Interior Darkness

Starred review from January 4, 2016
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.

December 15, 2015
"Did I say he was dead? What I said was, he is...gone." Welcome to an odd world in which the dead never quite go away, and the living are--well, 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 craziness--though 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.

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January 1, 2016
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)