Books Read in 2023: Four-Star Horror Part 1

So I went to the doctor a couple of days ago on my husband's orders and funny story, turns out I'm really sick. Since I was seven and got pneumonia, when I get a cold my lungs get super dramatic and I get a cough that goes on forever (I had a prof in fourth year that stopped lecturing and said "oh my god Allison, is that the same cough you had in second year?") It hasn't happened nearly as much since I got the CPAP and my airways aren't chronically inflamed, but it still seemed familiar enough that I wasn't overly alarmed. I went in to see if I needed a different inhaler or something and my doctor was like the fuck are you doing, take drugs, go to bed, and sent me out with a req for a chest x-ray, antibiotics and cough syrup that came with a Naloxone kit. I'm starting to feel like I can take an actual breath - it's a little thing, but it's a nice thing. 

Eve is also sick, and five hours away, which sucks mightily. My friend Elaine (HI ELAINE) whose daughter also goes to McMaster but who lives much closer (SCREW YOU ELAINE just kidding) delivered some meds that had a decongestant other than pseudoephedrine because it was hurting Eve's stomach and keeping her awake for days. I think she might have the flu but her flu shot actually lessened the severity maybe? (Didn't work for me, the two times I got the flu and felt like I was actually dying I had also gotten the flu shot). Or, as she says, she has quite a delicate internal ecosystem, so fever could be for any reason. It's really hard to tell an overachieving university student that she might have to let a few things slide while she recovers. Last semester I told her she was handling a very demanding courseload and doing the musical, and she'd already gotten great marks for two years, so she could consider that a thing she'd already done and worry less about it. Then she got great marks again, so THIS semester.... well, you get the gist. It didn't go over terribly well. If she was at home we could be snotty and cough-ish in the same bed and watch bad tv together and make Matt bring us soup and ice cream and I am sulking about this not being possible. 

Will split the horror, because I read a lot of horror this year. 

Four-Star Horror

Jackal by Erin E. Adams. Synopsis from Goodreads: It’s watching. Liz Rocher is coming home . . . reluctantly. As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward and passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, though; she can handle whatever awaits her. But on the day of the wedding, somewhere between dancing and dessert, the bride’s daughter, Caroline, goes missing—and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood. It’s taking. As a frantic search begins, with the police combing the trees for Caroline, Liz is the only one who notices a pattern: a summer night. A missing girl. A party in the woods. She’s seen this before. Keisha Woodson, the only other Black girl in school, walked into the woods with a mysterious man and was later found with her chest cavity ripped open and her heart missing. Liz shudders at the thought that it could have been her, and now, with Caroline missing, it can’t be a coincidence. As Liz starts to dig through the town’s history, she uncovers a horrifying secret about the place she once called home. Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls. It’s your turn.

-”Sometimes I think of Diana’s mother, Renee. She didn’t cry like the others. Instead, deep bitter blame rooted in her. She hated her daughter. Renee hated her until she died, years later, from a broken heart. Hating her daughter kept her alive. Hate is active. Hate has drive. But love, like grief, is long and ever-changing. Diana’s mother didn’t dare love again.”

Three and a half stars, rounded up. So much great stuff here - regular racism, extra-special small-town racism, fraught friendships between white and Black girls, fraught relationships between Black girls and their mothers, the different ways law enforcement responds to missing white girls and missing Black girls, oh, and law enforcement almost invariably being corrupt and/or useless. Liz is a really great character, whose problems fall at the intersection of racism and misogyny (and when your Black mother doesn't have much sympathy for the misogyny part of it, well I have to imagine that that's a special kind of hurtful).

I don't have a problem with mystery/thrillers being flavoured with the supernatural, I'm just not sure it worked entirely for me here. I will definitely check out anything else this author puts out going forward.

The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce. Synopsis from Goodreads: When two former friends reunite after decades apart, their grudges, flawed ambitions, and shared obsession swirl into an all-too-real echo of a terrible town legend. Centuries ago, beautiful young Ilsbeth Clark was accused of witchcraft after several children disappeared. Her acquittal did nothing to stop her fellow townsfolk from drowning her in the well where the missing children were last seen. When author and social media influencer Elena returns to the summer paradise of her youth to get her family's manor house ready to sell, the last thing she expected was connecting with―and feeling inspired to write about―Ilsbeth’s infamous spirit. The very historical figure that her ex-childhood friend, Cathy, has been diligently researching and writing about for years.

-”Whenever I object to her unkind treatment, she gives me a dark look to remind me of a time when our roles were reversed, when it was she who was in my service – though I nary had any help of her. She was always mostly a burden, a chain to bind me to this cursed place.

My mistress is neither cruel nor kind, but a thing of hunger and a thing of awe. It is no wonder that Owen Phyne found her so irresistible, although I must say that her charms have tarnished in my eyes. A century of scrubbing and boiling bones will do that.”

As with her previous book, this is a masterful exercise in storytelling in which it is equally plausible that the fantastical elements are real or imagined - and the story is sad and scary either way. The resentments of unhappy women mistreated by careless men exert a frightening power.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle. Synopsis from Goodreads: Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and an “absorbing, powerful” ( BuzzFeed ) new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of The Changeling. Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.

I am a big Victor LaValle fan - like Stephen Graham Jones, he uses horror as a medium to explore racism, and I feel like it doesn't diminish the issue at all, in fact sometimes makes the critique feel even more incisive. This book succeeds on so many levels - as a description of the hardships of homesteading life, particularly as a lone black woman. As an illustration of the power of female friendship. And then there's a the issue of the thing in the trunk, which, whoa. 

The Spite House by Johnny Compton. Synopsis from Goodreads: Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he’s desperate for money–it’s not easy to find safe work when you can’t provide references, you can’t stay in one place for long, and you’re paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you. When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. Provided the house’s horrors don’t drive them all mad, like the caretakers before them. The job calls to Eric, not just because there’s a huge payout if they can make it through, but because he wants to explore the secrets of the spite house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it’ll help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running. A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and death and the depths of a father’s love, Johnny Compton’s The Spite House is a stunning debut by a horror master in the making.

-”Peter should not have been disappointed. He shouldn’t have dared hope for his brother’s understanding, but what Lukas said to him tore something out of him that he had failed to loosen, so it did not come away clean.”

A spite house is an actual thing - traditionally, a house built or modified for the purpose of irritating neighbours. This seems to me to be rife with possibilities for comedy and drama, as well as horror, and I'm surprised I haven't come across it as a literary device before now. As the title of this book it works on several levels. It's hard writing about haunted houses in a way that creates fear the same way a movie scene can, but there were passages here that accomplished it for me, and that is in addition to the family elements that added layers of foreboding and melancholy.

The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett. Synopsis from Goodreads: 1643: A small group of Parliamentarian soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern England. Their only hope for survival is to flee into the nearby Moresby Wood... unwise though that may seem. For Moresby Wood is known to be an unnatural place, the realm of witchcraft and shadows, where the devil is said to go walking by moonlight... Seventeen men enter the wood. Only two are ever seen again, and the stories they tell of what happened make no sense. Stories of shifting landscapes, of trees that appear and disappear at will... and of something else. Something dark. Something hungry. five women are headed into Moresby Wood to discover, once and for all, what happened to that unfortunate group of soldiers. Led by Dr Alice Christopher, an historian who has devoted her entire academic career to uncovering the secrets of Moresby Wood. Armed with metal detectors, GPS units, mobile phones and the most recent map of the area (which is nearly 50 years old), Dr Christopher’s group enters the wood ready for anything.

I am waffling between three and four for a few reasons. Is it well written? Definitely. I appreciate the differences between the group of men and the group of women, one group there out of necessity and one out of choice. The difference in dynamics between the members of the groups, the dissension, the atmosphere of the forest, the growing dread and confusion - all well done. Oh, and the jabs at academia, the examining of the thirst for actual knowledge vs. the political angling for academic success - also very on point. Is it a satisfying horror story? Hmm, not entirely? At this point in my life I can be more comfortable with a lack of closure, and I don't require a hit-you-over-the-head six-paragraph explanatory map. But I maybe need something a little more than 'oh well, oldness, mysteries, who can say' - well, you're the author, you could say, some would argue that saying is your actual literal JOB, but okay I GUESS. As 'folk horror' which someone described it as, it is very good. I don't regret reading it.

999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense edited by Al Sarrantonio & Neil Gaiman. Synopsis from Goodreads: Award-winning writer and editor Al Sarrantonio gathers together twenty-nine original stories from masters of the macabre. From dark fantasy and pure suspense to classic horror tales of vampires and zombies, 999 showcases the extraordinary scope of fantastical fright fiction. The stories in this anthology are a relentless tour de force of fear, which will haunt you, terrify you, and keep the adrenaline rushing all through the night.

While organizing my bookshelves, I took this thick, battered paperback off the shelf up in my bedroom, planning to skim through it one last time and then give it away. Instead I ended up deeply engrossed in most of the stories and couldn't put it down until I read the all again, and then still had to think twice about getting rid of it. This anthology was my first introduction to some horror writers that I've followed ever since. Some stories are extremely dark and twisted - ICU by Edward Lee; some are more traditional - Good Friday by F. Paul Wilson (nuns against vampires, whoo-hoo); some are more mathematical than you'd expect from a horror story (The Book of Irrational Numbers by Michael Marshall Smith) and some are yearningly strange (Rio Grande Gothic by David Morrell). 

Isolation: The Horror Anthology edited by Dan Coxon & Paul Tremblay. Synopsis from Goodreads: A chilling horror anthology of 18 stories about the terrifying fears of isolation, from the modern masters of horror. Featuring Tim Lebbon, Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, M.R. Carey, Ken Liu and many more. Lost in the wilderness, or shunned from society, it remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: hikers lost in the woods; astronauts adrift in the silence of deep space; the quiet voice trapped in a crowd; the prisoner, with no hope of escape. Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.

I tend to rate anthologies even more forgivingly than everything else - if at least one story is up there, I don't know how to average it all accurately. The fears of isolation generated by the pandemic and lockdowns is a great excuse for an anthology, but I'm up for horror short stories anytime anyway. There were some good ones here, a couple were meh, but Across the Bridge by Tim Lebbon was stellar, with an absolutely devastating ending, and Fire Above, Fire Below (think of Cassandra from Greek lit) by Lisa Tuttle was flawless, as Lisa Tuttle generally is in my experience. 

The Best Horror of the Year vol. 14 edited by Ellen Datlow. Synopsis from Goodreads: For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the fourteenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.

-"Bloated and lanky, his jaw unslung" 

-”I glanced toward the field once more. The figure had climbed the wall while our attention was elsewhere and was moving through the stagnant water and thistles toward us, each step marked by the chit chit of skinless jaws.”

I don't actually read horror thinking I'm going to be scared - not the kind of scared where you shudder and can't turn the lights off. Good horror is cathartic the way Aristotle said tragedy was - through the engagement of pity and fear. That said, there was imagery in this anthology that did make me literally shudder. Because you are probably tired of me enumerating single stories, I will talk about two things I do not like in anthologies - one is including poems. If I wanted a book of poetry, I would buy a book of poetry. I force myself to read them, or start reading them, but I never feel like they add anything. The other is when there are multiple stories by the same author. Really? Out of all the submissions you got, there wasn't a single story by an un-included author that was as good or better than the second story by someone who already got a slot? It bugs me. Even though, goddammit, the two Steve Toase stories in this one were staggeringly fucking good. The Eoin Murphy and Michael Marshall Smith stories were excellent but so goddamned sad they made me angry. 

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror edited by Jordan Peele, Erin Jackson. Synopsis from Goodreads: The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation. A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid.

-"Noble. The name fit. It had a ring to it that demanded respect -- which had been the entire reason his parents had chosen it. It forced white folks to say the name of honor, even if they didn't respect the Black man carrying it."

-"Bro, we are an undifferentiated mass of heterosexual, cisgender, Anglo-Saxon, upper-class, male privilege. Who the fuck is gonna wanna explore our inner life by the end of this?"

I love Jordan Peele. Key & Peele is smart and hilarious, and his horror movies are smart and scary and entertaining. I requested this the second I found out about it. Then I started reading it and had to remind myself that the stories weren't actually written by Jordan Peele, just selected by him. I got a few stories in and was a little bewildered, a little disappointed, wondering if it was just me and if not liking new Black horror makes you racist. Hmm, now I am looking at the story list and this is not even true, what the hell. I didn't like the first story (although it was not by any means un-frightening), but I liked the second very much. Oh, but then I didn't like the next three very much, and not just because they weren't my thing, they just didn't seem that good. Even the one by Cadwell Turnbull - it seemed like a rip-off of Get Out. Invasion of the Baby Snatchers was a promising premise, but the ending was truly baffling - it felt like a screamingly obvious statement of something that was already, well, screamingly obvious. I liked the rest much better - Pressure by Ezra Claytan Daniels was my favourite, illustrating effectively what it's like to be a black person in a family full of white people, while also being a stunningly good horror read.