review

I KNOW YOU’RE THERE – PAUL TREMBLAY

By karen t. brissette

Posted on December 13, 2022

I Know You’re There by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 5/5 cats
One Star

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the SEVENTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your annual reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.

GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i’ve read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that’s still a work-in-progress. however, because i don’t have a lot of time to waste, and because my brain has felt scraped clean ever since my bout with covid, i’m not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap ’em again.

i am doing my best.
merry merry.

DECEMBER 13

oh, man—this is such a great story, even for paul tremblay, who routinely hits it out of the park. it’s a slowhaunter, where things start off sad and creepily askew, dislocating and griefstrung, with inconsistencies tickling like a sneeze through the event’s multiple retellings and it is lovely and human and sad, which are my own personal doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles. and paul tremblay? he is my raindrops on kittens.

read it for yourself here

2022:

DECEMBER 1: PORGEE’S BOAR – JONATHAN CARROLL
DECEMBER 2: SKELETON SONG – SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 3: JUDGE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT – LAVIE TIDHAR
DECEMBER 4: QUANDARY AMINU VS THE BUTTERFLY MAN – RICH LARSON
DECEMBER 5: IN MERCY, RAIN – SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 6: CHOKE – SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA
DECEMBER 7: THIS PLACE IS BEST SHUNNED – DAVID ERIK NELSON
DECEMBER 8: RED PYRAMID – VLADIMIR SOROKIN
DECEMBER 9: HOSPICE/HONEYMOON – JOYCE CAROL OATES
DECEMBER 10: MY FIRST CAR – JOY WILLIAMS
DECEMBER 11: HOW MANY – BRYAN WASHINGTON
DECEMBER 12: KENNY BOND SHOT MY DOG – CHRISSY KOLAYA