But now I honestly wish I had just gone ahead and read it beforehand. Ok, so I had been saving this one to read in October. I also thought it was very cool that he hid another story ( Scheherazade's Typewriter) in the acknowledgments. Quite a few of the stories allowed the reader to do just that, and I think that may have been what I liked most about this collection. The Black Phone was an interesting take on a serial killer, and it made me want to watch the movie.īest New Horror was awesome! I loved that he basically asks the reader to choose their own ending in that one. I've seen quite a few people say that Pop Art was their least favorite, but it was one of the ones that I honestly liked the most.
Widow's Breakfast & Better Than Home were two stories that weren't at all supernatural and didn't seem to fit into this anthology, but Hill is an excellent storyteller, so you just kind of go with it. There were some that just flew completely over my head and some that I simply didn't see the point of at all. Like most collections, I enjoyed some more than others. Just slice of life tales that star the misfits of the 20th century, and showcase them in odd and unusual stories.
They aren't scary, nor do I think they are meant to be.
Short stories with a sometimes paranormal slant maybe, but not horror. There is the self-aware, post-modernist work in which a well-known anthologist gets savagely schooled by a contributor about what constitutes "The Best in Modern Horror," the unsettling tale about the effect of family disguises and games on a son ("My Father's Mask"), the powerful, sustained novella about an autistic brother who can construct marvelous, imprisoning labyrinths, a story which never loses its horror or its humanity ("Voluntary Committal"), or the masterpiece-I do not use the term lightly-about an "inflatable" childhood friend ("Pop Art") that has something to teach every reader about disability and transcendence. And then there are times when Hill's writing is so good that comparisons don't arise. Hill, the son of Stephen King, inherits his father's empathy for the ordeals of childhood as well as his artfulness in constructing a tale, but he also possesses a warmth and an elegance all his own.Īt times his stories are chilling and gripping like the horror fiction of King ("The Black Phone"), but at other times they are gentle and elegiac like Bradbury ("Better Than Home") or quirky and humorous like Vonnegut ("Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead"). Seldom does a collection of weird stories feature a style so accomplished, a range of tone and mood so broad, or a generosity so profound.
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