Book Review: 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Joe Hill's collection of short stories runs the gamut of both horror and fantasy. They range from the utterly horrific, such as Best New Horror about an editor who makes the mistake of tracking down an incredible new author to his home in order to convince him to publish more stories, or You Will Hear the Locust Sing which adds a horrific riff on Kafka's Metamorphosis when a young boy turns into an insect -- one that's still human sized and very hungry; to the downright creepy, including The Black Phone in which a young man is kidnapped and locked in a basement with a disconnected phone that rings at odd hours of the day, and Last Breath about a man who collects the dying words of people and keeps them in bottles. The horror fan in me absolutely loved these and the other creep-inducing jaunts into the darker corners of imagination. What I found surprising and quite a nice touch were a few stories that while on the surface may have touched on those dark corners, they actually carried a nice amount of sweetness and poignancy.

Take the story Pop Art, for example. When a young boy is severely picked on for being inflatable rather than flesh and blood, another outcast sticks up for him, forging a unique friendship that Hill uses to delve into how people react to differences in others. In 20th Century Ghost, a woman who haunts a movie theater shows the owner and others who've seen her what love and caring are all about. And in one of my favorite stories -- Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead -- two people find love in the midst of filming a zombie movie.

The stories collected in 20th Century Ghosts are all wonderfully crafted tales, filled with delight, terror, creepiness, gore, and love. A highly recommended read.

20th Century Ghosts
by Joe Hill
Harper (Harper Collins)
ISBN: 978-006-114798-2
trade paperback, 318 pgs.

purchased book

Image from Book Closeouts.