Worse Than Myself – Stories by Adam Golaski

Adam Golaski’s collection of strange stories emerges from behind a nicely suggestive image of a deep forest in deep winter, the uniform white of snow contrasting the progressive fade of black trunks to grey with the distance. Divided into two sections – New England & New York and Montana – Golaski presents eleven unsettling experiences which, while not necessarily unfamiliar to readers of horror, all benefit from quality and style not generally associated with the genre.

Yet Another Three Reviews

The now customary triliogy (as I used to put it) of InMadrid-aimed book reviews – recorded here for posterity in order of appreciation by me. The last such set for the time being – life is too busy to spend on something so trivial as high literature…

Another Three Short Reviews

Again, three short reviews submitted to InMadrid, the friendly face of English-speaking free newspapers in Spain’s capital; and again, presented here in order of appreciation (if not exactly that of artistic merit, whatever that means). I liked the first one so much I’ve now reviewed it twice…

Three Short Reviews

Just because it amuses me to lump a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in with Clive Cussler, I’m posting these three short reviews together. They were all written (well, two pending) for InMadrid, a free English-language newspaper whose editor has graciously failed to object to their reprinting, in order of my appreciation, here.

Decline of the English Murder

Billed as some of Orwell’s “less accessible” material, Decline of the English Murder and other essays contains ten texts on a strange variety of subjects, but in which his potent insights into the flaws of man and society remain constant – as well as a biting wit.

Sicilian Uncles

Although there are probably any number of reasons for me to think otherwise, even in my own reading experience, when I consider translated literature I never imagine it to be genre work – as if being translated were a genre in itself.

Wonderful Life

For anyone in the dark, the Burgess Shale is one of the greatest fossil discoveries in palaeontological history. Uncovered in British Columbia by Charles Doolittle Walcott, one of America’s most distinguished scientific minds, the Burgess Shale contained an astonishing diversity of forms – but most significantly, from a time at which no solid evidence for life had yet been found.

Eleven Short Stories (Undici Novelle)

I persist in my old habit of giving audience every Sunday morning to the characters of my future short stories.

Three hours, from seven to ten.

I almost always find myself in bad company.

The Graveyard Book

An oppressive figure – chillingly illustrated by both author Neil Gaiman and, in the case of my hardback copy, artist Chris Riddell – ascends a staircase after completing three terrible acts, only to find the final vital victim is absconded; has fled his cradle oblivious to the horror lurking in his home, the dangers waiting in the night mists outside, too young to even know his own name – and you’re nobody if you have no name.

Henry Fool

Simon Grim is taciturn garbage man supporting and living with his depressive mother and slutty sister, largely as the subject of their contempt, in a run-down neighbourhood of Queens, New York. He is constantly exposed to the lower qualities of human existence, even contributing to them in his own small way, seemingly destined to add nothing to the world but another meaningless, vaguely squalid life story – until he encounters Henry Fool, a learned scoundrel and unpublished author of his own, too scandalous to be read, life story… his “Confession”.