The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Shipp's The Atrocities is well-served by featuring the iconic maze on its cover. Like any self-respecting maze, The Atrocities is a lush story that is never quite what you think it's going to be. A haunted house? A respectable family? A terrible tragedy? Mental illness? Unquenchable grief? All the ingredients are there.

It's worth mentioning that there is a key difference between a labyrinth and a maze: labyrinths have a single path in and out, whereas mazes are full of right and wrong choices. Shipp manages to give us both. Our path into the book may be a labyrinth for us, but Shipp shows us that readers have choices on how to interpret a character's journey.



You get comfortable with the direction of the narrative, and then we are reminded the story is a maze, full of questionable motivations, unreliable narration, darkly fantastic nightmares, and stories within stories. It's no accident that the house is encircled by the maze, as the story itself both ends and begins there. It is symmetry that both are full of dead ends, false starts, and hidden secrets. But it is not a minotaur you find at its center. Instead it's a chimera of heartache and betrayal, slowly revealed by Shipp's inexorable dream logic.

It is difficult to discuss the plot beyond the book's synopsis without spoiling the tricks of the maze, but the tale is glorious Gothic goodness from beginning to end. Many have pointed out the story ends abruptly. I think that's probably a fair assessment, but then again, emerging from any maze is usually disorienting, revelatory, and sudden.

If you're in the market for a modern Gothic ghost story with a dose of labyrinthine delirium, The Atrocities should be added to your list.


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