#BookReview-‘Growing Things and Other Stories’ by Paul Tremblay

About the book…

‘Growing Things and Other Stories’ by Paul Tremblay is published in paperback format by Titan Books and is available wherever good books are sold from the 2nd July!

A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national bestseller ‘The Cabin At The End Of The World’ and ‘A Head Full Of Ghosts’.

Paul Trembaly is bringing his short stories to the UK for the first time. Unearth nineteen tales of suspense and literary horror, including a new story from the world of ‘A Head Full of Ghosts’, that offer a terrifying glimpse into Tremblay’s fantastically fertile imagination.

See a school class haunted by a life-changing video, the forces at work on four men fleeing the pawn shop they robbed at gunpoint, the meth addict kidnapping her daughter as the town is terrorized by a giant monster, or the woman facing all the ghosts who scare her most in a Choose Your Own Adventure. Intricate, humane, ingenious and chilling, embrace the Growing Things.

A confession- I did not get all the stories in this book. They evoked a reaction, for sure, and I definitely think some close reading is needed to fully appreciate what the meanings of some of them are to me, but this is an outstanding collection of experimental stories by a master craftsman.

I am very grateful to Titan for my review copy-‘Disappearance At Devil’s Rock’ was one of the scariest books I have read in a long time and I love short stories. They are a great palette for a writer’s work and in one sense give them a freedom of exposition that doesn’t always get reflected in a novel length work.

Ranging from very short stories that are like a punch to the kidney, to a novella length tale -‘Notes From The Dog Walker’-these stories have a distinctly dysptopian air to this reader’s mind. Giant monsters, swamp beasts, destruction, imposters, psycholigical horror and ghosts all run riot through these pages like the unnamed plant which is trying -and succeeding-in taking over the world in the title story.

‘Knocking means the world is over!’

It’s such a short sentece but suddenly all your sense are heightened and you are super aware of all the creaking noises of the house and the movement on the street outside takes a sinister twist…you find yourself examining the plants in your garden just a little more closely …

‘A Haunted House Is A Wheel On Upon Which Some Are Broken‘ is a haunted house tale framed as a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure ‘ story , offering the reader an opportunity to escape which the protagonist does not. Do you turn to the relevant page-which corresponds in the UK paperback-and leave the house or read consecutively and stay with Fiona? In setting the rule for the story you are given the means in which to break it and it brings back a lovely sense of nostalgia for those of a certain age who grew up with these type of books(kids, ask your parents about them, they were great fun!)

‘Something About Birds’ is a genuinely nasty tale which left me shaken and I had to put the book aside for a bit.You’ll never think of twitching in the same way again.

‘The Society Of The Monsterhood’ takes the school kid losers and reimagines them in a way that is greusome yet thoughtful and metaphysical aboout the beasts we create and those we carry with us…and what they like to chow down on.

There is quite a bit of 4th wall breaking in terms of parts of stories which seem to invoke the presence of the author, or reflections on the nature of fandom, in tales like the aforementioned novella and ‘It won’t go away’.  As a whole, the stories grow into and devlop from each other which is bizarre in a way as they are collected from various publications -17 of the 19 tales have been published elsewhere-so it could have felt jarring or hastily constructed. But the way that they are laid out and feed into each other makes sense and reflects lots of different disciplines and quirks which I thoroughly adored.

‘Growing Things’ does exactly what it says on the cover-it plants a seed of malcontent which grows into feeling uncomfortable, then unease, then full blown dread.Any book that has you checking in corners for what exactly is in the shadows, under the bed(doesn’t everyone do that?), double locking the doors, being extra nice to the houseplants-in case they , you know ,evolve-and not freaking out when your dog does that thing of stopping still and staring at absolutely nothing, has done its job. And then some.

Still not quite brave enough to plant the seeds that came with the book…maybe I should, to see what grows…

About the author..

Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker and British Fantasy awards and is the author of ‘Disappearance At Devil’s Rock’, ‘A Head Full of Ghosts’, and ‘The Cabin at the End of the World’. He is currently a member of the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in Entertainment Weekly.com, and numerous year’s-best anthologies. He lives outside Boston with his family.

Links-https://thelittlesleep.wordpress.com/

Twitter @paulGtremblay

@TitanBooks