Growing Things & Other Stories - Paul Tremblay

Horror

Rating: 7/10

“Horror is the biggest possible idea in the smallest possible space.” This erudite quote on the genre is never truer than in the short story format.

Chilling, bizarre, oblique, menacing, creepy, gory, weird, subversive, unhinged. Just some the descriptions that apply individually or in some combination to the stories included in this collection.

Many of them leave the ending to the readers discretion, which if you are a horror devotee, may be worse than anything written on the page. “What if it’s him at the door. What if it’s not?” Go ahead, finish that, I dare you!

I gulped these tales like a starved woman at a chocolate buffet and I should have taken a breath between courses. Allowed myself to savor the dark and delicious heights and avoided the crash that my gluttony spun me into. I often forget that short stories are harder work for we readers. It’s exhausting to transition setting, plot and characters and if read too quickly, they can run the risk of being non sensical.

Footnote: It is believed in writing circle that many words, among them “things”, should not be used. They are devoid of meaning and leave gaps in storytelling. Precisely the point in this collection as it turns out.