REVIEW: 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Joe Hill is the past recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship and the A.E. Coppard Prize. His stories have appeared in a variety of magazines, such as Postscripts and The High Plains Literary Review, and in many anthologies, including THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR (Ed. Stephen Jones), and YEAR’S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR (Ed. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link & Gavin Grant). His first novel, HEART-SHAPED BOX, is forthcoming from William Morrow/HarperCollins.

I'd never heard of Joe Hill before. When his name first started popping up here-and-there in the blogosphere, I took little notice. The name sounded pseudonymous, anonymous. Joe Hill. A normal name, a plain name. A name easily passed over. It could have gone on like that forever - my ignorance, my blindness to the hype that was building around this author. Luckily for me, it didn't.

I don't remember what it was that finally bought his name to my attention. Don't even remember what compelled me to order a copy of his first collection, "20th Century Ghosts", from PS Publishing. Whatever it was, I am very glad I did.

I'd never hear of Joe Hill before. Now I want EVERYONE to hear about him.

"20th Century Ghosts" is one of those rare collections that, story after story, just blows your socks off. Joe Hill has near mastered the art of the short story, and each and every tale here is a gem. This is mature, intelligent and emotion-filled writing.

Beginning with "Best New Horror", Hill lets us know upfront the territory through which he will be leading us. Eddie Carroll, editor of the long-running "America's Best New Horror", is feeling down and out. His wife has left him, he misses his daughter, and the slush pile grows ever higher. Reading one Lovecraft pastiche after another, tale after tale of vampires having sex with vampires, he becomes numb to the task. His once joyful job is now just a tiresome chore... until he discovers "Button Boy: A Love Story". He wants, he needs, to publish "Button Boy". It is the best horror story he has ever read. But seeking permission from its elusive author is more difficult than Eddie imagines, leading him him from the creepiness of SF-cons to backwoods USA for a conclusion that is as satisfying as it is inevitable.

The title story "20th Century Ghost" recounts the tale of the haunted and ailing Rosebud theatre. The ghost, a young woman who died during a showing of "The Wizard of Oz", still appears to watch the current feature, and occasionally to chat with those who find them self seated beside her. This is a sad and haunting tale of the effect those flickering ghosts of light that we call movies can have on the path of people's lives. It is a tale of the decline of the 20th Century's once-magnificent cinemas, and the things some people will do to see them restored. In the hands of a lesser author this story could have come across as soppy and overly sentimental, but Joe hill injects just the right amount of nostalgic melancholy to turn it around into a sad and beautiful romance.

"Pop Art" is probably the best short story I have ever read in my life. It is the story of an 'inflatable boy' named Arthur Roth. Yep, a kid who is just an air-filled plastic bubble in the shape of a boy. But he's real! The premise is just ridiculous (an inflatable boy!) but very moving. You really feel for this kid who can't even use a pencil in class because he might accidentally puncture himself. A silly idea taken very seriously, and so very, very sad. If you say "I don't like horror", well: I don't care", you MUST read this story. Absolutely wonderful.

"You Will Hear the Locust Sing" is probably my least favourite in the collection. This is not at all to say it is a bad story. It is written just as well as all the other stories, but this one just didn't quite connect with me. Here Franz Kafka meets 50s "Giant Bug" movies when a kid wakes up as a giant locust. Unlike Kafka's despairing Gregor Samsa, young Francis Kay revels in his new found daikaiju status, and goes on a teenage-locust rampage.

"Abraham's Boys" shows us how strange it would be to grow up with Van Helsing as our father. Fleeing distressing rumours about the death of his wife Mina, Abraham Van Helsing has bought his superstitious fears to America, and raises his sons with a tough but fatherly hand. Will Abraham convince them to continue the family trade?

"Better than Home" is a baseball story without any hint of the supernatural or the speculative. Its unease comes from the troubled narrator, a young child for whom certain sounds - the rustle of aluminium foil, the sound of a VCR rewinding - are nauseating and painful.

"The Black Phone" is a Twilight Zone style story about a young boy trapped in the basement of a serial killer's house. There is a phone on the wall, a black phone, and it's receiving calls from the killer's previous victims.

"In the Rundown" is another baseball themed story. A disgruntled video store clerk loses his job and stumbles onto a scene of urban violence that makes him wonder why he ever gave up the sport he loved.

Every young boy's superhero-dreams are fulfilled in the opening moments of "The Cape" when he discovers his childhood security blanket can make him fly. This Bradburyesque story of childhood innocence lost and the hard road to maturity was genuinely shocking in its final-page turn around. I think I'll remember this tale for a long time.

A Museum of hermetically sealed jars, each jar containing someone's "Last Breath". This is the macabre premise behind the next story, which my mind imagined as illustrated by Charles Addams, or Edward Gorey. Quite unsettling... until the children arrive, and then it gets even more disturbing.

"Deadwood" is a creepy piece of flash-fiction about haunted trees.

Again, in the "The Widow's Breakfast", there is nary a whiff of the supernatural. Just a polite old hobo looking for some food and an accommodating widow. All very nice, but here again it is the children that give us the feeling we might have just taken a few steps off the road to reality.

"My Father's Mask" is probably the most disturbing story in the book. Its surreality and taboo erotic undercurrent let us know for sure that reality has definitely slipped a few gears. When Jack travels with his parents to the family's house on the lake, and masquerade masks and nakedness become compulsory, the spiral into weirdness drags us deeper and deeper into a story that I never quite understood but couldn't tear myself away from.

The collection's final piece, "Voluntary Commital", is a very fine novellete. When teenager Nolan falls in with school bully Eddie Prior, tragedy eventually ensues. It is Morris, Nolan's mentally retarded younger brother, who steps in to help and get Nolan's life back on track. Year's later, with the disappearance of Morris from the mental institution to which he has voluntarily confined himself, Nolan reflects on the important part his brother played in shaping his life. With a nod to Lovecraft (and more than a touch of Stephen King), Joe Hill successfully brings us into Morris's strange and insular world as seen through his brother's eyes... and what we see might be very hard to believe.

Together, these tales combine to create a collection that balances perfectly between intelligent, mature dark-fantasy and unflinching horror. Easily as accomplished as Clive Barker's "Books of Blood", "20th Century Ghosts" is also much more subtle. Its stories are lingering, disturbing creatures - even the 'mainstream' ones - that reminded me in many ways of Margo Lanagan's "Black Juice", or Dale Bailey's "The Resurrection Man's Legacy" (two collections that are on top of my "You Must Read This" list for all readers of short, dark tales).

Joe Hill's "20th Century Ghosts" has also joined my "You Must Read This" list. I'll be telling everyone about it. Telling everyone to buy it and read it. I'm starting now by telling you - Go and read '20th Century Ghosts', you won't regret it.

20th Century Ghosts is available through PS Publishing - http://www.pspublishing.co.uk