 I have to say, the first image Christopher Stanley's 26-story collection conjured in my withered old brain was that of Suggs from Madness singing (another) comeback single about drunken love affairs with the titular lamppost. Any notions of whimsy or white men playing ska-pop were soon dispelled by the first story though, which left me with a wry grin on my face. The kind you get from a ghostly tale which ends abruptly, and shatters any preconceptions you might have about the well-worn character of a struggling writer. That opener gives way to a goodly number of other tales of the unexpected, and I use that phrase deliberately, as this gave me the same kind of vibes as the old TV show of the same name. The Lamppost Huggers... offers up some Very British Stories where bad things happen to worse people, or sometimes good ones. Not all of them are set in the UK though – the book takes you on a worldwide tour of dangerous destinations, and a range of diverse characters get pushed through Stanley's weird wringer. The globetrotting nature of the collection is a real strength, and even though the stories tend to fly by pretty fast, none of them running to more than 10 pages, you get a taste for each location before the frights begin. And if you want to talk range, you're in for more variety than a week-long jumble sale here. Witches with a taste for justice, apocalypse-summoning kids, ghosts conjured by guilt, a few (un)happy Xmases, magick, fairies, dragons and more. There's even a spooky appliance story which gives Stephen King a run for his money. Each story is short but never sweet; sometimes gory, sometimes ghoulish but mostly effective and pretty much always creepy. Some fly by too fast – there was one story about teenage troublemakers which felt like watching Lost Boys on fast forward. That one didn't quite last long enough to sink its claws in, but it still packed in some effective imagery.  Unusually, the collection is divided into three parts, with each having a loose theme and a brief mood-setting quote. The first third has an overarching theme of lost childhoods (and sometimes lost children), where kids realise sinister fantasies in which they're separated from their less-than-attentive families. In that way, again, it brought me back to Tales of the Unexpected and Roald Dahl, as well as my own formative years in the 80's where kids were often cast as heroes, and parents as either an inconvenience or just plain shitty. There are echoes of Day of the Triffids, even Rosemary's Baby, a strong feeling of weirdness invading everyday situations along with a sense of hopelessness as situations inevitably spiral out of control, ending on notes that'll either have you grinning or grimacing. That same effective unease, and a reliance on world-ending scenarios follows into the second and third parts, where themes of climate change and altered realities also worm their way in. There are more bad parents, and put-upon children, more apocalypses and more peculiar goings-on in the most normal of settings. Most importantly though, you're always kept guessing. That's an essential part of any short story collection in my view, and this one does not disappoint. Plus, for the curious among you, there are a bunch of story notes at the end so you can delve further into the author's mind. Just don't wrap your arms around anything while you're there, you never know what might be waiting to pounce... Review by Ben Walker Paperback: 174 pages Publisher: The Arcanist Press (1 Jun. 2020) ISBN-10: 057865329X ISBN-13: 978-0578653297   the hear and soul of horror review websitesComments are closed.
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