The Uncanny Reader

January 1, 2015

This anthology of 31 classic and modern short stories is united under the theme of the weird, the unexplained, and the uncanny. Classic tales range from the predictable such as E.T.A. Hoffmann's chestnut "The Sandman" to more intriguing choices such as H.P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann." Then there are such excellent stories as Robert Aikman's "The Waiting Room," about a man who misses his train and spends the night in a haunted train station. The always creepy Shirley Jackson delivers "Paranoia," in which a man is followed by a mysterious figure in a hat as he attempts to get home via multiple cabs, the subway, and buses. Joyce Carol Oates, a prolific master of the short form, turns in a story of suburban grass-is-always-greener menace in "The Jesters." The longest story is Kelly Link's beautifully weird "Stone Animals," in which a family discovers that their lives--not their new house--are haunted. VERDICT Just as humor is subjective and personal, what one reader will find uncanny another will just find odd. The collection as a whole satisfies in generating delicious unease, delivering a smorgasbord of creepiness, with something for any reader.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
When something familiar happens in an unfamiliar context, or something strange happens in a familiar one. When the inanimate appears animate, or the animate appears inanimate. When we feel there is a foreign body inside our own, or when we become foreign to ourselves. Editor Sandor, in the brilliant introduction to The Uncanny Reader, lists these unnerving scenarios as the definition of uncannythat nature is being undone, that what we think we know of the world is a deception. To unseat us from our comfort, Sandor has collected short stories spanning over a century of classic and contemporary horror. Starting with eternally haunting works by Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, the collection ends with outstanding science-fiction and horror writers on today's short story scene. Authors such as China Mi'ville and Karen Russell deliver the same disconcerting subversion of the uncanny as the nineteenth- and twentieth-century masters but are informed by today's understanding of psychology and flavored with our contemporary fears. Any seeker of smart and subtle literary horror could not bear to miss this.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)