But You Scared Me the Most

March 28, 2016
This collection of 26 clever but often aloof short stories tries to provide fresh takes on familiar material, from men behaving badly to monsters being monstrous, but doesn’t always succeed. Some of these stories display glimmers of sensitivity and insight, including “Nessie,” which features two young sisters bonding over the song “Puff the Magic Dragon,” and “Jamey’s Sister,” in which the teenage sister of a soldier killed in the Middle East begins to see the president as inhuman. However, many other stories are either brief and shallow, such as “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” a letter from a man to his fiancée explaining his antics in her family’s pool, or finish with creatively dark but baffling twists, as in “No Place like Home” and “Dracula’s Daughter.” Manderino (Reason for Leaving) infuses each story with wit and well-observed detail, but the glib tone often keeps readers at arm’s length. As a whole, the collection is entertaining, but lacks depth.

April 1, 2016
Maine-based writer Manderino (The H-Bomb and the Jesus Rock, 2010, etc.) plumbs the depth of domestic horror in these fleeting but beguiling stories about ghosts, murders, monsters, and madmen. In "A Certain Fellow Named Phil," our narrator confesses to killing Veronica, an inflatable sex doll. "Nessie" finds a middle schooler obsessed with the sea monster and the sadness of "Puff the Magic Dragon." In "Bigfoot Tells All," the mighty beast tells us about his girlfriend (a bear) and the time he ate a person recently: "The look on that man's face. Priceless." "Wolfman and Janice" is a domestic drama in the vein of Tom Waits about a werewolf and his girlfriend. The title story finds an old woman frightened of a bump in the night speaking to a dead husband who may or may not be imagined. "I don't think I'm going to die tonight," she says. "But I'll be there soon, George, I'm sure. Meanwhile, be happy, dear. But not completely." In "No Place Like Home," a boy wonders about the differences between Dorothy Gale and a local girl named Gloria. "But maybe Dorothy had the right idea, staying close to home," he ponders. "Gloria's body was discovered one morning under some bushes in a park two towns away, her bicycle lying nearby." "Bob and Todd" covers the dialogue between a hitchhiker and a driver who may or may not have a dead body in the trunk. In "Jamey's Sister," a dead soldier's sister must compose a letter to the president. "Mr. President, do you know what you are? You are a monster. You don't have horns or hoofs or fangs or fur, but that is what you are, a monster," she writes. Still other stories concern themselves with twisted versions of Barbie, Nancy Drew, and other pop-culture icons. Clever fables about nightmares both real and imagined.

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May 15, 2016
What would happen if you took all the familiar things that scared you as a child ghosts, mummies, vampires, Bigfoot!but looked at them with your adult eye? They would be darker and more bizarre than you could have ever imagined as a youth, much like Manderino's 26 witty and inventive tales. These are short, surprising, and thought-provoking stories that will stay with readers long after they finish. Jamey's Sister shines as the heartbreaking story of the havoc real-life monsters can play on a family, as a young girl writes a letter to the monster she blames for her soldier brother's deaththe president. In Wolfman and Janice, a wife helps control her werewolf husband by talking to him about golf, while in Bob and Todd, a hitchhiker may or may not be in a car with a man who just killed his wife. It's not just horror tropes that Manderino probes with his macabre sensibility. Familiar characterssuch as Nancy Drew, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and even Barbie and Kenare prominently featured in their own dark and twisted tales. This is a solid collection of weird fiction and bizarre fables for fans of Kelly Link or Stephen Graham Jones.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)