BENEATH A PALE SKY BY PHILIP FRACASSI - BOOK REVIEW

15/6/2021

Philip Fracassi follows ‘Behold the Void’ with a second superb collection

BENEATH A PALE SKY BY PHILIP FRACASSI (BOOK REVIEW by Tony Jones)

I have been a fan of Philip Fracassi for several years now, via scanning my archive I realise I have not reviewed any of his work since 2018. That is way too long for such a stylish writer to be off my radar. So, I was delighted to rectify this oversight with Beneath a Pale Sky, which brings together eight short stories (some of which are quite long), a few of which are brand new to this collection, mixed with others which have previously seen the light of day elsewhere. Fracassi is, simply put, an outstanding writer of short fiction and his work has been widely published in genre magazines, including: Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Dark Discoveries, Lovecraft eZine, and Cemetery Dance.

If you have never tried Fracassi Beneath a Pale Sky is an excellent entry point, the overall collection is a top-notch mix of cleverly varied settings, featuring a convincing balance of supernatural and vividly drawn every-day occasions. The author is an experienced scriptwriter, and this skill permeates through into these stories; having a knack for creating believable characters with only a few sentences or literary brushstrokes. There is a crispness to his tight and tidy style of writing, which confidently brings the pages to life. On a number of occasions, I marvelled at how effortlessly he achieved this.

Before I look at Beneath a Pale Sky in more detail, let us have a quick backtrack at some of the other fiction I have reviewed from Fracassi and am happy to recommend. None of these three stories feature in Beneath a Pale Sky.

Sacculina (2017 - recently republished by Lethe Press, character driven maritime horror, set in a small boat with family tensions, before a nasty problem with barnacles lead to a battle of life and death).

https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/sacculina-by-philip-fracassi

Overnight (2018 – A security guard quickly regrets accepting easy cash to steal souvenirs from a film star’s trailer in a dark look at the underside of the film industry).

https://www.horrordna.com/books/overnight-philip-fracassi-book-review

Shiloh (2018 – A Lovecraftian take on a famous 1862 American Civil War battle where otherworldly forces take hold in the midst of the vicious killing).

https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/fiction-review-shiloh-by-philip-fracassi

Beneath a Pale Sky is Fracassi’s first collection since the excellent Behold the Void, which won the This is Horror annual award in the short story collection section and is a fine follow up. After an entertaining introduction from Josh Malerman, proceedings kick-off in style with Harvest, which is published for the first time and is one of three stories to feature incredibly well described disasters. The level of detail is outstanding, making it easy to visualise a tornado (in this story) and later a huge Ferris wheel collapsing and finally the destruction of a huge office building in the penultimate story. Combined, these are visceral and gripping scenes, with the same level as intensity as the battle sequences in Shiloh. The build-up to the tornado sequence in Harvest beautifully sets the scene, a tense wedding in a countryside church, with a young woman, Carrie, about to marry the wrong man, but the right man is an outsider with a unique gift.

If you are still biting your nails after brushing up with the tornado then you might want to skip The Wheel, another brand-new story, and save it for later. Why? It was a genuine hair-raiser and reminiscent of the big budget disaster films of the 1970s. Several story strands converge, and Rob (who is no Steve McQueen) decides to propose to Mary on the top of a Ferris wheel, not realising disaster is about to strike through a series of wild coincidences leading to that moment. The characters are beautifully realised with Fracassi bringing them to life in a few brushstrokes, throwing in a sexual predator for good measure, to balance out the young lovers. Although it was a white-knuckle ride, The Wheel also had an emotional kick and a moving ending.

Soda Jerk, one of the shorter stories, was originally companioned with Shiloh, when it was first published by the Lovecraft eZine. Although it lacks the emotional punch of some of the other longer stories, much of its success hangs on how you rate The Twilight Zone style ending. Sixteen-year-old Ellie Miles moves to a new town and is shown around by neighbour James Honeycutt, before things take a darker turn with the story nicely seen from the teenager’s point of view. This is followed by Symphony, a dark tale in which Esther escapes an abusive home life into a strange dream world which slowly filters into her real life.

Next up was Ateuchus, which changes direction and heads into the territory of science fiction. Alfie and James are Geology students who discover a meteor they believe to be 5000 years old, sensing a scientific scoop, Alfie takes it home to study it more closely. What follows was a highly entertaining spin on Kafka’s Metamorphosis as Alfie quickly finds himself out of his depth and unsure what to do with the weird larvae which leaks out of the meteor. ID takes the reader into the depths of the Blue Ward and Green Wards of a mental hospital, where the narrator ends up after a botched suicide attempt. Dreams and reality blend as our narrator embarks on a co-dependent relationship with another resident, Sarah, whom he sort of hooks up with after release. Written in a fractured style, with an entertaining unreliable narrator, this was an engaging look at mental illness. Also, a couple of the scenes with Sarah’s mother had me chuckling.

Beneath a Pale Sky finishes with two absolute corkers, both of which I had read previously, but was happy enough to revisit. Fragile Dreams was another nail-biter which is sure to get you sweating and wincing in equal measure. Matthew arrives at Baskin and Associates for a job interview and whilst chatting with a secretary there is a massive earthquake and after a few pages we find him stuck, alone, with many broken bones, in the belly of a collapsed office block. This story had me thinking of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, as Matthew drifts in and out of consciousness, with flashbacks to the rest of his life, whilst he waits to die. And don’t even get me started on the rats. Magnificent and moving stuff.

I adored Death, My Old Friend, which was perhaps my favourite in the collection and most certainly the quirkiest. John is best friends with ‘Death’ whom he knows has an important job as the Grim Reaper, but also lives a normal life in which he goes to school etc. It is never explained how it works, but everybody knows this guy is ‘Death’ and accepts it as normal, within the frame of the story it is pitched perfectly and had me thinking of Terry Pratchett’s Mort and Reaper Man. Death is, amusingly, attracted to Goth girls and John does not blame his old friend Death when he comes to claim his parents. Ultimately the story was about their friendship and it has a beautiful and poignant ending.

Later in 2021 Philip Fracassi’s novel Boy in the Valley is released and I am looking forward to seeing what this author does with the longer format. If this collection is anything to go by, we should be in for something special. Beneath a Pale Sky is highly recommended.

Tony Jones

BENEATH A PALE SKY A Collection

BENEATH A PALE SKY collects eight stories of horror, including an original novella, that will take you from the high-security ward of a mental hospital to the top of a Ferris Wheel on an ocean pier. These stories will bury you in the rubble of an earthquake, pull back the veil on a soul’s journey into the afterlife, and turn a small midwestern town into the secret domain of cross-dimensional gods. Combining old-school horror with the modern weird, BENEATH A PALE SKY will take you places you’ve never been before, and show you sights you won’t soon forget.
Previously published stories within the collection have received praise from New York Times bestselling authors such as Josh Malerman, who called Soda Jerk “an instant classic,” and Jack Ketchum, who said that Fragile Dreams was “…harrowing…and claustrophobic as hell.”