Book Review: Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson

 

Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson

 256 pages, Paperback
Published September, 2024 by Coffee House Press

Do I start by repeating myself about who Brian Evenson is and why he is important, I never know if this is your first time reading my reviews or if you have read my ten other Evenson reviews or listened to the multiple interviews I have done with him. Brian Evenson, to this reader, is the modern master of the short story. Along with Lisa Morton, they are my favorite short story authors at this moment. 

There is a history of writers who excel at the short story, Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Conner are examples in mainstream literary circles. Within SF, Fantasy and Horror Dennis Etchison, Harlan Ellison, Catherine L. Moore and of course, Lovecraft were masters of the short form who never achieved the same kind of power in their full-length work. Evenson has written two novels that I think are masterpieces, Immobility and Last Days. I have enjoyed several B.K. Evenson media tie-ins novels, so it is not that he isn’t capable of writing novels. He does. Brian’s skill as a writer in the short form feels like a surfer catching the perfect wave or A Steph Curry jumper that hits all net.  

An Evenson collection is filled with themes, motifs, and vibes that repeat. Clive Barker separated the Books of Blood stories in a way that every short felt different, but that is not the case when Evenson collects a book. He repeats the themes and motifs to an almost hilarious level but often it creates a sense of something bigger.

This time Parenthood, bedtime stories, communication breakdowns, ecological collapse, perception, posthumanism, what it means to be human, or alive itself. Weird creepy moments and dark reflections of thoughts that feel inspired by talking to his young son. That is just a guess, but it seems fairly obvious that during the era when most of these stories were written, the author was tucking a young person in. I feel like many of these stories feel inspired by sitting at the end of a child’s bed and wondering what stories a hiding in the shadows of those moments. 

I may be reading into the title of this collection, but there has to be a reason that this story was chosen to anchor the book as the title. 

Let's into a few of my favorite stories in the collection and highlight a few moments that I was really touched by. It should be noted that more than one of these stories was digested in one sitting on my lunch break at work. I was sitting in the break room feeling moved, surprised, and uncomfortable. At least three lunch breaks during my work I put the book down and thought “Holy shit.”  You can’t ask for more from a short story experience.

The first story I want to highlight is Untitled (cloud of blood). This is a story about a haunting in the form of a painting. The story evoked a serious amount of dread.  “It was my father's favorite painting, though perhaps favorite is the wrong word. Shall we say, rather, it was the painting my father was most drawn to, the one for which he had the deepest relationship? Indeed, if I came down from my bedroom late at night I would often find my father in the dining hall, stationed as if frozen on the meticulous and shining parquet floor staring deeply into the painting. Sometimes, too, he would speak to it, then pause, seemingly awaiting an answer though he would immediately stop this activity whenever he noticed my presence.”

Is it the painting? Is it the father that is creepy? Both? The story drips with vibes. Without the strength of prose, I am not sure we would feel this. The act of the father falling silent is the mechanics of the suspense, every piece of the build-up including the narrator being unsure how to word his Dad’s feelings for the painting plays a role.

Mother is a fantastic story, that holds the reveal of its nature as Science Fiction back so that it is a part of how it unfolds. This is also true of my favorite in the collection Imagine a Forest. Mother plays with the parental role in a science-fictional way. Mother has a powerful ending. An artificial being story that is built slowly revealing the nature of the character and the story. It is a variation of the ‘bedtime stories’ theme as it is an artificial mother/child story.  But I want to key in on one passage.

“A dream?

You do not sleep so you do not dream, and you do not have your memories to explain what dream means, how shall I put it? When you go to your tent and gather energy from the prime floor for the next day, allow your mind to wander. It will find its way to what I have given you before morning.”

The whole passage is written in italics, a communication between Mother and the artificial child. Dream is not in italics, it is a little thing, but it stopped me. I see what you are doing Evenson, I caught that. I did think about what the choice meant. In the science fictional tales in this collection, the characters ask questions like what is a forest or a dream? Questions that come off as basic parts of life. They are the questions of a child but in this context, they are questions of beings trying to understand what it means to be alive.

That also leads to our title story. Good night, Sleep Tight. In this story, a man remembers the times when his mother would tell inappropriate stories at bedtime. Also after she left and came back.

“What made her come back? Why did she return some nights but not most nights? He wasn't sure. There was no reason that he could make out. She just did.

He asked his mother about it once when he was older when he was in college before he met his wife-to-be and long before his son was born the two of them were in the living room she generally reserved for company. But now that he was away at college he qualified, he supposed, as company.

In a lull in her resuscitation of neighborhood gossip, he had asked, “Why did you used to tell me those scary stories?”

The nightmarish implication that it was not his mother, reminded me in all the right ways of a Josh Malerman vibe. This is an excellent creep fest show, a master classic in classic chills. But Evenson as well-rated as he is, still doesn’t get the notice for sentences that raise goosebumps in a single sentence.  Consider this from The Other Floor, “Speak, to be fair, was not exactly the right word. It whispered, maybe, or breathed out words, things he could barely hear.”

I don’t think you can spoil this next one I am talking about the reveal much like Mother that it is science fictional. Patiently told you might not notice until a bit into the story that you are deep in space.  To me, it is the best story in the collection and fits a 2024 zeitgeist as it is in the same subgenre as my top read of the year Skinship by James Reich. Imagine a forest is in the grand SF tradition of the Generation ship but I didn’t know until this exchange.

“What is a forest? I asked. What is a bear?”

“A forest is…” she thought for a moment. “If you go to the service deck, there are places where the ducks are exposed, you know what I mean?”

The reveal is great, but the vibe is haunting and elevates SF in a way I enjoyed enough to read a second time. 

Never Little, Never Grown is a great sly little Phil Dickian paranoid short story. Another Favorite in the collection that plays with the nature of memory.

“How many times have I learned and then asked to forget it?”

“A few Hundred,” she said. Perhaps a few more than that.”

A Brian Evenson collection is always a cause for celebration. This one is no different. You can’t go wrong with a collection, but between this collection and the new Laird Barron this has been a fantastic year for literary horror, I suspect both will make my best reads of the years. The Evenson collections are all consistent in quality there is no place to go wrong, I mean I feel I could compile of personal best of, but short horror fiction readers can’t miss this one.