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Book Review: The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie

cover art for The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie

The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Trepidatio Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1950305247

Available: Paperback

 

The Cuckoo Girls is a collection of eighteen stories (three are “drabbles” and counted as one in the table of contents), eight of which are original to the collection, and includes “Abby”, a story narrated by the mother of an autistic teenage girl that appears to be an early version of the beginnings of  Lillie’s debut novel The Ceiling Man (I wish she had mentioned this in her story notes as I was not familiar with the novel). I’m glad Lillie expanded the story as the novel apparently includes Abby’s point of view, something I felt was really missing here.  In stories like “That’s What Friends Are For”, about a woman who grew up in a haunted house where she made friends with the ghosts,  and “Mother Sylvia”, which is told from the point of view of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, Lillie shows the imagination to re-vision and reverse familiar schemas, so it appears that in “Abby”, she just needed more space to express that. It’s an eerie and disquieting story as it is.

 

Doppelgangers, twins, parasites, and children gone wrong populate Patricia Lillie’s stories, from her surreal “The Cuckoo Girls” and  “In Loco Parentis”, to those, like “Mother Sylvia” and “The Robber Bridegroom” clearly based on fairy tales, and those mystical but grounded in fact, like “Notes on the Events Leading Up to the Mysterious Disappearance of Miss Lotte Clemens” ,  a fascinating story based on actual newspaper accounts. Other stories are brief but clever, such as “Laundry Lady” and “Three Drabbles Brought to You By the Letter E”, and there is commentary on the tragedies that can be caused by small town “togetherness” in “And One For Azazel (With Jellybeans), a Bradbury-esque tale about a little girl who is blamed for causing the colors of things in her town to change, and “Wishing You The Best Year Ever” about a family held responsible for the fate of a town’s star baseball team.

 

This is an enjoyable and imaginative, if uneven, collection of insightful, quiet, and disquieting, stories about women and girls trapped by circumstance, family, society, and themselves, that leaves me intrigued enough to look into Lillie’s novel. Having now seen the difference between “Abby” and the first few chapters of The Ceiling Man, I would say she’s grown significiantly as a writer and is one to watch for in the future. Recommended.

 

Contains: mention of suicide, mild gore, violence, dismemberment, body horror

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: The Cuckoo Girls is a nominee appearing on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Short Story Collection. 

 

 

Posted on March 29, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Goblin by Josh Malerman

cover art for Goblin by Josh Malerman

Goblin by Josh Malerman
Del Rey (May 2021)
ISBN-13 : 978-0593237809
Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

After several blockbuster novels, and with Malorie, the sequel to Bird Box still fresh in readers’ minds, Josh Malerman finally gets to introduce the town of Goblin to fans everywhere.

 

Goblin is Derry. It’s Oxrun Station. It’s Cedar Hill. It’s Green Town. It’s all of us in our hometowns and yet, it’s something brand new, where the greats would likely fear to live. Think of Goblin as Derry’s disturbed little brother.

 

This book, comprised of a sextet of short novellas, takes the small town motif and shreds it, molding it into something which fills the reader with uneasy pleasure from cover to cover. Malerman seems to display more skill, more darkness, with each story.

 

“A Man In Slices” shows how friendship can be a tricky concept. One boy does whatever he can to help his lonely friend, at any cost.

 

“Kamp” is a lighter tale about a man petrified of a seeing a ghost. Everyone in his family has, and he knows his time is coming. How Walter copes with the expectation will make many readers feel a bit better about their own issues with things that go bump in the night.

 

“Happy Birthday, Hunter” displays the heart and obsession of a man who cannot give up the hunt. Nash’s addiction comes to a boiling point during his 60th birthday party when he decides to kill Goblin’s most prized game in the north woods, a place from which no one ever returns.

 

“Presto” is a love affair with magic, the oldest and darkest kind where a young boy seeks to learn the secrets behind his favorite performer in a story which channels classic Bradbury.

 

“A Mix-Up at the Zoo” details the inner struggle of Dirk, a man who switches jobs to become a tour guide in a zoo, a far cry from his other employment in the slaughterhouse. He finds a talent for understanding the mighty beasts within the cages, but feels a certain darkness brewing when he drifts off in thought.

 

“The Hedges” is the final story in the collection. Mazes built in corn and the famed topiary in the film version of The Shining emerge here. Young Margot claims to have solved the unsolvable creation by Wayne Sherman. What she finds at the end causes her to alert the Goblin police, a decision that might be worse than keeping the secret to herself.

 

The mythology of Goblin’s history is richly drawn within these stories, and connects them with a style that keeps the reader turning pages. Malerman has created a town which may even be darker than King’s, Grant’s, and Bradbury’s nightmares. Goblin is all Malerman and should be listed on every horror reader’s itinerary of places to visit, with the lights turned low and the night breeze creeping into the room. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Posted on March 22, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Unseemly by Jason Parent

 

cover art for Unseemly by Jason Parent

Unseemly by Jason Parent

Corpus Press, 2016

ISBN: 9781523980307

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Unseemly is a nice little story that uses creatures rarely seen in horror stories as its backbone: fairies.  In a quick 59 pages, the authors crams in the story of a group of academics/grave robbers out to find fairy gold, and the bloody disaster that befalls them.  It’s a fast read, and perfect for a rainy Saturday afternoon of horror escapism.

 

The first nineteen pages quickly set up the characters, their backstories, and the story objective.  Peter Callum is a down-on-his-luck archaeologist with a mountain of debt.  He partners with a sleazy grave robber named Dervish and a folklore professor named McCoy to find out if fairies and their legendary gold inhabit a sparely populated, remote Scottish island.  The author does a nice job in the few pages allotted creating a perfectly serviceable explanation for why the legends might be true, as well as adding some mystery that concerns the lone village on the island.  The group sets off one fateful evening, and they get much more than they expected, as the fairies aren’t the cutesy type you find in Disney films.  The story quickly wraps up with a violent, unexpected ending.

 

Unseemly does what a good short story or novella is supposed to do: hook the readers with a quick setup, dose them with excitement, and end it with a twist or two.  There’s just enough story to assist the reader in forming opinions about the main characters, the ending is unexpected enough to not be predictable, and the story moves quickly, leaving out overly-detailed explanations.  The one place a bit more elaboration would have helped is the fairies-to-monsters part, which was a little hard to visualize from a reader’s perspective with the amount of description provided.

 

Overall, a good, quick story, good enough to easily justify the paperback price of $5.50.

 

Contains: violence, mild gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on March 15, 2021 by , Reply
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