As someone who can’t stand the long hot days of summer, I get excited as soon as the weather starts to turn and the leaves begin to change. Fall is my favorite season, and like many people, it’s the time when I feel most compelled to pick up horror novels. The days are getting shorter, the nights colder, and Halloween is just around the corner. I’ve always struggled to find good horror, as its not a genre I read very widely. One can never go wrong with Stephen King, and I managed to time my first reading of It last year with the spate of clown sightings across the U.S., which leant it a particularly ominous air. After last year I made an effort to root out some good horror, especially from small and independent publishers, as the “Best Horror Fiction” lists I kept finding online seemed to recycle the same books over and over.
I will take a moment here to mention one of my favorite writers, Shirley Jackson, whose books I would always include on a list of go-to horror, and who I feel like has sadly succumbed to the Curse of the Anthology (Jackson is famous for her widely taught and anthologized short story “The Lottery” while her other work is rarely mentioned). We Have Always Lived In the Castle, and Hangsaman are my favorites, and The Haunting of Hill House is one of the best haunted house novels I’ve ever read. I also read Ruth Franklin’s excellent biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life last year, which was so well written and researched. One of my favorite details in Franklin’s biographies were the excerpts from the letters that Jackson’s mother sent her when she began publishing her novels. The best quote? “You have too many demented girls in your books.”
Liveright, 2006
Shirley Jackson will always be one of my literary heroes, and I’m hoping to pick up the few books of hers I’ve left to read (Life Among the Savages, and Raising Demons) before the end of the year.
Moving on. I’d like to mention the books I’ve recently read that I believe are criminally overlooked entries into the best contemporary horror.
The first one I want to mention is Such Small Hands, written by Andrés Barba and translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman.
Transit Press, 2017
This is a short novella set in an all-girls orphanage that follows seven year old Marina, who enters the orphanage after losing both of her parents in a car crash. Part of the book is narrated in the collective “I” by the other students at the orphanage, and its for this reason that the book has drawn comparisons to Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. I don’t think this is a useful comparison at all, as the only thing that links these books is an uncommon narrative perspective. Perhaps you could argue that both books deal with the darker sides of “girlhood,” but still, its a stretch.
This book is short and eerie and revolves largely around a game that Marina invents for the other girls that ends up getting wildly out of control. I read this book in one sitting, its hard to put down, and the translation was excellent. The prose is really beautiful and its lyricism is what makes the unfolding events of the novella even eerier. Murderous or sinister children are a staple in horror movies, and there’s been a lot of discussion about why this is such a persistent trope.
Anyone who has been a child knows that children are capable of cruelty, but there is also a deep sort of empathy that runs throughout this book, which moves the girls at the center of it beyond mere tropes and stereotypes. I would recommend this book even to those who aren’t looking specifically for horror.
The next book I would recommend is A Collapse of Horses by Brian Evenson. Evenson is a prolific writer, but I’ve only read this book, a collection of short stories.
Coffeehouse Press, 2016
I found the stories in this collection to be absolutely terrifying. The premise of many of these stories is simple. In the title story a man comes across a group of horses collapsed in a field and wonders if they are truly dead and if a man he sees in the same field notices them too. The uncertainty eventually drives him insane. The stories are almost more terrifying in their mundanity. Of all the books on this list, this is the one that disturbed me the most. As their short stories, these would be great to read around a campfire or to try and scare your friends.
The next book I want to recommend is one I found the most enjoyable, which is Experimental Film by Gemma Files. I had never heard of the author before until I stumbled upon a great review of the book in LARB.
ChiZine Publications 2015
This novel follows a professor of Canadian film history, Lois Cairns, after she discovers the existence of an early 20th century filmmaker, whose work has since been lost to history.
Lois’ growing obsession with this woman eventually leads her deep into the study of 19th and 20th century spiritualism, obscure wendish fairy tales, and the life of the filmmaker herself, who mysteriously disappeared. This book was excellent and deeply entertaining, I couldn’t put it down. I liked this book so much I immediately went on a hunt for her other work, and picked up We Will All Go Down Together. Like Experimental Film, this book drew on obscure folk tales and stores of the Fae. These aren’t your typical fairy tales however. The Fair Folk of Files’ books are malicious and unpredictable and terrifying. I haven’t read many books that mine the mythology of fairies for the purposes of horror, but Files does it to amazing effect.
I have the feeling that some people would argue with my inclusion of this last book on the list. Which is The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu). I suppose if one was to categorize this novel (the first in a trilogy) they would classify it as science fiction. But there is something so terrifying to me about this book. Just read this review “Quiet, Too Quiet,” and maybe you’ll understand what I mean. Of course, I’m biased because I find space to be uniquely terrifying and am probably in the minority in saying that I have no interest in discovering whether intelligent life exists out there. This probably says something about my weakness of mind, but I have accepted that truth about myself!
Tor, 2014
The Three Body Problem unfolds after a scientist working at a secret military project receives a message from outer space warning her not to answer, lest her planet be invaded. The scientist, a woman named Ye Wenjie, angry at what has happened to her and her family during China’s Cultural Revolution, decides to answer anyway, after deciding the human race is not worth protecting.
As the ramifications of this decision make themselves known globally, we also learn more about the alien civilization behind the message; a race of beings known as the Tristolarians, who occupy an unstable planet constantly undergoing extinction level events due to the two stars in their orbit, and their destructive gravities. The Tristolarians are searching for a stable planet to repopulate, and have locked on to Earth.
This book was both fascinating, terrifying, and through provoking. It’s the first in a trilogy and I would highly recommend it.
Other scary books I’d like to read but haven’t yet: The Changeling by Victor LaValle, Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, The Grip of It by Jac Jemc.
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