Nowhere Hall by Cate Gardner

Usual full disclosure: Cate Gardner is a long-time online friend of mine. I admire her writing enormously.

Nowhere Hall is a short novella published this past September and no longer available as far as I know (which is why I linked to Gardner's website instead of a buy link below). It was a limited edition that sold out very quickly.

Cate Gardner's writing is hard to describe. She has a vivid style that manages to be both brisk and dreamy, with nightmarish imagery presented with an almost childlike amusement. Nowhere Hall starts with a man trying to step out into the street, and it's not clear at first whether he's just walking to work or about to commit suicide. It's not even clear if he's actually alive--and that's what I love about her writing, the way she makes you wonder what the subtext is beneath the events she describes.

Nowhere Hall is short, and follows hapless, aging officeworker Ron as he fails to step in front of a bus (maybe) and stumbles into a hotel called The Vestibule. As the setting shifts and changes like something from a dream, Ron is forced to face a person and event from his past while still looking into his bleak future. It's beautifully written, evocative, and wryly funny. Don't you wish you had a copy?

author's website

Reviewed by Sin - Lala Pipo

Lala Pipo
by Hideo Okuda
Amazon link


"Lala Pipo" is a relay race: as each story ends, a previously minor character takes the lead and shows us what was going on in his/her life while someone else had the spotlight. From housewives to host boys, you get a graphic tour of who's getting it in Tokyo, and who's not getting enough. Anger, stress, and self-destruction are the predominate themes. You would think getting laid would make people happy, but Hideo Okuda knows better. Sometimes sex is the last thing you need.

The book starts with a man who has no life, no friends, and one new neighbor. When a very audible parade of sexy women ensues the man, and his penis, are happier than they've ever been. Unfortunately, he's no host boy and, as time goes by, the man's addiction to the antics upstairs get the better of him. And that's one of the tamer stories.

"Lala Pipo" is proof that perversion can have a point. As titillating as the stories are (did you want me to lie?), they are also thought provoking, and in some cases touching. Okuda's characters aren't the nicest people but, even if you don't agree with what they do, you understand how they got there. To me, that is the mark of an excellent writer. It's easy to make you like a character who's charming and funny. Making you care about someone who needs a boot to the ass takes talent.

Reviewed by Sin - In the Pool

IN THE POOL
By Hideo Okuda
*English translation
Amazon link


"In the Pool", by Hideo Okuda, is a collection of five stories with two things in common: The protagonists all have an unusual problem, with a relatable human core, and they are all under the care of doctor Ichiro Irabu, head of neurology. Along with his indifferent nurse, Mayumi, Doctor Irabu specializes in indulging his patient's irrational, self-destructive impulses. Whether it be compulsively swimming, or text messaging their lives away, doctor Irabu is there to tell them everything is all right.

By the second story you can see the method behind doctor Irabu's madness, while his patients are left in the dark. Seeing how each patient deals with having the most fucked up aspect of themselves encouraged, and eventually figure out why, is the brilliance behind "In the Pool." Yet, as much as you come to know each character and why they are the way they are, the "real" doctor Irabu remains a mystery. Where does the therapy end, and the person behind it begin? I just read the book, and I have no idea, yet it's impossible to dismiss doctor Irabu as crazy. He has a vision, and it comes complete with mommy issues and a pea green porsche.

It's rare that a book makes me laugh out loud, but this one did it repeatedly. It also made me feel bad for the characters, and root for the ones that got their lives together. My favorite story is the first, titled "In the Pool", about a man whose stress drives him to swim. Soon a few laps isn't enough, and it becomes impossible to balance his trips to the pool with the rest of his life. Here, and in the other stories, the journey is what's important, even when the characters don't get where they wanted to go.

Personal rating = A+

Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits by Cate Gardner

Full disclosure: Cate Gardner is one of my online writer friends. I've known her for years and greatly admire her writing.

Gardner's collection of short stories, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits, came out a few months ago but I only just got around to reading it. I'm not much of a short-story reader for some reason and I tend to put off reading anthologies. Once I did pick it up, though, I devoured it utterly. The stories are quick-paced, varied, and full of the mischievous and odd characters that people Gardner's writing and make it so unique.

I'm not sure how to describe Gardner's style. She'd qualify for 'new weird' except that her fiction is so well grounded, her characters practical even when they're surrounded by madness; and while her style is poetic and playful, I never feel distance from her characters the way I often do when reading literary specfic. Nor is she precisely a horror or fantasy writer, even when zombies and fairies pop up in her stories. Her plots often follow dream-logic, where reality is a fluid concept, without feeling at all dreamy (although many of them qualify as nightmarish). She's also frequently very funny.

The stories in Strange Men are all strong, some of them reprints but many of them new for this collection. My favorites are the ones that tell one story on the surface while hinting at stranger (or at least different) realities underneath, like the truly creepy "The Scratch of an Old Record." I read the anthology over several days and there are several that I keep thinking about. I really think my favorite, oddly enough, is "The Moth Brigade," a bleak SFnal story about a firefighting robot who's facing obsolescence. I also adore the opening story, a lovely little gem only four paragraphs long called "Dandelion Fluff."

One thing I like a lot about Gardner's stories is their underlying cheerfulness. This may seem like a weird thing to say since death, dismemberment, madness, and the casual infliction of pain are recurring themes, but her characters rarely despair. They're tough, strange, stubborn people who usually remain upbeat even when the worst happens. And the worst always happens.

B&N link

Reviewed by Sin - Blanket of White

Blanket of White (anthology)
by Amy Grech
Damnation Books, LLC





Gore: Not heavy, but the blood does fly in some stories!

Sex: There are some very, very horny people in this anthology.

Angst: Oodles.


The nice things about anthologies, is that you get a taste of all different kinds of horror/dark fiction. This is certainly true with Amy Grech's BLANKET OF WHITE. Topics range from parent-child relationships, dealing with the end of the world, and people who need to learn to keep it in their pants. On that last note, this is not an anthology for anyone who is shy about sex scenes. You will see quite a few people get their hump on ; )

This isn't an anthology for anyone who requires hard core blood and guts. Some of the stories aren't straight horror at all, and you won't get any gross monsters out for human blood. Much of the anthology relies on emotional pain/tension to make a point. Amy Grech does this extremely well: she has a knack for pealing back her character's layers, and (figuratively) exposing their squishy tender bits. In some stories, she also exposes their literal tender bits.

My favorite story, "Ashes to Ashes," was definitely one of angst over gore. It was creepy as hell in some parts, but nothing exploded and no one's intestines got eaten by rabid chipmunks. Also, I can never look at doing laundry the same way again. That's how you know a story hit the mark: you are still uneasy long after you've read it. It's like seeing a Saint Bernard after reading CUJU. Sure, they're lovable cuddlebugs with silly faces. But deep down, you still flash back to those moments in the book that scared the shit out of you.

The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken

I first read Joan Aiken's book Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home when I was a kid, and I own a copy. It's a collection of stories about the Armitage family, to which odd things happen on Mondays (and sometimes on other days). They're very funny, sometimes poignant, always entertaining. I had no idea there were more stories than the ones I had read and reread in Armitage, Armitage.

The Serial Garden collects them all, including four new ones--24 stories in all. They're all a lot of fun, even if some of them leave the reader with more questions than answers (although sometimes Aiken answers some of the questions in later stories).

One thing I noticed is the change in tone from the earliest stories, written when Aiken was in her teens, to the latest ones, written when she was in her late 70s (she died in 2004). The early stories are fun nonsense, silly and merry; bad things happen, but everything comes out right in the end. They remind me a little of Aiken's Arabel and Mortimer stories (which I also love). However, the last stories have a more somber feel. Sad things happen and stay happened--in one story, for instance, someone dies, which really shocked me (not one of the Armitages, I hasten to add). The next to last story in the anthology, "Don't Go Fishing on Witches' Day," is a poignant story of loss and aging that moved me to tears.

But the last story, "Milo's New Word," provides the Armitage children Mark and Harriet with a baby brother, Milo, who picks up the phone at the wrong time and ends up turned into a elephant calf. It's a return to the madcap fun of the earlier stories, and a perfect way to end the book.

B&N link, or order direct from the publisher Small Beer Press (with free shipping in the U.S.)