Glimmer Train Stories 70 (Spring 2009)

Glimmer Train Stories 70, Spring 2009


Glimmer Train webite.

Not just a publisher of literary works, Glimmer Train Press, the flagship that is responsible for the elegant quarterly Glimmer Train Stories, is an industry. Based in Portland, Oregon, the journal was launched in 1990 by sisters Linda B. Swanson-Davies and Susan Burmeister-Brown, a duo that made enough of a fortune in the software industry to leave work and begin their literary venture. With the success of Glimmer Train Stories they began a second quarterly, a journal on writing titled Writer's Ask. The venture has been a great success though the journal itself garners mixed reviews: while it pays its writers generously, frequently publishes first-time or developing authors and is a very high quality and physically attractive publication, it regularly promotes generic, bland writing. Glimmer Train Stories prefers internal philosophizing with a backdrop of some medical tragedy or alarming event. Narrators must make some kind of realization, and life goes on.

The journal's structure and operation is incredibly consistent and well organized. They solicit work not only from the general public, but they also offer different contests at predetermined times of the year, from a general Fiction Open contest to one for new writers, a "Very Short Fiction Award" and something called Family Matters, which seek stories dealing with family. Each of these contests requires a reading fee of $15, or $20 for the Fiction Open. Seeing as contest entries number in the hundreds, these proceeds likely help the editors/publishers in offering such high cash prizes to the contest winners and two runners-up. The Fiction Open award is valued at $2,000, plus publication and twenty copies of the issue their story will be featured in. Rather generous and appealing for established and new writers. I am personally not opposed to reading fees for contests since it is a lot of work and external readers are often hired to help with the submission load (though according to their site the two editors read everything themselves--all 40,000 submissions), and twenty bucks is a good investment toward a literary journal.

Among Glimmer Train's best feature is its website. An attractive, user-friendly site that is as well organized as the rest of the publication. So well designed that it is not difficult to believe that the two ladies behind Glimmer Train worked in the software industry.

I am unaware of the journal's early format, or even if they have gone through many changes (though I've searched for back issues in different second hand shops I know), but the current format seems not to have changed much over the last number of years. The journal features stories of varying length (they are open to publishing those awkwardly longer pieces that often have difficulty finding a home), an author interview, brief article and photographs of the editors and their contributors: childhood photos face each story's opening page, while other family-oriented photos grace the last few pages, a section under the heading "The Last Pages." Each of these photos contains a caption, and some of these cations by the authors themselves are more entertaining than their actual stories.

I subscribe regularly to different journals mostly in order to help them out; it is unfortunate that many of these periodicals, some quite excellent, are not more widely read. In 2009 I decided to subscribe for a year to see what Glimmer Train was all about, and with high expectations plunged myself into the first gorgeous glossy issue I received, Glimmer Train 70 (Spring 2009).

This particular issue features eight short stories, an author interview and a brief essay, and I was immediately impressed with the first story, Stephanie Dickinson's "A Hole in the Soup." The story deals with a young woman trapped in a hospital in New Orleans immediately following the flood. Not only does the story have a spectacular title, but the prose is solid and the situation more than gripping. Not just the strongest piece in the issue, Dickinson also provides the best entry among "The Last Pages," with a great photo of her dad and a genuinely touching caption. "A Hole in the Soup" proved to be by far the strongest piece in the issue, and really only one of two worth reading. The second is the following piece, Lauren Groff's "Delicate Edible Birds." It is a good story but drags a little at times and the protagonist can be somewhat uninteresting; it nonetheless has some strong moments and is well written.

The rest of the stories are forgettable.

There is a first-time published writer here, Joshua Canipe, whose "Preacher Stories" is dry, the prose generic and the characters uninvolved. Canipe's caption for his photo is the best in the collection among childhood photos; unfortunately someone screwed up and the photo that was supposed to appear with his caption in "The Last Pages" was omitted. Ed Allen's "Krakenhaus" is familiar and too self-involved. Mirian Novogrodsky's "Just Enough Food to Remember" is one of the two weakest of the bunch, as it tries to structure itself around a series of oddly-titled vignettes, a trope that is more irritating than neat, and does little more than distract from (yet another) self-involved piece. Scott Nadelson's "Aftermath" is the longest story though among the quickest to read. It is written in a clear style and is not a bad story. It deals with a married couple agreeing to a "trial separation," told through the point of view of the man. While it has some nice moments and interesting character relationships, it is too long and the protagonist is a little whiny to be sympathetic. This is followed by "Blind Spots" by Erica Johnson Debeljak, a story with some interesting ideas strung together with some dull writing. This is unfortunate because the concept here is interesting, about a boy who can only see peripherally, told through the point of view of his mother. The point of view weakens the story as it becomes about the mother and her own struggles and grief, victimizing her, rather than being about the boy himself. David Allan Cates's "The Rubber Boy" is the other weaker piece. It is a catalog of a man's life, asking why do I endure, which is followed a single event that gives him reason to endure. The last story, "Toward a Theory of Blindness" by Beth Aria Sloss, is uneven yet interesting at certain points.

This issue of Glimmer Train contains little variety. Most stories are in first person and most with unenlightened characters trying to philosophize about their place in the universe. Whether concerned about a sick child or a sick country, the bulk of the stories centre on a narrator attempting to come to grips with their place in the world or with what the universe has provided them, and each of them through some form of deus ex machina end up accepting that lot. In essence, notions of free will and independence are inherently dispelled, as characters learn to accept rather than make better, or different, the state of their selves or their immediate world. There is nothing challenging in the interpretations of the universe, nor of the self.

This issue features both an author interview and a short article. The interview in this issue is with author Will Allison, conducted by Andrew Scott. It is a fairly generic author interview, but a better read than many of the stories, and though I have never heard of Allison before reading the interview, I am curious about his novel and took note of it. One thing that bothered me about the interview is that, when quoting Allison on authors he read in college, the text reads "Nathaniel West," when his name is actually spelled Nathanael West. We are not told how the interview was conducted, oral or email, so I won't speculate as to who erred, but the editors really should have caught this blunder.

The essay is an all-too-brief account of Iranian author Yaghoub Yadali who was being persecuted for a novel he wrote about a couple involved in an extra-marital affair. The article is well written though wholly introductory.

I am uncertain as to the fate of my three remaining issues of Glimmer Train. They are still in their original plastic packaging so perhaps they will one day be worth more than the cover price. I was speculating on reading the first two stories of each issue, the photo captions and even the author interview, which I do like. The lack of free will in the Glimmer Train universe prevents me from over-speculating, because what I end up doing is likely predetermined. In the meantime each issue will look handsome on the bottom shelf of the little brown bookshelf beside my desk.

Dean R. Koontz, Twilight Eyes (1987)

Koontz, Dean. Twilight Eyes. New York: Berkley Books, 1987

Publication note: A "slightly different version" (as per the copyright page) of Part One was originally published in a limited hardcover edition by The Land of Enchantment in November 1985. It was illustrated in both black and white by Phil Parks, and was originally sold for $32.00 US. There were apparently some signed copies as well, that likely sold for considerably more.

Twilight Eyes at ISFdb

Twilight Eyes at Goodreads

Twilight Eyes at IBList

Rating:     1/10

(This review is spoiler free, though so little occurs in the 451 pages that it really doesn't make any difference.)

I am a firm believer in literacy, and have in the past argued that all genre has merit since, if nothing else, a "trashy" book nonetheless encourages people to read. Yet some books arguably serve no purpose. By this I mean books that are not only dull (which is essentially a subjective judgement), but so poorly written that the author should be ashamed for having brought it into the world. One of these books is the Dean R. Koontz novel Twilight Eyes, which is in competition with the Maurice Gagnon Montreal-based pseudo-mystery By Hate Possessed for the honour of The Worst Novel I Have Ever Read.

Twilight Eyes fails on every level: conception, plot, character, development, character development, setting delineation and writing. Even the title is weak: a misplaced 1980s pop tune. The novel focuses on a seventeen year-old boy who has the inexplicable natural ability to see through the disguises of certain "people" and recognize them for what they truly are: porcine creatures bent on exterminating the human race, driven by their predisposed hatred of humankind. The boy, Slim MacKenzie (as he has aliased himself), is on a journey to destroy these evil creatures which he randomly refers to as "goblins." The novel opens with Slim sneaking onto the closed lot of a travelling carnival, which is the setting for the first half of the novel. The second half of the novel is set in a small town that has become a hive for these monsters.

The narrator of his own story, Slim MacKenzie is a seventeen year-old drifter from Oregon, who is athletic, sensitive, morally upright and older than his years, traits that we are constantly being reminded of as though Koontz is trying hard to convince us of their accuracy. But as Slim sees through the goblin mask, I can see through Koontz and am blatantly aware that Slim is instead uninteresting and unbelievable, as flat as his prose and with less charm than the ink that was wasted in printing the text. The narration itself is immediately marred by the fact that the narrator is ageless, seventeen or a hundred and two, leading me to suspect that it is not Slim himself narrating but someone pretending to be him, and I am left with the notion that Koontz has merely immersed himself in what is essentially a juvenile male-driven fantasy.

Throughout my reading I kept wondering about narrator Slim's vantage point and his motive in telling the story. The events occur in 1963, but it is unclear at what stage in his life Slim is currently in and how distanced he has become from the events he is relating. The voice is ageless and remote, trance-like and devoid of personality, not seventeen but neither forty, which is likely what impels Koontz to keep reminding the reader that Slim is only seventeen. Koontz takes it for granted that this is even an issue, but while we don't require actual details of Slim's present circumstances, we do need to be somewhat grounded with narrator and narrative. The story should have been written in the third person. This would have eliminated the need for the grounding that Koontz is unable to deliver, and would have made Slim so much more interesting. I believe Koontz chose to write the story in the first person in order to allow for some dull moralizing that weighs the book down as heavily as a building would sink a rubber dinghy.

With such an elusive narrator we can only guess as to what inspired Slim to tell his story. The reader is expected to believe the narrator's every word; Slim doesn't even attempt to convince us that these goblins are real, and he proceeds with the presumption that we automatically believe him. Moreover, he is not trying to warn us of the danger of these hell-bent goblins, as he tells his story in a fairly casual way, withholding key pieces of information and revealing them at seemingly random points of the narrative. Slim is not even focused on these goblins and their threat to humanity, as he wades in a swamp of unimportant particulars. The emphasis on the most personal details of his sexual relationship with lover Rya Raines leads me to question his sensitive and moral nature, for he ends up coming off as an immature and overly-sexed man-child, bragging about giving Rya two orgasms before he even enters her, gushing embarrassingly over her perfectly rounded breasts, and then describing in odd detail his own orgasms: "through the medium of my sperm I passed my own heartbeat into her, the two now thumping as one." (p. 143) Perhaps this description is supposed to contrast the "spurting" blood of the goblins in the following paragraph, with "its thick warm jets of thick crimson serum," the serum in contrast with the semen, one giving life while the other steals it away (though this fails not only because of awful execution, but because Rya cannot have children and hence the life-giving aspect is moot). I don't believe any contrasts are attempted here; it is all part of a juvenile male fantasy.

Story-wise very little happens. Over the course of 451 pages we are given very little in the way of story and plot, with a rambling narrative that lacks direction. Instead of story we have naïve Christian moralizing and philosophizing (I don't mean that Christian moralizing and philosophizing itself is naïve, just that Koontz's own practice of it is less than insightful). Throughout the narrative Koontz/Slim reminds us that some people are good, while others are bad. Some are so bad that they may as well be evil "goblins," though overall humankind is filled with more good than bad and we should not harm the good because there is some bad in the flock. Destroy bad and maintain good; such is the purpose of life. Koontz tries to add ambiguity by illustrating extreme scenarios of "real" humans who act as though they are goblins, trying to drown us with the notion that the creatures may have a valid point in their desire to destroy humanity.

Furthermore, just like these goblins some "real" humans act friendly but are manifestations of evil and wear their friendliness as a disguise to allow them to perpetrate more acts of evil. These attempts at uniting story with base morality fall flat, as though Koontz was desperate to add some other dimension to the text in order to save it from its inherent uselessness. Amid this mess Koontz repeatedly uses Christian imagery or reference in everything from his similes and metaphors to the moralizing itself. Slim hears a scream that sounds like the voice of God (is it not sinful to assume that a mere man can imagine the voice of God?), and my personal favourite, Slim's statement near the end of Part One that love is the cross on which he was crucified. Each page is seemingly filled with such allusions that the practice is quickly tiring, and eventually more than irritating.

The novel is written with an agonizingly grating stream of repetition. Not only do scenes repeat themselves, but descriptions from death to sex are essentially reformatted every few chapters. We are plagued by constant repetition of how evil these "goblins" are, beaten over the head with overused adjectives such as "evil," "dark," and so forth, and are told over and over when and where Slim and Rya make love, and just how his semen intermingles with Rya's inner self, or some such nonsense.

This repetition is not reserved for descriptions and scenes, but the narrative is approached with a single, lackluster technique. Koontz begins each scene with a statement, either an idea, the introduction of a character or a single event, and he then proceeds to analyze that statement, however mundane. Koontz sticks to this pattern so avidly that I was able to survive the final hundred and fifty pages by reading only the first sentence of each paragraph, while reading in full those few scenes that manage to progress the limited plot. Perhaps aware of the repetitive structure, Koontz breaks off once in a while to gives us a series of brief sentences that are supposed to heighten tension, but that come across as dry and lazy.

One night last week as I lay awake in bed on a hot day in Granada, Spain, I decided to write a brief parody of Koontz's technique and content. I am presenting it here:

"Hello," Rya said.
She was greeting me as she did every morning, only this morning I noticed that her greeting was different. My senses told me that last night meant a lot to her, and that maybe she did not feel as alone as she was when I first stared at her silhouette while she sat in the darkness of her trailer. I was sure her greeting was sincere, so I decided to respond.
"Hi," I said. My own greeting was also sincere. I was beginning to look forward to seeing her in the mornings, to seeing that beautiful long blond hair and that perfect body clothed in jeans and a loose shirt that succeeded nonetheless in emphasizing her amazonian shape. I had to pull my own shirt down to cover my erection. She was smiling, but I am sure she did not notice the bulge, or was too polite and understanding to hint at it. I had the strong feeling that she wanted to ask me something, and knew that if I waited for a minute, or maybe a minute and a half, she would ask her question, and I was right.
"How are you?" she asked.
I don't know exactly how but I could sense that she wanted to know how I was. She wasn't asking just to make conversation, the way most people do, but because she really wanted to know. This made her unique and made me feel a stronger attachment to her, since I had the feeling that she felt that I liked sincerity when it came to questions. But I also knew that there was more: she wanted me to ask her how she was.
"Fine," I said, and I wasn't lying. Even though I spent an almost completely sleepless night, goaded by horrible nightmares that I spent the previous chapter relating in full ten-page detail, about being chased and chasing someone in a dark and evil graveyard, wanting to kill but not knowing why, until I awoke moaning and in a shiver of cold sweat. Despite these nightmares, the chasing and the graveyard and even despite the cold sweat, I felt fine because I was standing here admiring Rya in her blue jeans and loose flannel shirt. Though the world was being threatened by the evil goblins, I felt comfortable with the outcasts of this carnival because I too was an outcast, a freak with twilight eyes, but most especially I felt, for the first time in my life, my short seventeen years, utterly comfortable in the presence of this beautiful-breasted amazon.
She smiled.
I looked at her breasts.
They were nice.
I had an erection.
I was blushing.
I looked away.
I was only seventeen.
"How are you?" I asked. I knew that dark and evil things would come between us, but not on that day, I felt certain, but soon, very soon. At least by Friday. Or maybe by page 386. How was I supposed to know? I was only seventeen!

Truth be told, this is the third Koontz novel I have read, and likely the last. While I suffered through Twilight Eyes I also loathed The Funhouse (1980). I did somewhat enjoy Midnight (1989) despite the bad writing and uninteresting characters; there was something creepy about that novel, a level of authorial focus that was utterly missing in Twilight Eyes. And it was a good idea. Despite having liked Midnight, two terrible novels from a single, overly-prolific writer is far too many, and I doubt I will be reading any more from Mr. Koontz.

Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box (& “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead”)

Hill, Joe. Heart-Shaped Box. NY: William Morrow, 2007

______. Heart-Shaped Box. London: Gollancz, 2007.

Hill, Joe. “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead.” Postscripts Autumn 2005

______. 20th Century Ghosts, NY: William Morrow, October 2007

______. The Living Dead. Ed. John Joseph Adams. San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2008

______. The Dead that Walk: Flesh-Eating Stories. Ed. Stephen Jones. London: Ulysses Press, December 2009.

Ratings: Heart-Shaped Box   4/10

               "Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead”   7/10

(Semi-spoilers)

Heart-Shaped Box should have been a novella.

Joe Hill’s debut novel deals with Jude Coyne, a self-interested burnt-out rock star who purchases a ghost off the internet. This transaction results in a series of events that forces Coyne to take responsibility for some past actions, and allows him the opportunity to escape his rut and build a foundation for a strong future. Hill tries to build a character-heavy horror novel, but the result is uneven, as ghost story and character examination often exist on separate planes, never truly fusing into a single, solid work.

Beginning as an interesting horror mystery, the novel soon turns into a road trip as dreary as its dusty landscape. Along with two guardian dogs, Jude and his lover, former stripper Marybeth, drive to each of their respective childhood homes to put to rest both figurative and actual ghosts from the past. (With bought ghost in pursuit, though most of the time you wouldn’t know it.)

Not much is achieved at Marybeth’s grandmother’s home, just a lost little girl and a tiresome Ouija board. Excitement abounds, however, when the group arrives at the former home of their ghost pursuer, when once again we have a horror thriller on our hands. The real disappointment comes at the end of the road, the arrival at Jude’s old homestead. What begins as a promising sequence with a strong character in Arlene Wade, Jude’s dad’s nurse, and a sickly and dying father who may or may not see and speak, ends up as a weak denouement for the novel as a whole. Hill had a great opportunity to achieve something of a study of Jude’s character in relation to his estranged father, but sadly all form of reunion is avoided. I wouldn’t want nor expect a heart-felt moment of forgiveness, not remotely possible for these two characters, but I would like something to happen between the two, some element of conflict, especially since this is supposed to be a mainstream horror novel driven by character. What better horror than to be forced to confront the father you've been running from all your life, and what a great contrast Hill could have built between disposed father and purchased ghost? But as I mention above, once the horror enters the pages, notions of character are flung aside, and since we are nearing page three hundred and fifty, what better time to have a climax than now?

Joe Hill evidently struggled with this book. There is a long list of names he feels he must thank at the end, people who have read various drafts in order to help the work along, and perhaps the novel suffer from too much feedback and input; too many cooks in the writer's kitchen (not to mention a few sous-chefs and some big dude with a deep fryer). Hill does at times come across as  lacking confidence. He has the unfortunate habit of over-explaining characters’ motives rather than allowing the reader to gather that information through characterization, action, dialogue and all those other writerly tropes. This occurs frequently at the beginning of the novel, and once glaringly at the end, when Jude charitably slips some money into someone’s backpack. Since I included the adverb “charitably” I do not need to expand by adding a phrase at the end of that sentence for clarification, something along the lines of "in order to help her out because she was struggling and he sympathized with her unfortunate situation." Jude Coyne can’t seem to lift a hand without some narratorial comment which should have been stricken.

I decided to read this novel after having read one of Hill’s short stories, “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead.” The story tells of former lovers who get reacquainted while working as zombie extras on the set of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. I enjoyed the story because of the strong dynamic between the characters, the strong dialogue and interesting set-up. It is an ambiguous little story with a touch of comedy that comes together quite nicely. There is no actual horror involved, and the behind-the-scenes working with Romero and crew do not detract from the character elements of the piece. Heart-Shaped Box was perhaps an attempt at re-creating the effects of that short story, but unfortunately it does not work.

What is ironic is that what I enjoyed about the short story did not work in the novel, and what I enjoyed of the novel did not exist in the short story. The story is a character study with implied horror, and I liked the characters and was interested in their situation. With the novel I did not care much about the characters but enjoyed the tension, for the most part. I liked the mysterious ghost in the beginning, and the tense moment in the middle that I allude to above was well crafted, though another scene at a roadside diner and the climax do not work for me, primarily due to the situation and not the actual writing. It reads as though Hill is trying so hard to be original that he ends up being silly. Moreover, that razor that the ghost wields menacingly, but never actually does anything with, is superfluous and trite, an attempt to embellish the ghost with some horror when its mysteriousness alone was working quite well.

Heart-Shaped Box is certainly not a bad novel. I was interested enough to finish it and I will reiterate that it contains some good, tense moments. But it is also not a good novel. It is too ordinary, too conventional and mainstream to hang above the other multitude of ordinary, conventional and mainstream suspense novels. I do genuinely appreciate Hill's attempt at creating a character-driven ghost story. I was simply unable to get attached to Jude Coyne, while the women all molded into one, and though that was the point, to a certain extent, I did not like the effect; it was just too dehumanizing. I did like the ghost at the beginning of the novel and some minor characters, like Jude’s agent and the lawyer who appears briefly at the all-too-extended, post-climactic, seemingly never-ending character resolution sequence.

Despite these difficulties, Hill is not a bad writer (he is no David Shobin*). I will likely read his latest, Horns, and I do own a copy of 20th Century Ghosts which I am looking forward to on the strength of "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead."

Note: I do wonder if the name Jude Coyne is a nod to John Coyne.


*meaning he is not as bad as Shobin. I need to clarify since a reader misunderstood and was as a result confused by my review of the The Unborn.

David Shobin, The Unborn (1981)

Shobin, David. The Unborn. NY: Simon & Schuster, January 1981

______. The Unborn. Cosmopolitan Magazine (serialized). March 1981.

______. The Unborn. NY: Bantam Books, January 1982.

The Unborn at Goodreads
The Unborn at IBList

Rating: 4/10

The Unborn is a standard suspense/horror novel, lacking in suspense and devoid of horror. At times it reads like a trite medical romance, though I mostly enjoyed its elements of technological parody. Unintentional, of course.

The plot deals with a pregnant woman taking part in a medical sleep study, during which the foetus begins to communicate with the medical centre's super computer. An interesting, far-fetched idea.

Author David Shobin is himself an obstetrician and gynaecologist still practicing in New York (as of the writing this articles publication, June 2010). The Unborn, his first novel, utilizes a fair amount of medical knowledge to narrate its story. While Shobin's knowledge certainly adds to the somewhat thin plot and does help to ground the far-fetched premise, I kept wondering how a sleep-study researcher knew so much about obstetrics, including obscure bits of information related to pregnancy and gynaecology. Is the smart, dashing and sensitive hero of the novel the author in disguise? Or perhaps, while the foetus was communicating with the super-computer, the doctor was in tune with the narrator; a more frightening prospect and a neat idea for a future Shobin novel.

The unusual premise and medical slant help to save an otherwise bland novel. The writing, characters and plot are weak, and though it is a fast read, a third of the 301 pages could easily have been shaved off. Shobin spends far too much time in the first eighty pages delineating these all-too-familiar characters. Samantha ("Sam"), the pregnant woman and Jon, her sleep-study doctor, are both highly intelligent, exceptionally good-looking and hyper understanding of each other. If not convinced of these qualities, rest assured that the author will not hesitate in reminding his readers just how intelligent and good looking these two are. The two fall in love, which is evidently what good-looking people do, and unfortunately they must prove their love again and again at the expense of the reader.

The good doctor has an older, maternal assistant who helps him professionally and socially, and cares about Sam as much as he does. The minor characters, and there are very few, are stock and impossible to tell apart. The computer, sadly, does not act as a character, but as a machine. Shobin had the opportunity to create a creepy menace but avoids it altogether, though at times Sam's foetus does come across in a nice, eerie light.

The writing is weak, but I suppose passable for a doctor trying to write his first novel. The sex is laughable and Shobin seems quite taken by Sam's breasts, though I suppose the attention he lavishes on them might be an attempt at enhancing the focus on maternity. Dialogue is paint-by-numbers and plot is almost non-existent while scenes are quite repetitive. The reader knows well in advance what is happening, so there is no suspense for us (though in abundance for the doctor and his assistant) until about page 200 or so. What kept me reading was wanting to know what will the foetus turn out to be? Freak, innocent child or Damien? I give Shobin credit for not overdoing this in the course of the read, since some authors might find it tempting to fill reams of pages wondering what freakish being resides in the pregnant woman's abdomen to the point that the reader will get fed up and no longer care. I will peculate that Dr. Shobin, during his career, has developed a sensitive view of women in their pregnancy, and I applaud his sensitive approach to what could easily have been a juvenile speculation. Hence little time is spent on such musings, with the occasional mutter from Sam, so that the reader's own imagination can wander at will.

The Unborn was published in 1981, and social and gender roles come across awkward and self-conscious, with the good doctor clearly acknowledging that abortion is the woman's choice. Shobin wanted to make his doctor the well-rounded yet perfect modern male, who is sickened when he feels used by sex and all-understanding of women's lib. Modern at the time perhaps, but a little contrived and comical today.

Moreover, the computers are clunky machines of the past. I mention above that Shobin missed an opportunity in creating a menacing, life-like computer, but in reality this machine may have appeared more frightening in the dark ages of the early '80s. It is indeed 1981, and these massive data banks and "minicomputers" are hilarious. Have a look at Shobin's description of the precursor to the home computer:

"The minicomputer was a marvel of electronic wizardry and mechanical miniaturization... A product of advances in quartz and gold microcircuitry, the entire unit was twelve inches high and one yard wide, with a separate typewriter console for programming."

Not to mention a printer that filled up a closet and spat out folded reams of paper. Of course our brave doctor is also somewhat of a technical expert and manages to cross-wire his minicomputer with that of the medical centre's highly prized and tightly secured, multi-million dollar super computer.

I'm not sure what to make of the 1981 cover pictured at the top, but that it seems to beg for a sequel. As expected, Sam doesn't go into labour until the last few pages so there is no glowing baby in a crib. The 1982 paperback is identical but for a brief tag line below the title: "Before the baby cries you will scream." Whatever that means. I understand that labour and often pregnancy can be painful, so a scream or two is not unnatural. The cover on the left is by Pan, from 1982, and the one on the right is a Dutch translation. I am somewhat confused about the concept of glowing babies, or a glowing foetus. The woman on the Dutch edition cover looks nothing like our darling American Sam; in fact, the woman on the cover doesn't look at all pregnant. She looks like a healthy woman lying in bed and clasping an evidently scalding crystal of some kind. There are two things I like about this edition: the wonderfully appropriate dated technology hard at work behind her (is that a Geiger counter resting on her left beside the pillow? Is that crystal radioactive?), and I love the letter O in the title (take a closer look).

But I believe I have nit-picked enough about this novel and it is time to set my typewriter console aside, rest my minicomputer and pick up a better book.

John Coyne, The Legacy (1979)

Coyne, John. The Legacy. New York: Berkley, 1979.

The Legacy at Goodreads
The Legacy at IBList

Rating: 7/10



Former horror and current golf author John Coyne wrote The Legacy early in his fiction writing career, and it helped establish him among the ranks of best-selling young American horror authors of the period, such as Peter Straub and Stephen King. While the novel was a best-seller and Coyne did pen some other successful horror books, most notably Hobgoblin (1981), he never reached the heights of Straub or King and his name is not well recognized today. Though regarded generally as a good craftsman who has written horror, literary fiction and a number of non-fiction works, as well as a marketable commodity, it is odd that Coyne did not reach greater heights, nor maintained the height he did achieve. In his introduction to the 1983 anthology The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror, writer and editor Charles L. Grant honours Coyne by referring to him as "one of the most gifted and literary writers."

The Legacy is a novelization of the 1978 movie of the same title, directed by Richard Marquand (best known for Return of the Jedi) with story and screenplay by Jimmy Sangster. It tells the story of six people invited to Ravenhurst, a remote estate in rural England. They are brought together by the mysterious and wealthy Jason Mountolive, yet while five are familiar with Mountolive and the reason for the gathering, the novel's protagonist, Maggie Walsh, along with her partner Pete Danner, believe they have been recruited from California for an architectural project. The story is a combination of murder mystery along the lines of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, and dark demonic fantasy.

Though it is lacking in some areas, the book is an enjoyable and quick read. The writing is strong and suits the work: it is straightforward and clear, nothing intrusive, simply well constructed prose that allows character, setting and plot to function on their own merits. The characters are recognizable caricatures, but so well delineated that their stock qualities work nicely with the story. The dialogue is strong and the interaction between the diverse members of the gathering worked particularly well. The setting is so clearly rendered that while reading the entire landscape appeared before my mind's eye. There are some grey areas in plotting and resolution, but personally I like my fiction with a little grey. Everything spelled out would eliminate much of the story's required obscurity. Of course many of these elements are likely the result of having to follow the film's screenplay, but regardless are a part of the completed text.

My only real problem with the book is the climax (some spoilers ahead).

 I did not care for the final showdown with Jacques Grandier. In fact, I did not fully understand it. Grandier was not behind the killings at Mountolive's estate, and I figure he is attacking Maggie and Pete because he believes they are the one's responsible for the recent deaths, and hence believes he is defending himself. Yet there was something odd about Grandier walking the plank of the roof (so to speak) in that I could not imagine him being so lithe and athletic. It does not help that someone who was such a great marksman with bow and arrow cannot shoot a couple of people with a shotgun. Perhaps because the book is so visual yet we are never given a clear image of Grandier on the rooftop that the action appears to be playing out in a kind of fog.

The resolution is fairly well anticipated but this does not weaken the reading. The reader has by now pieced the somewhat grey pieces together and understands what will happen to Maggie, though Pete's fate (a minor point) remains unclear until the very end.

The horror elements are good, with some truly creepy moments. There are some standard, all-too-familiar moments alongside the original creepiness. The book manages to fuse the Gothic clichés with the modern elements, just as it fuses classic rural England with the hip 1979 yuppie Californian couple. In fact there is a nice blend of the classic mystery and Gothic with the rising modern horror genre of the 1970s & 1980s. Perhaps if this book were published only a few years earlier, before Coyne's contemporaries were able to steal the market and establish themselves as horror's forerunners, Coyne would have met with greater success and left a stronger... legacy.

I have not come across the 1978 movie version of The Legacy and have not heard of it before finding the book, despite a somewhat familiar cast including Katherine Ross, Sam Elliott and Who founder Roger Daltry, and the fact that I do enjoy a good horror movie. Reviews I have managed to find seem unanimous in preferring the novelization over the movie, and in fact while the book was a best-seller the movie essentially flopped. If I do get the opportunity to see the film I will add an addendum here, but I won't be rushing around to search for it. Instead I will pick up a copy of Hobgoblin, Coyne's most famous horror novel and the only one available at my local library.

I came across this book in a discard bin at a book fair and promptly saved it, and other mass market paperbacks, from the fate of being recycled (or nabbed up by someone else). It was my first time encountering the name John Coyne, and it took me a few years to actually read it, mostly because of that cheesy cover (I have the first Berkley edition from 1979, the smaller cover shot just above; the larger one at the top is of a 1980 reprinting). The cover features the white cat that appears at ominous moments in the book and no doubt the movie as well, and the gnarled hand of Jason Mountolive. I started reading it because the synopsis at the back caught my eye; I've always been a sucker for small groups of people disappearing or dying off one by one, everything from And There Were None to movies like The Thing and Alien. While the cover nearly had me placing the book in a donation bin, the back cover saved it and I think I will hang onto this copy for the time being.

Horacio Quiroga, The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories

Quiroga, Horacio. The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
______. The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

A collection was published with the same title during Quiroga's lifetime: La Gallina Degollada y Otros Cuentos, 1925. This is not a translation of that work, but a new collection of stories spanning Quiroga's career.

You can find synopses of each story at the Internet Book List.

Rating:     5/10

Uruguay author Horacio Quiroga’s fiction is tame compared to his tragic life. There are a number of differing variations between biographical sources, but since he led such an unusually active and tragic life, I felt it useful to piece together a brief and somewhat accurate account. (By "accurate" I mean I have omitted contradictory details.)

Born in 1878, Quiroga was just over two months old when his father, returning from a hunting trip, accidentally shot himself. The wound proved fatal and he died shortly thereafter. In 1901, the year that witnessed the publication of his first book, two of his brothers died of typhoid fever. Later that same year his best friend was preparing for a duel, and with the intention of helping him, Quiroga accidentally shot and killed him. He was arrested for the incident and imprisoned, but after investigators deemed the killing an accident, he was released and later exonerated. Quiroga married Ana Maria Cires, one of his teenage students, and they relocated to the jungle in 1908. The couple had two sons.

Quiroga’s insistence on making their life in the wild environment led his wife into a deep depression, and in an attempt to take her life she consumed arsenic. She was violently ill for several days and finally died a painful death. A few years later Quiroga fell in love with seventeen year-old Ana Maria Palacio, but his insistent pursuits only forced the girl’s parents to take her away. He then fell in love with another teenager, Maria Elena Bravo, who married him in 1927 when he was forty-nine. Quiroga returned to the jungle with his new wife and they soon had a daughter, Quiroga’s third child. Shortly thereafter the writer’s position with the state was revoked and, unhappy in the jungle, his wife fled from home, taking their child with her. After many years living with acute pains, Quiroga was eventually diagnosed with prostate cancer and hospitalized. There he discovered that a highly deformed patient was kept locked away in the hospital’s basement, and urged that the man, Vicent Batistessa, be released and allowed to stay with him in his room. Batistessa was grateful and proved faithful to his saviour, and helped him to locate and consume some poison to end his own life. (He used either arsenic or cyanide, depending on the source, though some cyanide compounds may contain arsenic.) Both of his sons, on separate occasions, later committed suicide as well. Quite the legacy. Amid all of this Quiroga worked many years as a state official, and produced a number of plays and short stories, as well as a few novels, mostly dealing with unrequited love.

In this collection of Quiroga’s stories, we are presented with an introduction to his writing that spans his entire career. There are obvious similarities across the twenty-something years, but the latter works are generally more skilfully written, while some of the ideas in the earlier ones are more interesting. Many of the stories are simply flat, relying on standard shock endings (“The Feather Pillow” 1907), while some are so infused with filler that getting to the end is a bit of a dull chore (“A Slap in the Face” 1916). Other stories employ interesting ideas but are unfortunately not well rendered (“The Pursued” 1908). Too many of the stories are too alike, though this may be the result of story selection for this edition.

The only truly satisfying story in the collection is “Anaconda” (1921), a novelette about a jungle serpent community threatened by the presence of a human research facility. This story seems to amalgamate the positive elements of Quiroga’s literary phases, everything from a unique idea to solid prose and the strongest example of characterization his work has ever presented (ironically the characters are mostly snakes). Quiroga replaces his usual choppy prose with smoother, even writing, and his characters are more than caricatures, rendered with some fine light humour. There is a poignant message and the story hits is layered with various themes, a multiplicity that is wholly absent in most of his other works. “The Incense Tree Roof” (1922) almost manages this as well, but a strong idea and an interesting character are cast aside by an ending that is more deserving of his earlier stories. The comical and eccentric civil servant is a portrayal of Quiroga’s own disorganised behaviour while acting as Justice of the Peace. What is interesting about this piece is that Quiroga does well in delineating the civil servant protagonist, since his stories often resort to employing partially-formed or stock characters.

As I mentioned above, the translator and/or publishers may have preferred a certain style of Quiroga story, and it is possible that the preference for a certain style excluded other worthy(ier) tales. At least in his youth he was referred to as an experimenter. There is a wide gap in the chronology, between 1922 and 1935, a period from which no story is represented. It is possible the author was less productive in the form, focusing more on his novels. I have not been able to find a definitive bibliography of his short works, and may add an addendum to this review when I do.

According to the blurbs at the back of the 2004 edition, Quiroga has been compared to Poe and Kipling, a statement I find rather surprising. Not only does he lack Poe's inventive story-telling, character technique and attention to detail, his story endings are often incidental, tacked onto any random thought, on par with the tired "it was all a dream" convention. Furthermore, he does not have Kipling's devotion to character and interest in character relationships. Likely these blurbs helped to sell a few copies of the book, which is unfortunate and unfair to Quiroga as it likely raised certain expectations while delivering something obviously sub-par. This raising of expectations would result in disappointing readers.

This volume is illustrated by Ed Lindlof, and though I liked the concept of the drawings I did not care for the art. Each story featured a full-page illustration, and the only one I found satisfying and appropriate to the spirit of the work is the haunting drawing for the semi-haunting "The Dacapitated Chicken" (Originally "La gallina degollada" 1909) . The cover of the 1976 edition features a yellow chicken over a blood-red background, with the bird's head lopped and lying in the opposite corner. Terry Gilliam's artwork comes to mind, and the effect is somewhat dated and comical. The art and design of the 2004 edition is quite effective. A clean white chicken torso is strung upside down, its head covered over by the elaborate title design. This image leaves more to the imagination, and the lettering is really quite nice.

Casual Shorts 2: Edward D. Hoch, "A Melee of Diamonds" (1972)

• First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, April 1972.
• Reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Be Read with Caution, ed. Eleanor Sullivan, NY: Random House, 1979; The Best of Mystery, ed. Alfred Hitchcock, NY: Galahad Books, 1976; Leopold's Way: Detective Stories, eds. Francis M. Nevins, jr. & Martin H. Greenberg, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.
• Rating: 4/10.
• "A Melee of Diamonds" at the Internet Book List.

(Mostly spoiler-free.)

A man walks by a jewelry store, smashes its glass display case with a cane and rushes off, only to be caught a few feet away by a bystander with a policeman in sight. Despite the fact that $58,000 worth of diamonds are missing from the showcase, the thief is found empty-handed. Captain Leopold is brought in to investigate.

This is the premise to Hoch's sloppily-written mystery short, "A Melee of Diamonds." An incredibly prolific writer, Hoch seems to have tossed off many stories in a single afternoon (one website logs 680 individual works, including those published under different pseudonyms). This one features Captain Leopold, one of Hoch’s many recurring investigators, and though it has an interesting premise and a potentially good resolution, it ended up being fairly predictable. Moreover, the distractions Hoch employs to throw the reader off the scent do not work in the least, as most readers should know that the obvious solution to a mystery is rarely the correct solution. What is truly embarrassing about this story is that it inadvertently portrays Leopold as a less-than-sharp-minded detective. He is quite passive and forgetful, and his overall awkward approach to the case results in portraying him as somewhat of an imbecile.

The opening scenes are set up in an attempt to focus the reader on the Samaritan bystander. Since the most obvious suspect is usually innocent, I found myself quickly considering the other alternatives. The initial thought that passed through my head was: "What happened to the cane?" as the item seems to have all-too conveniently dropped off the page. Oddly the cane is not mentioned during the initial investigation, and it turns out Leopold has completely forgotten about it. Half-way through he remembers the item and blurts out, "Why didn't I think of it before?" I asked the same thing; aren't weapons & tools involved in a crime examined early on and shouldn't professional inspectors be interested in what clues these items can yield?

Leopold is led to solving the case by a woman who walks up to him in the middle of the street, telling him she knows where the diamonds are. Great deduction work, Leopold! Brave Leopold then sets up a little scheme in order to learn the true thief’s identity, a scheme that results in getting a middle-man killed. Despite this unnecessary death, Leopold is pleased at having figured out the identity of the glass-smasher’s accomplice, while I was left to mourn the pointless death of the small-time crook.