One of the leading forces in the world of horror literature in recent years is in the form of Josh Malerman. A truly outstanding author who brought the world Bird Box and its sequel, as well as the truly amazing Black Mad Wheel and the recent trip into nightmares - Incidents Around the House. He is capable of creating amazing characters, developing terrific stories and world around those characters, and keep you on the edge of your seat.
I just recently finished his collection of novellas from a couple of years ago, Spin a Black Yarn. While these five tales are not strictly horror, they are horror adjacent and I am happy to say Malerman is as adept at working in those realms as he is the big scares.
Five Amazing Tales
The full book centers around five novellas, all of them telling different tales, but all of them in some tangential way attached to fictional town of Samhattan, Michigan. That town, in turn is connected to his fictional town of Goblin, which was the center of a previous collection of novellas he released. However, they cover the territory of horror, thrillers, mysteries, hauntings, psychological suspense, sci-fi and more.
Half the House is Haunted. This story just won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and I can see why. It is my personal favorites in the entire collection. It is told between a brother and a sister and we follow them from early childhood, living in a spooky giant house that the sister says is "half haunted" and how she torments her brother with this knowledge. We then check in on them again and again throughout their lives, until the end, when some revelations happen. This is a very spooky book, that has creepiness oozing form its pores, but to my surprise, I also found myself profoundly moved at the end, showing that Malerman injects humanity into his tales of horror.
Argyle. What an interesting, fascinating take on a serial killer story. A man lays on his deathbed and begins to confess to his family. The twist? He is confessing to all of the murders he did NOT commit because he held himself in check instead of giving into his serial killer instincts. A profoundly disturbing tales that will keep you turning the page, and then the final sentence is a killer and a dagger to the heart.
Doug and Judy Buy the House Washer. This an odd one and features two of the most unlikeable protagonists of recent years. Doug and Judy are two status obsessed assholes who look down on pretty much everyone and are ruthless in their climb to success and status. They buy a "house Washer" which is the latest technology that actually washes an entire house interior, each item, using a cleaning fluid that fills the house, while the residents have to stay inside a glass tube. During this, dark secrets are revealed and that is all I will say about that.
The Jupiter Drop. My second favorite tale here and pure sci-fi - sorta. A man gets the chance to literally plummet through the planet Jupiter. Houses in a glass apartment that gives views up, down and all around, he will spend months seeing what no human has been able to see before - the interior of Jupiter. However, once he is alone, he has to face dark parts of his past that seem to want to be part of his present. A weird, baffling, ending to this one, but a tale that has stuck with me.
Egorov. I have to admit, I had a rough time getting into this one. We meet a family living in Little Russia in Samhattan. Included in this family are triplets, but one of those triplets has just been brutally murdered on the street. Now, his surviving brothers hatch a plot to track down the man responsible for the murder, and drive him mad by staging a haunting. It takes a long time to get going, as Malerman carefully crafts his world and his characters, and it almost made me not finish. However, once the plot gets going, and the haunting starts - this one starts to move fast.
A Terrific Collection From a Modern Master
The fact of the matter is that Malerman has an amazing way with developing characters, making you care about them, and then making you go through whatever terrors or horrors they face. While has spent time dealing with supernatural terrors, with this collection he shows he is more than adept at dealing with the horrors we all inflict upon ourselves. He crafts tale after tale of three-dimensional characters in all-too believable situations.
Spin a Black Yarn might be a bit of a departure for you if you only know Malerman's work from something like Bird Box, but it is worth taking the trip. He can plumb the darkest alleys of our collective consciousness like the best of them.
Please be sure to read and review my latest psychological terror - Newcomers.
Also, visit my Amazon store for all of my works of fiction in all formats.
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