Being a reviewer of regular horror fiction I confess I wasn’t familiar at all with Brian Evenson, a writer working mainly in the area of “magic realism.”

Truth be told I wasn’t aware of that while reading the first section of the present collection, where I especially enjoyed the following tales.

“Amparo the Bastard,” an unusual piece of fiction featuring an old rich man and his son Amparo whom he never recognized as such.

The excellent “The Specimen,” a very disturbing variation on the theme of the mad scientist.

“The Dead Child” a moving yet deeply unsettling story revolving around the death of a little child and its effects on her poor mother.

Other stories in that section are,

“The Din of Celestial Birds”
“The Death of the Old Man”
“Among the Living”
“One Tick Black Cord”
“Water and Angels”
“Legacy”
“Manna”
“Altmann in Bolivia”
“Bird”
“The Killer”
“The Revolution”
“The Jar”

When I moved to the second section of the book (“Annex: Related Stories”) I realized that I was dealing with a series of “tales” of a quite different type, which clearly belong to the magic realism genre. A couple of them (“The Trunk”, “The Tragical History of the Auschwitz Barber”) are clearly inspired — as Evenson openly admits — by the story of Klaus Barbie, a war criminal living under a false name in South America, discovered and brought back to France to stand trial for war crimes.

Certainly unusual stuff — although quite interesting– for a mere reviewer of horror story collections and/or anthologies.

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Mario Guslandi was born in Milan, Italy, where he currently lives. He became addicted to horror and supernatural fiction (too) many years ago, after accidentally reading a reprint anthology of stories by MR James, JS Le Fanu, Arthur Machen etc. Most likely the only Italian who regularly reads (and reviews) dark fiction in English, he has contributed over the years to various genre websites such as Horrorworld, Hellnotes, The British Fantasy Society, The Agony Column and many more. See all his recent reviews for us here.