Every House is Haunted by Ian Rogers
My rating: 3/5 cats
3.5 stars cats.
even though i have come a long way w/r/t my feelings towards short stories, i still have trouble writing reviews for them. i have written reviews in which i have painstakingly reviewed each individual story, but that is such a pain in the ass, because sometimes certain stories in a collection will just leave me cold, and once you’ve committed to that structure of a review, it’s like “AARRGGH what was i thinking?”
and that is why i am not going to do that with this book. this book is a collection of 6 years worth of stories, and while they can loosely be grouped into an overarching stylistic similarity of “dark fantasy,” they take on a number of different forms, lengths, and styles, some of which i really responded to and some which just left me a little flat.
the stories are loosely gathered in groupings designated by the parts of a house: the vestibule, the library, the attic, the den, and the cellar. and while some of these stories do in fact slot tidily into these groupings; for example—three of the stories in “the library” segment feature books in some way, some of them are less bang-on obvious. i speak exactly two words of german: das unheimliche, which of course means “uncanny,” but more importantly, “heimliche” means “homely,” so the truer meaning of the word is something like, “that which makes us uncomfortable in the place where we should be feeling most comfortable.” and that’s what many of these less-obvious stories do. while some of them do feature haunted houses or houses haunted by memories, troubled relationships, spiders, the past—some of them are just about discomfort within our supposed comfort zones: family, friends, work. the familiar rendered unfamiliar, and a little creepy.
but knowing what you know about me (do you know? have we met?), i am coming out of a long held “short stories? bluck!!” stance and while some of these stories didn’t work for me, i can’t be trusted, so you’re on your own.
so—brief summaries only, and make of them what you will
Aces
first sentence is aces. hahahaaha!! DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?
Soelle got kicked out of school for killing one of her classmates.
actually – the whole first paragraph is pretty good, and sets up the entire collection nicely:
Soelle got kicked out of school for killing one of her classmates. They couldn’t prove she actually did it, which was why she received an expulsion instead of a murder charge, but there was no doubt among the faculty that she was responsible. Soelle told me she didn’t care if they kicked her out or put her in jail. She just wanted her tarot cards back.
basically, a spooky little girl with powers who is having an adverse effect on reality while her older brother/guardian tries to protect her and simultaneously protect the town from her.
Autumnology
this one touches explicitly on the whole das unheimliche theme when a character is confronted with a tree in full autumnal splendor despite all the surrounding trees having succumbed to winter bareness:
It’s hard to explain why the tree frightened me so. I think it was what it represented. A place where it was always autumn. There was something unnatural about the idea. Unnatural. Un-nature. The tree was something that shouldn’t be. It was a tree out of time. A living monument that shouldn’t exist, and yet at the same time couldn’t be ignored.
it’s more of a quietly haunting story rather than a scary one. unsettling.
Cabin D
this one is probably my favorite. ancient malevolent forces and a very hungry man. a good build and a satisfying resolution.
Winter Hammock
lovecraft tentacles/zombies/mutations. like This is Not a Test in the “boredom of the apocalypse,” parts, but also its own thing. an escalation of dread. and tentacles.
A Night in the Library with the Gods
haunted books. this story, like many of them, has a stephen king feel to it. or that x-files episode blood:
The Nanny
another one i really liked. a neat premise: exorcism by babysitting
The Dark and the Young
moar magical books. this one is way more sci-fi-ish, so i liked it significantly less than the other one, even though it is like 4 times as long. it’s good, but it’s got that thing that makes my head hurt. i have never read lumley, but this one reads the way i always imagined lumley would read. feel free to tell me i am wrong.
The Currents
this one is good—it reads like a folktale or song. i could see nick cave writing a ballad based on this.
Leaves Brown
this has a little callback to autumnology, and another iteration of the theme of “home.”
There’s a writer who said you can’t go home again. He was only partly right. You can go home again, but when you come back you find out home isn’t home anymore. It’s just a place where you used to live. It’s lost something, but you can’t tell what it is. It’s like an itch that you can’t scratch.
Wood
frankly, i am mystified by this one. the tone is suitably creepy, but i have no idea what the hell happened. this is like a meaner giving tree. and a little bit like this movie:
The House on Ashley Avenue
similar to the nanny in that it is a more traditional haunted house story. this one might be my favorite, actually. it’s a perfectly encapsulated little tale, with a solid ending.
The Rifts Between Us
sci fi and a short story? brother—you are going into this with two strikes against you. this is how i feel about most sci-fi—great ideas but the execution bored me to death. this one had what i feel was a particularly inelegant info-dump. which i think is my general problem with sci-fi.
Vogo
this is a very short story about a lake monster in which no one has intercourse with a lake monster, which is a change from most of the lake-monster lit i have read.
The Cat
NO – THIS ONE!! THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE STORY!
it kind of reminded me of that amazing stories episode—Thanksgiving, even though it is nothing like that episode except in terms of unexpected sources of secret wishes coming true.
i don’t know why i can’t seem to stop comparing these stories to completely unrelated things. but this is my path, now.
Deleted Scenes
this is a clever idea, and a treat for film geeks and fanboys. i enjoyed it, especially the sad trombone ending.
The Tattletail
this is pretty cute. slap some illustrations in here, and you got yourself a very marketable children’s picture book. i would buy it
Charlotte’s Frequency
where sci-fi meets spiders. this would also have been a fun episode of amazing stories. or to make myself sound about five years younger: tales from the crypt. or creepshow. no, that makes me even older. damn. but it’s good—a little nod to Charlotte’s Web, but with more dead bodies.
Relaxed Best
It looks like a Philip Marlowe novel exploded in here, observes one character. that is my take on it as well.
Hunger
another teeny tiny one, but the length works for it. more of a sensory piece than anything, but the sense is good and spooky, like that first episode of walking dead with all that hospital-confusion before it just turned into a show about people talking endlessly.
Inheritor
these family secrets are worse than your family secrets
Twillingate
dreamy childhood story more about wonder and innocence and that loss than anything truly ghostish. a haunty feeling without any true haints.
The Candle
another one with an effective atmosphere, but that i don’t really get. like wood, i liked it without really knowing what it is about, really.
and that is my review!!
i would definitely read more by this author, especially if the next book is a full-lengther. and is about cats.
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