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Book Review: I Am the River by T.E. Grau

I Am the River by T.E. Grau

Lethe Press, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-59021-445-9

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

If there are such things as literary horror novels’ I Am the River would be the poster child.  This is the equivalent of a 70’s era acid trip washed down with a fistful of amphetamines.  It’s a dizzying trip through the reality (and unreality)  of one man’s mind and actions, as he struggles to deal with his shattered life, post-Vietnam.  Written with exceptional skill, I Am the River is a novel the reader won’t want to miss.

The story centers around Israel Broussard, an American GI who suffers with a severe case of PTSD, as he drifts though life in the slums of Bangkok, five years after the war’s ending.  The story runs two threads concurrently throughout the book, and the chapters are split along the threads.  One thread is written in the first person from Broussard’s point of view, and shows him trying to make sense of his reality in the seamy underbelly of Thailand.   He is clearly unbalanced and has severe mental problems, but he can’t remember what happened to him in the war that left him so unstable.  The author’s skill is on full display here, as he moves between using full sentences/paragraphs, to using short, jagged sentences when he describes the thoughts running through Broussard’s head.  It does an excellent job of making the reader feel the madness Broussard is suffering from, as it comes at you in quick snippets, much like the thoughts in his head. The other thread is written in the third person, and tells Broussard’s story during the war.  He was a disgraced GI who was hand-selected for an off-the-books mission, and he had no idea why he was picked, or what the mission was.  It then builds towards the objective itself, and how it is supposed to end the war.

Some of the highlights include the expositions by some of the characters concerning what winning a war actually entails, and how to “win” it without firing a shot.  I Am the River is very well thought out: it is written so well that you might find yourself questioning your own ideas about what a war is, and what winning actually means.  Other characters help to lend more to the overall discussion in this section.  The reader will get hooked quickly here, as you’ll want to know more about the mission and the nefarious idea behind it.

The author wisely does not give away the reasons behind either plot thread at the beginning.  It is like reading two stories at once: both build in excitement at roughly the same level, and each hits its climax within a chapter of the other at the end.  Both threads tie their plots together for the last chapter, and the reader gets a beautiful, open, ending that does not completely resolve the story, but does leave a note of hope for the future.  It also leaves a setting tailor-made for another book in the story of Israel Broussard, as most readers will be clamoring for more.

As good as everything concerning the plot is, it’s Grau’s skill as a writer that makes this book so impressive.  His prose is fluid and extremely polished, and shows a skill that many authors can only hope to achieve.  It’s hard to believe this is his first novel, as he writes like a seasoned veteran.  As an example: describing a helicopter landing, he writes, “the choppers shed altitude fast, handing it off to the slow rising sun as an even trade with the break of dawn over the eastern mountain range.” The whole book is written with this type of skill, and it’s impressive to behold.  The bottom line is, you want to read this one.  Highly recommended.

Contains: violence, mild gore.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Editor’s note: I Am the River is a nominee on the final ballot for the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel.

 

Posted on May 6, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Dark and Distant Voices by Tim Waggoner


Dark and Distant Voices by Tim Waggoner

Nightscape Press, 2018

ISBN: 9781938644252

Available: Kindle, Paperback

Dark and Distant Voices is a Stoker-nominated collection from Tim Waggoner. This collection presents 19 blood-curdling tales of creepiness, which will haunt your dreams. The motif which pushes the stories along is the idea that there exist dark voices you can’t quite figure out where they’re speaking from, telling you bone chilling truths.

Standout stories include “Blood and Bone”, which gives us a particularly great monster tale;  “Doozer Is a Happy Cancer”, a trippy story which concerns a homeless man who lives in a tent city with a population that keeps shrinking for some terrible, dark reason; and “Sky-Watching”, which blends events from the writer’s life with a dark and grim tale that brings us some really dark and blood-curdling horror.

Dark and Distant Voices will keep you awake at night, as you wonder if any of these monsters Waggoner tells us about lie in wait for you. Recommended for adults. It’s far too grim, violent, and terrifying for any child.

 

Reviewed by Ben Franz

 

Editor’s note: Dark and Distant Voices is a nominee on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. 

Posted on May 3, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones

Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones

Oxford University Press, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0198826484

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

In Sleeping with the Lights On, Darryl Jones addresses the origins and evolution of horror, and provides a brief but wide-ranging, descriptive overview of the relationship of violence, taboo, and fear to culture, society, and storytelling that will provide newcomers with a readable and easy-to-understand guide to the horror genre’s major terms, critiques, subgenres, and tropes addressed in both lay and academic literature. Those more familiar with the horror genre, may be acquainted with many of the ideas and criticisms, but Jones organizes the information effectively. In his introduction, he starts by tracking the origins of horror through early literature, religion, and myth, following through to the present day and making predictions about the future of horror. He provides clear explanations of terror, horror, the Gothic, the uncanny, and the weird, citing major, primary sources for their origins and definitions, and argues that changing cultural anxieties inform the development of the horror genre. Further chapters discuss major branches of the horror genre: monsters, the occult and supernatural, horror and the body (this includes transformation and cannibalism as well as body horror), horror and the mind (focused on madness, doppelgangers, serial killers, and slashers), and mad science.

In each of these chapters, Jones explores the breadth of the topic by first addressing the general concept (monstrosity, in the chapter on monsters) and then getting more specific and discussing critiques and analyses of how their representations and meanings  have changed with the times, through a more specific examination (in this case, of the representation of cannibals, vampires, and zombies in society, culture, history, and literature). Although he is able to address these only briefly, it is clear that his knowledge is deep as well as wide.

An afterword discusses post-millenial horror and Jones’ predictions for the future of horror. Noting that one of horror’s defining characteristics is its existence on the margins and manipulation of boundaries, he observes that its recently gained respectability in academic circles and the way it is now marketed to mainstream popular culture may be compromising its transgressiveness. Jones coins the term “unhorror” to describe movies that use horror tropes, sometimes exaggeratedly, and using computer-generated effects, without actually being horrific (he seems to be focused on recent kaiju movies, which do definitely differ in tone depending on who is making them. I don’t think anyone can say that Shin Godzilla is “unhorror” despite its CGI, though) and introduces “Happy Gothic”,  which uses a Gothic mode but in a romantic, whimsical way.

Jones also notes that recent storytelling in the genre is rooted in cultural anxieties about economic, ecological, racial, technological, and political horrors, all of which are very real parts of people’s lives right now, as well as a return to “old-school horror”, but that Asian and Hispanic horror are also having a major impact on the genre, as well as television, podcasts, and Internet memes such as Slender Man. Jones concludes that horror is expanding past the page and movie screen directly in front of our faces, to include new voices and new fears in ways that, at this time, we can’t even imagine.

As this is a short book, it really isn’t possible to cover everything, and I feel like Jones maybe stretched himself a little too far in trying to include as much as he did, especially in his afterword. He devotes just a few sentences to YA horror and paranormal romance(entire books have been written about this), and a few to the “Happy Gothic”, without really elaborating or providing examples (I have never heard of this and now I am curious). His attempt to describe “unhorror” was fragmented as well. He just didn’t have the space for everything I think he would have liked to have said, so the end felt a little unfinished.  I was also a little frustrated with the index. While it lists authors and titles of books and movies cited, movies were not always identified by the date (there are a number of movies titled Godzilla, for example) and terms defined in the text were not always included (abjection, taboo, and sublime, for instance). This is less of a big deal if you have a paper copy that you can just flip through, but doing that on the Kindle is more difficult. The “further reading” section was also difficult for me to read, and I would have liked a little space between citations. These are minor quibbles, though.

This is a great book for anyone looking for background on the genre or arguments for its validity, or who is just interested in the topic, and especially for newcomers seeking a good overview of the horror genre in literature and cinema. Highly recommended.

 

Posted on February 9, 2019 by , Reply
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