Catriona Ward first exploded on the scene 8 years ago with her fantastic novel Rawblood. With each new release, Ward has pushed the boundaries with the reader's expectations, forcing the reader to look not just between the lines but also to look inside themselves so that they can fully digest and understand what they have just read. These complex, multilayered stories challenge the reader in a way that very few other horror novels can; they are deeply rewarding on first reading, but if they shine after you have read the final page and everything clicks into place, these are the sort of stories that leave an imprint on your heart, soul and mind.  


Looking Glass Sound is another such book; initially, it feels like one of the most straightforward novels from Ward in terms of narrative structure and plot devices; however, don't be fooled, as it won't be long before you realise that this is anything but a straightforward novel. You will be tempted to go back and reread certain sections just to ensure that you haven't missed a critical point that at first seemed like an innocuous plot point. And this is no criticism about the story; the richness and sense of incorporeal dread that percolates throughout this novel are made all the better with this teasing, the trail of breadcrumbs approach to revealing the true nature of the story.  


Set during the summer months of 1989, there is a beautiful sense of nostalgia running through the book for those of us who were teenagers during these years, and the sense of wonder that Ward invokes with her descriptions of spending a summer at the beach with your "friends" is a glorious addition to the book. Never heavy-handed in its approach, it thankfully never takes The Stranger Things approach to this by laying on cultural reference after cultural reference to get a feel for the era. Rather than this approach, Ward channels what it was like to be a teenager in a period where life was just that little bit simpler with no mobile phones or the internet. The sense of freedom and carelessness that we all had way back then is tempered by a subtle and dark sense of impending doom, with her threat of the summer boogie man and the realisation that the friendships are hiding a dark and deadly secret and a joy to read, love, live, a hope to belong are laid bare with a raw and honest approach to storytelling. Ward perfectly captures how we were all feeling during those long-gone summer days.  


You will notice that I am being as vague as I can be about the actual plot. There is a good reason for this, novels like this are best approached from a total point of ignorance with regards to it, the partially meta-narrative, filled with or without unreliable narrators, will be lessened if you know what is going on before you embrace this novel with both hands. Ward refuses to hold the reader's hand while they make their way through this complex novel, and why should she, when the writing is this exquisite, we should return the favour by giving her our full attention.  


And ass for the book's resolution, many authors stumble on the final ten yards. However, Ward nails it entirely with a powerful, chaotic and thought-provoking final act that will leave you with that warm glow you only get from consuming a perfect piece of art. 


Filled with wonderfully complex characters, who take their time to reveal their true nature, this is as much an essay on the frailties of friendships and the past catching up with you as it is a gothic horror novel. They are so well realised that you feel as though you are one of the gang; whether or not you want to be one of the gang that's up to you.  


The stones are singing in Looking Glass Sound, but we should all be singing at the top of our voices about this elegant and bewitching novel.  




 ​

I was immensely impressed by Blaine Daigle’s debut The Broken Places which might be described as an ice-cold blend of Adam Nevill’s The Ritual, Marc E Finch’s Boy in the Box and Ron Malfi’s Bone White. Being entirely set in a remote part of Canada’s Yukon Territory it is easy to compare The Broken Places with any survival style story where something nasty lurks in the forests and help remains frighteningly out of reach. Whatever you may decide to compare this terrific novel to, this gripping, eerie and captivating tale more than holds its own against the big names in the genre. Even, if at first glance, the plot sounds derivative of many other isolated snow-swept settings Daigle gives all those familiar ingredients a shakeup delivering a chilling and powerful read.


The Broken Places is written in the third person and seamlessly moves between the three main characters and best friends, Ryne, Shawn and Noah. Apart from various flashbacks the book has virtually no other characters and is built around their long-standing friendship and the unnamed powers which test their endurance to the extremes. Aged in their late twenties and with significant shared history behind them, the trio meet up to visit Ryne’s family cabin which is some miles beyond the village of Wolf’s Bone, in a remote part of the Yukon.


All three men were fascinating, relatable, and believable characters as they all had complex personal baggage which impacts the story in unique ways. Ryne’s is the most significant, having inherited the cabin from his father and uncle after their recent deaths, he is returning to his old home after even more family tragedy which has left him like a broken shell. The Broken Places was a very bleak book and happiness or cheery scenes are absent with anxiety levels increasing very quickly once the three reach the remote cabin. Even the title itself could be referring to the men themselves, just as much as the dangerous surroundings.


The novel is developed around Ryne’s childhood connection with the cabin, which was built by his ancestors many generations earlier, but there were secrets his father and uncle chose not to pass onto him. In the prologue dreamlike sequence a childhood Ryne witnesses his uncle bowing down in front on an antlered creature and is warned never to eat meat from the forest. But why? Clues are dropped here and there and Blaine Daigle’s forest is a threatening and imposing creation which is vividly brought to life. The unnerving behaviour of the local wildlife was equally unsettling and is a million miles away from the cute animals of Narnia, with experienced childhood hunters Ryne and Shaun both struggling to understand their odd characteristics with the natural laws of the wilderness seeming falling apart.


The Broken Places is set over a relatively brief period of a couple of days, with the three men arriving at the cabin just as a huge storm arrives cutting them off from the nearby village. Its pace is deliciously slow as anxieties increase with hints being dropped here and there what is going on. The book was top-heavy with outstanding sequences which used restraint to perfection, expertly blending dreams and nightmares with the natural perils of the weather. There was a brilliant scene where the men enter the basement for the first time which was reminiscent of the moment in Adam Nevill’s The Ritual where the group discover a highly unpleasant effigy in the upstairs room of the shack they encounter. Another startling moment arrives when one of the men shoots a deer in the head which is blocking the road, but was otherwise harmless, there was something particularly brutal about this savage act that did not bode well for what followed. A third formidable scene played out at a remote radio tower when one of the group are trying to attract help. None of these moments were particularly bloodthirsty, although a severely damaged leg might have you wincing, and flowed seamlessly into the narrative.


The slow escalation was overseen with significant effect, with the bickering friends dealing with weird whispers, sleepwalking, the feeling of being watched and the possibility that they are not alone. I also loved the fact that the village of Wolf’s Bone lurked the background, with the occasional comment from Ryne which raised my antennae leaving me hungry to find out more. The ending and how things connect together was also nicely managed, but the final epilogue was outstanding and pitched perfectly between melancholia, closure and a tiny smidgen of hope.


Blaine Daigle’s The Broken Places was a terrific debut and although individually a lot of the scenes might remind you of other works this was more than compensated by a grippingly bleak story of loss, friendship, survival and ancient beings which lurk in the forest which was told with great style and emotion.


Tony Jones

Whatever you do: never EVER cross the DMV!
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Considering Bentley Little has been writing novels since the 1990s, I am a relative novice to his fiction and from his recent output have only read The Bank (2020), which was an entertaining read. However, considering my shortage of points of references beyond The Bank I found DMV to be very similar to that other novel, too comparable even. In The Bank, a new financial institution opens up in town and gradually wraps its vice-like sinister claws around a small American town and in DMV all you have to do is switch the bank for a murky government organisation and you have a new novel with some similarities. Bentley Little obviously has it in for big institutions! Structurally they were pretty similar, a group of characters are threatened by the DMV (instead of a bank) and the author has fun with his satirical digs at everything from large institutions, the Kafkaesque nature of the organisation, to Donald Trump.


In parts DMV was very funny and I chuckled on numerous occasions, however, ultimately satire trumped horror and although there were a few violent and very imaginative kill or torture scenes it lacked scares and could have done with more grab-you-by-the-throat style horror. Also, the plot ran out of steam a while before it reached the end, 440 pages seemed much too long for a novel that treaded a fine balance between satire, thriller and horror. Once all the big reveals were out of the bag, the book took too long to finish, but I did find the more mundane quirks of the DVM organisation more amusing than those which are dropped when the novel moves into full blown horror territory with its ‘good versus evil’ style finish.


‘The Man’ is an American slang phrase which usually refers to the government or to some other authority in a position of power, quite often they are difficult to contact directly, but can wield a lot of control. Bentley Little turns the DMV into “The Man”.  It becomes a threatening and shadowy organisation which everybody avoids whenever possible with his novel dealing with a group of loosely connected individuals who fall foul of its influence. Their lives are turned upside down, or worse, as the influence of the organisation tightens, taking grudges to ultimate extremes. Some of these examples were beautifully subtle and believable, others were more outlandish or even potentially supernatural.


The reader could relate to many of the more straight-forward examples of manipulation, such as being stuck in queues for hours, unhelpful assistance, incorrect appointments which were impossible to reschedule or the frustration of receiving the wrong documentation in the post. But on the other hand, some unlucky suckers soon find themselves blacklisted, are repeatedly called in the middle of the night, are stalked, have threatening strangers appearing at their doorstep or are told their documents are invalid with a thug then appearing on their doorstep ready to repossess their vehicle. Welcome to the DMV!


DMV features several sets of characters who are living very normal lives until becoming unlucky targets on their hitlist. There are successful author Todd Klein and his librarian wife Rosita who live very normal middle-class lives until Todd attempts to renew his licence and after an argument with a DMV employee finding himself caught in their web. Next there is Jorge Guiterrez, Rosita's younger brother who is looking for a new job and then out of the blue is approached by a pair of mysterious strangers with an even more mysterious job offer...at the DMV. This led to the most outlandish part of the story (which was also very funny) with Jorge finding himself at a weird bootcamp where casual racism, torture and death are part of the daily routine. The third main story strand features Zal Tombasian, a young programmer at Data Initiatives, whose company is hired to work on the DMV’s computer networks leading to some startling revelations.


Bentley Little has a lot of fun turning the mundane aspects of everyday life into unnerving horror which is laced with humour and DMV often successfully balances the silly with the ominous. Portraying it as a fascist like organisation, I laughed when normal law-abiding citizens were actively encouraged (via weird alternative licences) to deliberately hit (ala Deathrace 2000) pedestrians, or others were designated as victims of some kind. I also found the group of undercover (ex-DMV) test instructors to be strangely funny, leading a strange underground rear-guard fight against the DMV by helping those given deliberately difficult tests which were impossible to pass. However, there were other plots which had unexplored dead ends, at one point Todd is interviewed by a podcaster about his novels and when he mentions the DMV is hung up on. I expected this guy to reappear in the vein of an X-Files style character, but he never did.


Paranoia and satire, rather than horror dominate DMV and although I never truly cared too much about any of the characters (the romance between Zal and Violet was another major damp squid dead end) I had fun anticipating what horrors lay beyond the next curve in the road. But when you apply for a new licence and are sent a cartoon drawing with your face on it you know you’re in big trouble!


Tony Jones

Quiet Part Loud – A Spotify Original – GIMLET MEDIA
Quiet Part Loud, created by Monkeypaw Productions, written by Mac Rogers and Clay McLeod Chapman. Directed by Mimi O’Donnell. 

Listen on Spotify

A Review by Mark Walker ​

Disgraced radio host Rick Egan (Tracy Letts) has finally found his chance at reinventing himself: by chronicling the cold-case disappearance of several Muslim teens from Staten Island—a group he himself disparaged—in the wake of 9/11. But Rick soon discovers this is no ordinary hate crime, as his ill-considered investigations bring him face-to-face with an ancient American evil that's ready to offer him a monstrous bargain.

I can’t quite remember how I found QUIET PART LOUD. It may have just been a random notification from SPOTIFY or seeing something on Twitter, but I am glad I found it. I haven’t explored audio dramas on Spotify before so had no idea what to expect, but the production team and actors involved suggested it was worth a shot, so I gave it one.

QPL opens with shock-jock Rick shooting his usual, vial rhetoric over the airwaves, tapping into post 9/11 fears and winding up his angry listeners even more. He has been focussing on three missing teenage Muslim boys who he claims were part of a terrorist cell before they disappeared. However, a misplaced stunt on air, designed to convince his listeners of the terrorist threat, backfires and leaves him disgraced, out of a job, separated from his family, and low on friends.

A mysterious encounter in a bar reveals that the boys who disappeared years before are back and Rick is given the opportunity to try and chronicle their unexpected return in a new podcast and possibly redeem himself with the truth.
Only it isn’t going to be that easy.

The three boys aren’t quite what he expected, and he struggles to get to the truth because of who he is and how he has so successfully alienated himself from the communities he is now trying to protect.

And something came back with the boys.

Not only does Rick find himself battling the hatred towards him, but he slowly comes to realise that his, and many other’s actions, are being controlled behind the scenes by an ancient demon who possesses and controls those who can serve it, moving from host to host and spreading its poison via sound. As the truth starts to be revealed, Rick has to decide what is more important to him, redemption and reconnecting with his family or the popularity he once enjoyed before his fall from grace.

QPL is a relatively short, but original exploration of the misplaced fear and racial prejudice that we have seen grow exponentially since 9/11. While bigots focus their energy on innocent people who are simply different culturally or through religion, they miss what is right under their nose; that the media, and those with a loud enough voice, can be more divisive than any terrorist. Like the demon in QPL, racially-based anger and bigotry is fuelled by the noise that is continually added to the cacophony of hatred. Rick realises he is the voice of hate, the mouthpiece giving strength to the demon’s plans, and he needs to silence that voice before it is too late.

Spotify is the perfect home for an audio drama based around sound and the quality of the production is excellent. All the actors do a great job, and the lack of visual cues is not an issue for the drama, the action is clearly portrayed without straying into excessive expositionary dialogue. I did find myself having to rewind in a couple of places to get a few bits of dialogue, but that is most likely because I was listening in the car, and the background noise sometimes interfered with the drama. If you are listening at home, or on headphones, I suspect the experience will be even more immersive.

I was easily drawn into Rick Egan’s world and he makes for an interesting anti-hero. Despite clearly being a bit of an asshole, he does change during the series and starts to realise the error of his ways. Whether his path to redemption is an easy one, needs to be seen (heard), but he carries the story well and the ending holds a satisfying solution to the problem…

…or does it?
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QPL is every bit as good as you would expect from something that has been anywhere near Monkeypaw Productions and, as my first audio drama, I was very impressed. I will definitely be checking more out – in fact, I already have, so I’m off to finish a review of ‘Case 63’, also from Spotify and GIMLET MEDIA.

I am mature enough to admit to my mistakes, and not being familiar with Cohen’s work sooner is a mistake. His short stories have been published in The Dark, Crystal Lake Publishing’s Shallow Waters, and in audio with Pseudopod and the NoSleep Podcast, to name only a few. With numerous award wins under his belt, and fans including Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, and A.C. Wise, I am at a loss for why I haven’t read anything of his before now. Sure, it has been a rich couple of years for horror fiction, and there seems to be more new writers worthy of our attention with each passing month, but I used to consider myself widely read. There are only so many hours in a day, but I clearly have more work to do. I am grateful that I was finally able to introduce myself to Cohen’s work through reviewing his latest collection for Ginger Nuts of Horror.

The collection consists of 22 short stories, varying in length and subject, but connected via a confident voice and a pitch black tone. There are stories set in the present, near future, past. Post-apocalyptic, science fiction grounded in reality, real-life horrors we visit upon each other and ourselves. Through each incredible setting and the living, breathing characters to whom he gives life, we experience tragic tales of pain and loss.

For example, take opening story “What Happens in the Dark Will Soon Happen in the Light”. What begins as a close look at the effect of combat on a returning soldier and his wife and daughter quickly becomes something much more sinister and horrific. While the mother tries to relate to the young child that soldiers often come home missing some of their humanity, it cannot prepare them for what the soldier has seen in the desert, what he has brought back. The speculative elements are subtle, but Cohen does an excellent job of building tension and making the reader uneasy. A great story to open with.

“Erasing Tony” is another story set in the real world that we may recognise, if we’re at all familiar with the cult of celebrity, the obsession with remaining relevant, and American sitcoms. Told from the point of view of a down-on-her-luck former sitcom actress, Cohen intersperses the action with her rose-tinted memories of working on the show, and especially her intense relationship with the actor who played her son, the eponymous Tony. It is a tale of lurid obsession and one woman’s descent into madness, and Cohen takes us along for the ride. He captures the voice of loneliness and desperation, and the format with the included audience responses from her days on-screen were a great touch.

“Better Than Healed” has an interesting point of view, as it is one side of a conversation as a manager at some kind of spa shows the widow of a man who recently died around the remote complex. It becomes apparent through reading that the widow had some doubts about the nature of the spa, and the circumstances of her husband’s death. It also becomes apparent that, despite the friendly nature and lilting voice of the manager, these suspicions may be legitimate. He utilises repeated phrases and a calm demeanour to lull the widow into a false sense of security, while Cohen weaves a tale of deception and coercion in the most subtle of ways. A great, quick read.

Adopting a more science-fiction setting, “Graduating” tells us the story of near identical clones Jones 1 to 7. Each of the seven have slightly different personalities and responses to their roles; they are each subjected to horrific deaths and asked to rate them on a scale of pain, before they are revived. Hopefully this isn’t too spoilery as the real story is about the relationship between them all as they work toward the ultimate goal; a normal life beyond the walls of their laboratory, one which eventually ends. A retirement of sorts. But not all Jones’s look forward to the day they are allowed to leave, and this causes friction amongst the group. It is a fantastical scenario, but one which Cohen uses to explore death and duty and our connections to them as humans.

“No Bones Were Human” takes place in an Earth that has endured some terrible, cataclysmic event known as the Great Fire. Jem is a survivor who cares for his nephews and niece and the story is told from the oldest, one of the boys. He is forced to look after the two younger children when Jem decides he has to go out and scavenge, and promises to bring back a tree; something the three kids have never seen. Rather than exploring the larger story of the Great Fire, Cohen opts to focus on the relationships between the characters and how they survive in the harsh environment. Through reading the oldest boy’s thoughts, we gain some back story to how they came to be here, and the strength it takes to hold onto hope when all is lost. A hopeful yet sad story.

Cohen adopts an interesting narrative style for “Done to Scale”, which explores a dysfunctional family and their tribulations through a girl playing with a dollhouse, replaying traumatic experiences from her own home with the dolls, trying to come to terms with the hurt and confusion she has experienced as a result. It is a tale of familial everyday horror, the kind of thing a child might experience in a so-called “unhappy home”, and Cohen demonstrates an exceptional ability to convey all of this through the eyes of a child using great language and complex ideas.

“The Book of Skies” tells the story of a hardworking farming family, the Towners. Father Laird instructs Cole in the nature of the family business, but he hides a dark secret, one that has been in his farming family for generations, passed from father to son. He believes that, in order to secure a good crop, sacrifices must be made, and the guide he follows to achieve this is his book of skies. The sky tells him what must be done to appease an angry god, and the only way he can ensure the survival of his family, possibly the world, is to follow the instructions to the very last detail. Even when the instructions insist he do something truly terrible. A fantastic exploration of inherited horror and the father-son dynamic, while also hinting at something cosmic in scale.

To close the collection, “The Price of Gold” follows an unnamed protagonist as they visit the grave of a beloved. It seems that the lost loved one died a while ago, and the protagonist’s visits have become less frequent. Then they discover a small gold ring left by the grave and inscribed with a message of undying love. The horror in this story lies in the implications of the ring, and what it meant to the deceased. And what this now means to the protagonist. It is the horror of betrayal, of years spent in mourning only to discover, on some distant day, that perhaps it meant nothing at all. A powerful end to the collection.
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These are only a small number of the stories featured in Effects Vary, a tiny example of the range and ability of an excellent storyteller. No matter the setting of the story, the time period, each is crafted with care and precision. Not one word is wasted and often there is as much horror to be found in what Cohen doesn’t explicitly say, that to which he only implies. There is an art to such effective, efficient, economical writing. And, with Effects Vary, Cohen has demonstrated his exceptional ability. If, like me, this one somehow slipped beneath your radar, pick up a copy and find out for yourself.

Effects Vary features 22 stories of dark fiction and literary horror that explore the shadow side of love, loss, and family. From an aging TV star’s murderous plan to rekindle her glory days, to a father who returns from war forever changed, from human lab rats who die again and again, to a farmer who obeys the dreadful commands of the sky, these stories, four of them award winners, blur the thin line between reality and the darkest reaches of the imagination.

Praise for Effects Vary
"The stories in Michael Cohen's Effects Vary are sharp and hard-hitting, small blades that make one see the world through a dark and eerie lens. While these stories are chilling, what will stop you cold is how deeply they explore what makes us human. A must-read literary horror collection."

-Danielle Trussoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Ancestor and NYTBR Dark Matters columnist

“Cohen's fictions are knife flashes, quick and deft and so sharp you don't know you've been cut until the blood starts to flow. Whether he's in the mines of South Africa, the court of Charles the IV in Spain, or in places that seem like odd doppelgängers of the ones we know, his work unsettles in the best possible ways."

-Brian Evenson, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Award-Winning author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
“A pleasure ride to hell. You will read Effects Vary with a scorched smile and a horrified heart. And then you will re-read it, as I did. An unforgettable collection.”

-Martín Felipe Castagnet, author of Bodies of Summer and one of Granta's best of young Spanish-language novelists

Hell Hath Only Fury (Edited by S.H. Cooper & Oli A. White)

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BKHZBRQH
Publisher ‏ : ‎ S.H. Cooper (21 Oct. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 186 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8215434703
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A Horror Book Review by Rebecca Rowland
​

The American judicial system’s overturn of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing access to abortion sparked a number of projects in rebuttal, from art installations to literary collections. S.H. Cooper and Oli A. White’s contribution, Hell Hath Only Fury, is an array of twenty-seven speculative short stories penned by twenty-five different scribes. With a theme “of fright and fighting back” to regain control and reclaim independence of one own’s body, the anthology is an evocative display of quiet horror, dark fantasy, science-fiction terror, and psychological fiction.
Although pregnancy does factor into several of the stories, more often than not, protagonists are plagued by forces outside of their bodies. Co-curator Oli A. White’s own tale, “A Gentle, Soft Boy,” tackles an aspect of misogyny rarely spied in horror literature: while internet trolls and incels are ubiquitous, the sociopaths who hide in feminist facades are invasive forces far more destructive. The narrator explains, “This was his Twitter bio: ‘Nice boy, good friend, soft-spoken somebody. Kindness is cool, selfishness sucks! #RespectWomen.’ Every time I see a guy with a bio like this these days, I start shaking.” White’s villain is certain to make the reader angry, if only because we have all met a Robin and seen him nurtured by the blind sheep of social media, but White gleefully evens the score. Likewise, “June 24th, 2032” by G. Kimball, the anthology’s closing tale, provides a haunting glimpse at the possible domino effect anti-abortion rulings could have regarding the rights of sexual assault victims; in this story, it is both the judicial system and the angry mob of society that the narrator must defend against.

Two other tales take widely different approaches to the theme of reclaiming one’s destiny but are equally effective in evoking shock and horror. Syn McDonald’s entry will have readers thinking long after they have closed its pages. In “Life Support,” when a nonbinary person discovers that they are pregnant, their ferociously religious mother threatens to do everything in her power to prevent her child from having an abortion: “‘I’m on birth control, Momma. Apparently it didn’t work.’ She lifts her chin. ‘Just another sign the Lord wants you to have this child! He bypassed those medications you used to stop it from happening!’ Says the woman with seven children.” The shocking denouement of this tale reiterates the harm deadnaming and dismissing gender identity generates. Sandra Ruttan pens a sly wink to Ancient Greece’s deity of the hearth in “The Goddess Complex.” Vesta walks home with a male co-worker who hides a secret, nefarious hobby, and soon, her life direction is reorientated by acts of violence and vigilante justice: “Dark hoodie, dark jeans, dark sneakers. Nothing that would stand out. A lamp near the road offered enough light for her to read the street numbers. This was it…Her variation of the 12-step plan was a little different than the usual ones, but they started the same.” There are some acts, however, for which there is no absolution.

Three other standouts in the collection utilize a Cronenbergian method of skirting the edges of bizarro horror, and the resulting effect is delightful. The narrator in Dana Vickerson’s “8W2D” is trying to get pregnant but suffers a missed miscarriage. Her state’s laws, however, prohibit medical intervention in expelling the tissue. What follows is a visceral experience in terror: “Inside the black and white bulge of my uterus, I see the monster. I see its wriggling tentacles, its gaping mouth. I see claws and fangs and hundreds of eyes, all opening and closing with the lub-lub-lub of its heart.” Vickerson constructs a wickedly smart extended metaphor of the helplessness felt by women in the overturn of Roe as well as the patronizing misogyny set forth by the right-wing faction who pushed for it. Still more chilling imagery wafts through “The Change,” where Alice Towey’s protagonist begins a transformation. The world wants to teach Sarah skills to “cope” with her body’s change, but Sarah has a better idea: “She threw up, yards of thick white material spilling from her mouth. She touched it with trembling fingers. It was wet and fibrous. Soft, but strong. She understood.” Towey’s tale is quietly creepy, offering empowerment in a time of seeming impotence.
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Finally, co-curator S.H. Cooper’s “The New Front Line” is simply genius: an art exhibit that is removed by officials from a political protest returns, grows, and shatters the fourth wall. The Inheriting Her Ghosts author offers a mesmerizing piece of speculative fiction that saddens, angers, and provides hope to the reader all at once. Cooper and White have assembled a solid line-up of writing styles and approaches. Reinforcing the notion that Draconian decisions affect more lives than those in power may comprehend, people with uteruses in all stages of life are represented Hell Hath Only Fury. Sexual assault and misogyny, menopause and infertility: all of these horrors are told in tales that are often heartbreaking, sometimes allegorical, but always unsettling if not downright terrifying.

Mycological horror is pervasively thriving right now in both books and film. Recent examples I’ve enjoyed are HBO’s The Last of Us, that pool scene from Annihilation, Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, McCloud Chapman’s Ghost Eaters, Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, and I’d even add in that mushroom episode from the first season of Hannibal. Still reeling from a global pandemic and faced with self-inflicted ecological destruction, it’s no wonder that we believe the very fibers of the earth will resist domination and are plotting our destruction. Yup, malevolent fungus has become one of the new terrifying big bads.

Each of those works I’ve mentioned uses fungus in a different way, but I haven’t come across an example as nihilistically volatile, as paranoid, as linguistically slippery as what Andrew F. Sullivan images in his second novel The Marigold:

“Naming the thing is supposed to control it, right? What it does is change. Constantly.”

Dubbed ‘the Wet’ in his book, Sullivan’s version of fungus is like if Society’s shunting scenes were distilled and weaponized for use on the plebs and dregs of an uncaring Toronto. Birthed from the last grasping squeeze of terminal capitalism and pop culture debris, this fungus is active, insidious, and independent of the dispassionate 0.01% who want to understand it and wield it for their own corporate benefit.

As Canada’s biggest city—like every big city everywhere—everyone who spends time in Toronto has a love/hate relationship with the place. It’s big, it’s busy, it’s full of fun things, but there’s also much to dislike about the endless sprawl, the sucking humidity, and the obvious disparity between wealth and squalor. Sullivan satirically pushes his residents of Hogtown to grapple with a city intent on burying them alive in debt, surveillance, and apathy. No one, be they a resident of the titular Marigold or struggling on the margins, is safe. Violence is less of a threat than a byproduct of purposeful civic neglect and lazy corruption. People who teeter on the edge of the gig economy, who attempt to maintain some higher standard of public health and concern, or are just looking for a good time, are all consumed. And that’s before the fungus starts to creep up out of fractured foundations in a hell-bent push for assimilation.

High above the uncaring streets stands The Marigold, the titular sky-high condominium, and the near-abandoned sinkhole of a matching twin tower. These private spaces provide the backdrop for developer Stan Marigold to attempt to bend reality to his legacy, while on the ground (and below it) characters search for the origin of the disease and the futility of a cure. From the Marigold’s penthouse to nightmarish subterranean caverns, Sullivan’s writing etches like a laser as it traces their journeys through the urban decay with equal parts cynicism and sympathy.
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Can a book be moist? I mean, The Marigold’s pages are dry paper, obviously, but this story is positively dripping with moisture. It leaves stains; it leaves puddles. It creeps. Read too much in one shot and you’ll be seeing the world through a Vaseline-smeared lens. Wickedly funny, nihilistically hopeful, The Marigold is a body-horror ecological disaster that submerges a whole city for the crime of a few residents asking for a better quality of life.