There’s a lot of maybes about this book. Maybe it’s a masterpiece. Maybe it’s madness. Maybe I understood what was going on, maybe I just wanted to feel like I did. But there’s no maybe that this collection will stick in my head for a long, long time.
Evenson was initially marketed me as a horror author, and maybe that’s true, but there’s also a lot of heart, a lot of tragedy, and a surprising amount of humor in these pages too. His stories are often absurd and disorienting, filled with unreliable narrators and questionable imagery.
The title story really sets the tone for the whole collection. A man, after an accident with a severe head injury, finds his house, and life, changing around him. He cannot remember if he has three kids, or four. He tries to count their beds, and finds they have three, but maybe sometimes there are four. He goes on a walk to escape the house, only to come across a pen filled with horses collapsed on their side, and a man with his back turned filling their trough, never knowing if the horses are actually dead.
The uncertainty carries throughout the entire collection, carried along by Evenson’s minimalistic but skillfully chosen prose. The subjects vary heavily, from apocalyptic discoveries to families haunted by the beating heart of their child who died before birth to men accused, or maybe not accused, of horrible crimes.
I cannot recommend this collection enough. I will be devouring the rest of his short stories ASAP.
by ra2ah3roma2ma