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Summary
Summary
"If you care about the short story, you should read this book, and watch a master at work."
--Neil Gaiman
"Peter Straub brilliantly defies and blurs literary genres." --LORRIE MOORE
A MONUMENTAL COLLECTION OF SHORT FICTION FROM ACCLAIMED MASTER OF HORROR AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR PETER STRAUB
An American icon renowned for his bestselling novels, Peter Straub displays his full and stunning range in this crowning collection. He has consistently subverted the boundaries of genre for years, transcending horror and suspense to unlock the dark, unsettling, and troubling dissonances that exist on the edges of our perception. Straub's fiction cracks the foundation of reality and opens our eyes to an unblinking experience of true horror, told in his inimitable and lush style with skill, wit, and impeccable craft.
With uncanny precision, Straub writes of the city and of the Midwest, of the depraved and of the righteous, of the working class and of the wealthy--nothing and no one is safe from the ever-present darkness that he understands so well. "Blue Rose" follows the cycles of violence and power through the most innocent among us, leading to a conclusion that is audacious and devastating. In the darkly satirical masterpiece "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff," a stern estate lawyer known as the Deacon hires a pair of "Private Detectives Extraordinaire" to investigate and seek revenge on his unfaithful wife. "The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine" follows a man and his much younger lover as they explore their decadent and increasingly sinister fantasies aboard a luxurious yacht on the remotest stretch of the Amazon River.
Interior Darkness brings together sixteen stories from twenty-five years of dazzling excellence. It is a thrilling, highly entertaining, and terrifying testament to the prodigious talent of Peter Straub.
Author Notes
Author Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1943. He earned degrees in English from the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University. He taught English at his former high school for three years and worked for a time on his doctorate in Ireland. He began writing in 1969 and published two books of poetry in 1972. His novel Julia (1975) was an attempt to find a successful genre in which to work, after his first novel, Marriages (1973), did not sell well.
He found that he had a talent for writing horror thrillers in the Gothic tradition. His stories are complex and well paced, with authentic settings that add to the believability of the plot. He is particularly good at creating grotesque characters and gruesome situations; the eeriness of his work is captivating. He has won numerous awards including the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This outstanding collection of 16 reprints highlights what makes Straub such a master of genre-bending horror and suspense, and it's an effective introduction for readers new to his considerable body of work. Each story has merit, though a few of the quickies don't punch as hard as the longer works. In the deeply unsettling and uncomfortable "Blue Rose," a young Harry Beevers (who appears as an adult in 1998's Koko) reacts to his troubled home life by doing very bad things to his younger brother, Little Eddie. In "The Juniper Tree," Straub paints a heartrending portrait of sexual abuse and its lasting repercussions as a young boy finds escape in movies, only to discover a monster lurking in the theater's shadows. "The Buffalo Hunter" is an unnerving story about a man with a very active internal life who discovers he has an unusual ability (and amasses an impressive baby bottle collection). "The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine" features a couple with unusual and painful proclivities who take a creepy yacht trip down the Amazon River. Straub has a proven knack for black humor, and he coaxes the nightmarish out of the mundane with startling ease. This is a powerful collection from an enduring favorite in literary chills. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
"Did I say he was dead? What I said was, he isgone." Welcome to an odd world in which the dead never quite go away, and the living arewell, not quite there. Readers of horror know, even if characters in movies and books do not, that it's never a good idea to go up to the attic, even when it's euphemized as "the upstairs junk room." Bad things happen in such dark interior spaces, as the characters in Straub's long opening story learn; in a narrative marked by a tenuous hold on time and an even more tenuous one on reality, an unfortunate young man finds that hypnosis is maybe not such a good idea after all, leading to an event that, the protagonist tells us, "virtually destroyed my family." And not just virtually. Straub (In the Night Room, 2004, etc.), who, this collection ably reveals, has affinities with both Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, likes nothing more than a good, taut, psychologically charged yarn that raises more questions than it answers: "I thought of myself as a work of art," a denizen of one fairy tale-like story remarks. "I caused responses without being responsible for them." In a Straub-ian world, proper responses include puzzlement, nervousness, and fear, to say nothing of indulging in coprophiliac moments that are going to ruin some unfortunate housekeeper's day. Denial is also allowed; as another of Straub's characters yelps, bewildered at the thought that Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" should be esteemed enough to be taught in school, "I never went to any college, but I do know that nothing means what it says, not on this planet." That's exactly right, one reason not to trust Straub's narrators, whose worlds include an unhealthy amount of free-floating anger and not a little crazinessthough if anger and craziness can bring a taxi-flattened cat back to life, then so much the better. Dark, brooding fiction from a master of the form. And take our word for it: don't go up to the attic, even if it is just a junk room. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Over a 40-year career, Straub (Mrs. God, 2012; A Dark Matter, 2010) has emerged as one of the horror genre's leading practitioners, receiving widespread acclaim and awards both for his novels and his plentiful short stories. His latest compilation presents 13 tales from previous anthologies along with three previously uncollected stories. A common feature in much of Straub's work that's readily apparent here is how he blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, making many of his premises all-too-disturbingly plausible. The protagonist of Blue Rose is the childhood version of Harry Beevers, a main character from Straub's best-selling Koko (1988), who hypnotizes a younger brother to commit extremes of self-abuse. In The Juniper Tree, a novelist relives the summer he was molested by a drifter. The estate lawyer in Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff gets more than he bargained for when he hires detectives to punish his unfaithful wife. This is a must-read for the author's fans and a perfect introduction for anyone new to Straub's brilliantly original and unsettling brand of fiction.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
These 16 stories by renowned horror author Straub plumb the depth of the human consciousness, bringing to light the darkness that lives in each of us and exposing the secrets we keep-not only from the world but from ourselves. "Blue Rose" depicts the first steps of a child down the path of sociopathy; "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff" reminds us that the old adage "what goes around comes around" is very true; and "Ashputtle" presents a twisted version of one of the world's most beloved fairy tales. Verdict Many critics argue that the short story is a dying art form, and while that idea may be true, what is clear is that writing short fiction requires a completely different mind-set from the one needed to writing novels. It is rare to find an author who can bridge that genre gap and do both well. This collection shows that Straub is among the ranks of those rare few.-Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.