These days it is timely to be in mourning. So many people feel adrift and confused as if they have lost something intangible but precious. And perhaps they have. Jobs, relationships, even hope for the future — today, all of these shimmer and flash with the dangerous light of precarity. As so many of the characters in […]
Editor’s note: The following is a review for the short story collection, Figures Unseen, by Steve Rasnic Tem. We’re also featuring a story from this collection, “Red Rabbit,” which we invite readers to check out. A little over seven years ago now, I read Steve Rasnic Tem for the first time. This experience came via his long short story, […]
The following is a review of M. John Harrison’s collection, You Should Come with Me Now. We’re also featuring a story from this collection, “Cicisbeo.” I first encountered the work of M. John Harrison in the form of “Egnaro” when it appeared in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. I knew immediately that I had found something special, […]
This review is for Monster Portraits written by Sofia Samatar and illustrated by Del Samatar, which is out this week from Rose Metal Press. We’re also featuring an excerpt from Monster Portraits that readers can check out. — The Editors Monster Portraits, by Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar, explores the monster as a symbol of otherness. Through haunting, evocative […]
Why haven’t you heard of Anna Kavan? Born in Cannes in 1901 as Helen Woods, she published a number of books under the names Helen Ferguson, taken from her then-divorced first husband, and Anna Kavan, adopted from a character in her own 1930 novel, Let Me Alone. In 1968, she died of heart failure. Sometimes referred to […]
We finally made it to the end, my friends, and we have a lot to cover. As mentioned in Part 1, in addition to the republishing of Leonora Carrington’s short stories, a novella Down Below and a children’s book, Milk of Dreams, was also released by New York Review of Books Classics, and Virago published The Surreal Life […]
The last ten stories in The Complete Works of Leonora Carrington were written from 1950 and through the 80s, according to The Dorothy Project version. To know where exactly the three previously unpublished tales fit in, you have to consult the Silver Press edition, which organized its Table of Contents chronologically.[1] Perhaps because Carrington had […]
Weird fiction is increasingly international even as it returns to traditional themes and concerns. It was not so long ago that Finnish fiction from authors such as Leena Krohn, Johanna Sinisalo, and Jyrki Vainonen became prominent in English-language discussions of the weird. WorldCon 75 is being held this August in Helsinki. There exists a palpable sense […]
We are back and shaking things up a little in this read-along. As I began reading further and further into the collection, I found I wasn’t reacting to the individual story, so much, as reacting to patterns and themes that were building upon each tale. So, since we are two thirds through, I thought I’d start grouping stories, and in […]
Spells from Wakefield Press collects thirteen tales by Michel de Ghelderode, best known as a prolific dramatist, and includes work that has been anthologized alongside other such luminaries of the Weird as Jean Ray and Jean Muno. Each tale contains some unique take on the idea of “spells,” often with a focus on the realistic interpretations of […]