Book Review: A Better World by Sarah Langan

 

A Better World by Sarah Langan    

368 pages, Hardcover
Published April, 2024 by Atria Books

 

 I don’t know what took me so long to discover the work of Sarah Langan, I was late to the party, but perhaps the perfect time to do so. Shifting from straight horror (a genre where she earned a couple of Bram Stoker awards) to social-themed Science Fiction is a move I can relate to. Langan thankfully for her, is having better success than me. Besides natural award-winning storytelling chops, it is evident that she works very hard on these novels. One of those writers who was just born to do this.

Good Neighbors was a novel I pretty much never stopped thinking about. With a Monsters are Due on Maple Street (Classic Twilight Zone episode) meets Cli-fi - Langan created a lane for herself to dominate. Science fiction studies professor Liza Yaszek called her book about women writing SF Galactic Suburbia, one reason for that label is pioneer writers like Judith Merril for example were writing stories about families and rich characters the men were writing about. Langan is dominating the SF suburbia right now.  I live in a city, and I am not doing the suburbs so I can’t comment on how accurate or inaccurate the commentary is but Sarah Langan is becoming SF’s critic of the burbs in general. 

A Better World has a little Stepford Wives feeling because it is centered on a “perfect” community set in a future already radically changed by climate change.  Linda is our POV character, and she is excited when her family is given a chance to move to Plymouth Valley a corporate town in late 21st-century America. The outside world is mostly a mystery and according to the subtle world-building that comes early in the novel. “It was the era of the Great Unwinding. The institutions, laws, and even the bridges and roads that people had come to depend on were falling apart. Everything got automated, but broken automated.” Langan gives us a nugget of the collapse, but little of the day-to-day life. On this early page, we get the same method of talking about The climate crisis. “The weather stopped making sense. Fires and storms raged. Blackouts rolled through the country like waves at a King's Stadium Dodger game. A lot of people stopped making sense, too. They were angry and mad and sad all the time, they were indignant all over overall they'd lost.”

 Langan gives us plenty of world-building once we get to the corporate town, and it only adds to the mystery that we get hints about how unpleasant the rest of the world is. This is done mostly in characters expressing how lucky they are to live in Plymouth Valley. 

“OK, it's bad period because you want a company job, and you want to live in a town like Plymouth Valley. Is that what I'm hearing?”

Josie looked at her with exasperation. “I don't want it! I have to. There's nothing outside. No place to go except a company.”

It effectively accomplishes the horror novel narrative trick of explaining why the characters would stay. Given that there is also a pagan wicker man-ish feel to the community in PV. It also reminded me of the Olvia Wilde-directed movie Don’t Worry Darling, but unlike that movie, A Better World works both before and after the reveal. This novel works better because it feels more naturally weird, and is so much better told.

Linda and her daughter Josie while happy to be there start to see through it quickly. but much of the story drive is built around how the family TRIES to fit in. There are hilarious moments like when Linda brings another family donuts and is lectured that she should’ve brought Sourdough. “When you visit, you're supposed to bring homemade sourdough. Something that takes effort. No one brings this sweet crap…”

That is probably the way all families approach the suburb, Hip the son in the family is fitting in, but Josie the daughter is struggling. Some of the most heartfelt moments are times when Linda’s heart aches for the struggles of her kids. Josie’s struggles on the soccer field really highlight this. 

A Better World will be marketed as a thriller, a satire, or social commentary. It is all those things and that is one of the reasons it is great. Sarah Langan as an author is not one to run from the genres that many outsiders consider a ghetto. This novel is horror, it is Science Fiction. Because it has the strength and respect of literary circles doesn’t mean it is not science fiction. It is science fiction. Great science fiction indeed.

 

 

  

Book Review: You Like it Darker by Stephen King

 You Like it Darker by Stephen King

 502 pages, Hardcover
Published May, 2024 by Scribner

 

At Stokercon in San Diego this summer I talked with fellow horror podcaster Talking Scared’s Neil McRobert. One of the two topics we discussed in our short introduction was being critical of Stephen King. There are multiple reasons why it is tough for me. Like many of us, Stephen King is one of my formative authors. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I was a subscriber to Castle Rock. The actual newsprint paper came in the mailbox. The Raft more than any other story was the light bulb tale that taught me to become a writer. No one has done more for the genre than Stephen King, to say I love and respect him as a writer is an understatement. He has written masterpieces like The Dead Zone and books I don’t like. You can’t write as many books as SK and not have duds.

Neil and I chatted about King being so popular that he has become a common language, when we (I mean the whole horror community) are critical, we can’t hurt him, not in terms of sales, and King is one of the few universal languages in the genre. He is as close to a common language as we have. So if one of his books has problems, it is something we as a community can talk about, and grow from. SK knows he is not perfect, listen to him talk about mystery writing and plotting.

All That said, it means you can take it to the bank, when I tell you that I love a SK book. I will tell you that I found Fairy Tale unreadable when I do. You Like It Darker is an excellent collection of stories, most short stories but one is a short novel. It is 235 pages more than double Of Mice and Men after all. 

 There is a major difference between the author of Skelton Crew and Night Shift and the author of this collection. As King has gotten older so have the constant readers. There is no journey with an author that readers have taken quite like it. Maybe Dean Koontz but he has clearly different eras like Odd Thomas, or his Frankenstein books.. This is the same author with more tools but the same imagination and it is glorious to read King’s work when he is at full strength. 

The opening story will make you wonder if King was given his talent by way of an alien encounter, like the characters in this novella. This is a charming well-executed tale, built with excellent storytelling chops. The characters are great, but it is the structure and how it unfolds that makes it work. The second, the Fifth Step, is a weird story, short almost entirely built on a punchline ending. Up next is a weird vibe piece Willie the Weirdo that seems like a spin on the concept of the classic King story Gramma. (which was turned into a Twilight Zone written by Harlan Ellison). It is a pretty interesting piece. It had a creepy tone and I wasn’t sure where it was going at first. It had the creepiest tone that King had reached in a while. Loved it. 

 I am not going to go through every story, some work better than others but that is the nature of a collection. I admit I scoffed when I saw Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream was essentially a novel as that is not what I signed up for. That said King working at the length is generally magical. The set-up is midwestern noir meets Les Miserables. Danny is a great and rare King character, not a writer, but a janitor, who has a dream that leads him to the body of a woman who was murdered in the middle of nowhere. An attempt to anonymously report the body ends with him as the main suspect. 

We know he is innocent, and that makes the novel work for me. Danny is wronged, and convicted in public opinion. On the Kingcast the discussion involved a debate on this story. Someone suggested that it might have been a better story if the reader was not sure if Danny was innocent or not. I disagree. The tension and suspense of the story is the fact that this innocent man is in an almost impossible situation. Each time it looks worse for him it is like a rope getting tighter. Danny is a regular guy and you are rooting for him, and the worse it looks the more tense the whole thing feels. I won't spoil the second half but this story is worth the whole book. 

On the Slide Road Inn also felt like a new spin on a Skeleton Crew classic Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut but the connection was not as close. I mean it involves a shortcut. This was a good one.  The next one I feel I must comment on is Turbulence Expert. As Dickian, I had to notice the similar set up this one has to the PKD classic Adjustment Team, King rarely plays with similar themes. 

The last one that hit me was the novella Rattlesnakes. A Kinda sorta sequel to Cujo in the sense that the father who lost his son Tad (the kid who died at the end of CUJO) is the central character. It is interesting as he is mostly off-screen in that novel, catching up with him decades after the tragic event in his life. This is a haunting novella, and pure horror that serves as a sequel that an older writer is perfect to write to a book he wrote when he was younger. 

One of the things that is so cool about Rattlesnakes is that he couldn’t have written it when he was younger, and without the natural passage of time, it wouldn’t work. Seeing the consequences of the novel from so long ago…it was a great piece of work. 

Dreamers and The Answer Man were great ways to end the collection. Dreamers is a weird work that had cosmic horror vibes, and The Answer Man was a delightfully charming period piece that apparently King started in the 80s or 90s and it feels old school. The old-timey charm mixed with Twilight zoney strangeness was the perfect way to end 

You Like it Darker is a fantastic sample of the master at work. A must-read for King fans, bt there is reach beyond the constant readers for sure. It is not a mainstream King like Shawshank, it is horror King and I love that.

 

 

Better World by Sarah Langan

Book Review: Shallow Ends by David James Keaton

 

 

Shallow Ends by David James Keaton

 288 pages, Paperback
Expected publication: September 24, 2024 by Podium Publishing

 

Years ago, homey Anthony Trevino lent me The Last Projector by David James Keaton. It sounded good, and Anthony swore by it. I can’t explain it, but that book has been unread on my TBR pile in four apartments. Probably 8 years now. For the life of me why I have not read it is a mystery and at this point, I think I am just being stubborn.

I mean I read Head Cleaner his last novel, and Interviewed David on the podcast. That fucking book was one of my favorites of that year.  I even made it Dick-like Suggestion on the Dickheads podcast. So, think about it. I talked about Keaton’s weird SF VCR time travel novel on not one, but two podcasts. I also think of him every time a character in a movie takes a decompression shower, seriously once you notice it they are as pervasive as giant massive grave holes that magically happen in movies. Why do I think of DJK when a character stands in the shower and just thinks about their horrible situation? Because whenever he sees it in a movie or TV he posts a picture of it. I can’t unsee them because of him. That should serve as a reminder, of that book still sitting on the TBR.

The point is I have plenty of reminders and reasons to read The Last Projector and I have not. Then last month a package showed up on my porch. In the package mailed by David James Keaton there was a DVD for Innocent Blood.  A movie I saw in the theater that I used to call ‘European Vampire in Pittsburgh’. Get it? John Landis the director of American Werewolf in London directed it. It had the same horror comedy tone. They should’ve called the movie by that title. There was also a CD for the band Yes: The Yes Album. I was listening to the Misfits this morning. Now for the rest of this review, I will listen to that Yes album. I am not a Yes Fan, so this may become a commentary on Prog rock. I like Prog metal, so maybe I will like it.

Bye, bye Danzig and the boys. Here comes Yes.

The package also contained a novel by David James Keaton. Which I have read already despite not reading The Last Projector, and even though he sent me this hippie bullshit in the mail. Yes is the hippie bullshit to be clear. Shallow Ends is the novel.  In one way it is a throwback. In the Golden Age of Science Fiction, authors would break up novels and sell them as short stories, later compile them into what were called Fix-up novels.

As best I can tell Keaton took seven short stories that he published in various places and recycled them into this novel. You can call it smart or shroud because the common wisdom is that readers don’t want to buy short story collections. They want novels baby.  One long story with characters that grow and have character arcs over a complete book. So here is David James Keaton the author of seven published short stories and what does he do with them?  Publishers don’t want a collection.

So I am sure he turned on a hot shower let the water run on him and closed his eyes. As the steam rose cinematically around him in his moment of despair an idea!  I will put them together in one novel with a single story to tie them together.  (I can’t take anymore Yes, I might have to cleanse with Morbid Angel. Speaking of YES – Why didn’t Weird Al ever make “Donor of a Faulty Heart?”)

You maybe asking now? Who could make that work? The Answer is clearly the author of the Last Projector David James Keaton. This is a pretty solid act of writing, not everyone could take seven stories seemly slide them into one novel, thankfully the stories are thematically themed and stylistically suited for the task.

The story of the fire truck converted into a nightmarish party bus sets perfectly for Keaton's hilarious Clerks meets Twilight Zone vibe. Add a bit of Speed (the movie, not the other stuff) and you have all the ingredients for a fun read.  The party bus heads out of Louisville, where the novel starts on a lost highway, it won't stop, the poor bastards are afraid it will never stop.  As the characters try to figure out how they ended up in this hell the guilt brings up memories. The short stories!

Damn you for making me listen to YES hippie shit, but thank you for the novel Keaton! Some of the stories, like the shark one, are better than others but the story tying them together was fun. I laughed many times. I had fun with this book. Podcast interview is coming. It will be about Shallow Ends. Not The Last Projector.