicious murder, witnessed only by a young boy, and is seemingly unconnected to the rest of the novel.

 

The reader is then introduced to Kathryn, once a promising star in the legal field until a complete breakdown sends her to a psychiatric ward for six months. When released, she secures a job with a friend’s firm, and purchases a townhouse with her mother. She hears music and other noises through the walls, but just as she is about to relapse, she punches through the wall – and discovers a secret room with a vanity, o ther items, and the source of the music.

 

As Kathryn investigates who used to live there, possibly the murdered woman from the scene at the beginning of the book, reality begins to unravel in front of her. Visions of a strange woman plague her, and she is having bouts of dissociation when in the house or with items left behind. She meets an intriguing man with a connection to the house and his odd brother, both who have integral roles in the story. How the story is resolved is worth the read. Recommended to fans of ghost stories and unreliable narrators-– or simply well told tales.

 

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Posted on March 13, 2024 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Cover art for Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Viz Media, 2023

ISBN: 9781974736041

Available: Kindle, hardcover

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

Junji Ito’s Tombs presents a collection of nine original horror manga tales. In the titular story, Kaoru and her brother Tsuyoshi take a trip to visit their mutual friend, Izumi, in her new town. One the way, Tsuyoshi hits a young woman with his car. The siblings load her into the vehicle, only to find out she is dead and they transfer the body to the trunk. When they make it to town, they are perplexed by the random countless tombstones in the middle of the road. A few townspeople explain that they appear where people have died. Izumi corroborates these claims, even showing them tombstones that are inside her family home. The dead are not to be touched.

 

“Clubhouse” is an intriguing haunted house story. Friends Yukari, Chikako, and Minae enter an abandoned building. Minae decides to explore the second floor, while the other two wander the first. Soon after they leave, the friendship between Chikako and Minae deteriorates. Yukari, upset by her friends not speaking anymore, pleads with Chikako to make up with Minae. Chikako, however, has a new group of friends who frequent the haunted house they explored.

 

The “Slug Girl,” poor Yuko, hates these little creatures. She used to be so talkative, but she falls silent when her tongue transforms into, well, a giant slug. She’s tried cutting it off, but it grows back. Can her family and friends help her?

 

In “The Window Next Door,” Hiroshi and his parents move into a new house, where the closest neighbor only has one window on the second floor. Unlucky for him, it’s right across from his bedroom window. In the middle of the night, Hiroshi hears the woman next door calling to him. He is met with a terrifying sight when he looks out his window. She repeats her call to him night after night.

 

“Washed Ashore” is the story of the corpse of a strange, massive sea creature found on a beach. It is mysteriously luring people to it. The scientists studying the monster notice clear patches along the body. A commonality between all of those who are drawn to it is that they are missing loved ones. When bystanders get closer to the body and look closely into the clear patches, they find the unexpected.

 

In “The Strange Tale of the Tunnel,” a town is plagued by disappearances tied to a train tunnel. Goro, whose mother committed suicide in the tunnel when he was young, finds his sister wandering there when she is not watched. A group of scientists starts to study strange occurrences associated with the disappearances, such as strange sounds, unexplained wind, and blood dripping from the stones.

 

“Bronze Statue” is a cautionary tale. Mrs. Sonobe is a jealous woman obsessed with the beauty she has lost. Tsuchiya, a master of working in bronze, made the statues of Mr. and Mrs. Sonobe installed at the local park. Through her statue, she eavesdrops on conversations of the mothers who bring their children to the park, and she doesn’t like what she hears. She unexpectedly invites them for a social to unveil another statue. When their hostess leaves the room, they begin to discuss their honest feelings about the situation. Mrs. Sonobe, of course, doesn’t like this. How far she is willing to go to preserve her beauty in statues knows no bounds, and the women, as well as her bronzeworking miracle man and herself, will find out the lengths she will go before she exhausts her options.

 

In “Floaters,” Ryoichi finds his friend Masao, who has been out of school for a few days, with a bug net at the side of the road. He tells mutual friend, Kyoko, about it, when they see a hairy mass on a tree branch. It shifts in Ryoichi’s hand and starts proclaiming it’s love for Masao…in Masao’s voice. Soon, everyone in town is seeing these things floating around, some stating other townspeople’s secrets and innermost thoughts. The floaters from celebrities become the most coveted to catch and keep

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The last story in this collection is “The Bloody Story of Shirosuna”. Dr. Furuhata moves to a small village where the townsfolk are all weak and emaciated. Perplexed at what could possibly be afflicting everyone in town, he starts an investigation that reveals a disturbing secret.

 

This is a strong addition to the Junji Ito Story Collection series that Viz Media has been releasing. The body horror in all of the stories is up to par with the best of Ito’s work, such as Uzumaki and Gyo. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on March 5, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: More Deadly Than the Male: Masterpieces from the Queens of Horror edited by Graeme Davis

More Deadly Than the Male: Masterpieces from the Queens of Horror edited by Graeme Davis

Pegasus Books Ltd., 2019

ISBN-13: 9781643130118

Available: Hardcover, Kindle, audiobook, audio CD

Buy: Amazon.com

 

More Deadly Than the Male gives us 26 tales of terror written by women between 1830-1908. Some of my favorite Gothic and horror tales were written around this time period. Davis has selected some great stories in this anthology by well-known, and some not as well-known, women authors. In addition to select stories, Davis includes brief biographies with information about the authors’ lives and challenges they faced as women writers, and about the stories themselves. While I enjoyed all of the stories in More Deadly Than the Male, there are several that stand out. Some of my favorite tales include the following.

 

The volume opens with Mary Shelley’s “The Transformation,” in which Guido, seeking revenge, makes a deal with a monstrous being to trade bodies. What will become of the man trapped in a monster’s body?

 

In “Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse” by Louisa May Alcott, Evelyn begs Forsyth to tell her how he came to be in possession of an ancient and strange gold box. He tells a tale of exploration, colonization, greed, hubris, and the mummy of an ancient sorceress and mysterious seeds found in the box.

 

Edith Nesbit’s “The Mass for the Dead” is a haunting story about a couple who change their history because of a vision. Jasper mourns that the woman he loves, Kate, is to marry someone else. When she reveals she is not marrying for love, but for wealth, he still insists that she should break her engagement. Out of familial obligation, she refuses to end the engagement in order to help her father with his finances. When she shares her vision of a mass for the dead with Jasper, they believe it to be a sign of her impending marriage. Later, when he reveals his own vision to Kate, they find they may have misinterpreted the vision entirely.

 

“The Vacant Lot” by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman is a lovely ghost story. The Townsend family has decided to move to Boston, and the man of the house has purchased a home for a more than reasonable cost, originally $25,000 for a mere $5,000. The family wonders what the catch is with such a low dollar amount. After a month goes by, they find out. There are strange happenings in the vacant lot next door, and shadows moving about with nobody to cast them.

 

Other authors include Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Margaret Oliphant, Vernon Lee, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Ada Travenion, Edith Wharton, and more.

 

It’s not new or controversial to say that horror is subjective. When we read the Gothic or older horror tales of the past, we may not be frightened, we may not get the spine tingles we are looking for or may scoff at the fainting or other what we would deem as “quaint behaviors” of the heroines. Descriptions tend to be much longer and go too far for modern audiences. I, for one, love Gothic and older horror stories, thanks to my late grandmother Phyllis, so these early stories were great to read. I just recently heard about a subgenre called “cozy horror,” and I believe these would qualify. Also, not only would this be a good addition to a Gothic fiction collection, but it would also be an interesting addition to a Gothic novels course.

 

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on December 24, 2023 by , Reply
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