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Sunruined
Seven bleak stories from Andersen Prunty.
Contains:
The Jackthief
The Screaming Orchard
Glowers Point
Cruel Women with Whiplike Smiles
The Smoke of Samuel
Sad Clown, Kentucky
Sunruined
Contains:
The Jackthief
The Screaming Orchard
Glowers Point
Cruel Women with Whiplike Smiles
The Smoke of Samuel
Sad Clown, Kentucky
Sunruined
82 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2011
18 people are currently reading
271 people want to read
About the author
Andersen Prunty
51 books669 followersAndersen Prunty lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He writes novels and short stories. Visit him at notandersenprunty.com, where he posts a free story every Friday.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 5, 2019
Have you ever found a writer that wrote exactly the way you would have written a story? Who's mind seems to be in sync with yours, somebody who might see life and think exactly the way you do?
Well, Andersen Prunty is none of the above for me. I think this guy writes weird-ish stuff and he's thinking so far outside the box, his mind is in the factory where they MAKE the box. Don't get me wrong, this is not criticism from me.
Prunty is, above all else, refreshing. This makes his stories totally unpredictable (a good thing). And he didn't take the weirdness too far - at least in this collection - for me to appreciate the stories. Granted, some of them I didn't immediately understand and had to reread some things to wrap my head around them - Thanks a lot for making me feel stupid, dude - but overall this collection is good. I wouldn't call it horror, exactly, but there is this element of uneasiness in some of them.
If I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be THE SMOKE OF SAMUEL.
You need an open mind to appreciate this collection, which is why I think you will either love it or hate it.
Well, Andersen Prunty is none of the above for me. I think this guy writes weird-ish stuff and he's thinking so far outside the box, his mind is in the factory where they MAKE the box. Don't get me wrong, this is not criticism from me.
Prunty is, above all else, refreshing. This makes his stories totally unpredictable (a good thing). And he didn't take the weirdness too far - at least in this collection - for me to appreciate the stories. Granted, some of them I didn't immediately understand and had to reread some things to wrap my head around them - Thanks a lot for making me feel stupid, dude - but overall this collection is good. I wouldn't call it horror, exactly, but there is this element of uneasiness in some of them.
If I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be THE SMOKE OF SAMUEL.
You need an open mind to appreciate this collection, which is why I think you will either love it or hate it.
October 29, 2013
An uneven collection of stories, albeit with consistently good writing throughout. Evenly split between horror and moody-ish stories. I loved the horror-related titles, the others, not so much. I give the collection overall a 3 1/2 star rating, maked as four on Goodreads.
The good stories in this collection are REALLY good, and the others aren't necessarily bad, just not great. I'd recommend reading THE JACKTHIEF, THE SCREAMING ORCHARD, and CRUEL WOMEN WITH WHIPLIKE SMILES. The rest of the stories left me unsatisfied.
Individual story reviews:
*** The Jackthief
A Halloween fairy tale of sorts. Very poetic, but I was hoping for more depth in the plot after the excellent opening. Worth reading. Reminiscent of Bradbury.
**** The Screaming Orchard
A great Halloween read. Dark gruesome fun, reads like a lost Laymon tale. Pure pulpy entertainment. Recommended. Looking forward to reading more of this collection.
** Glowers Point
This one started out strong. A woman cheating on her out-of-town husband gets a call from him while still in bed with her lover. Her husband says he's in the middle of nowhere, wait, there's a sign...he's near Glowers Point. Her heart sinks she knows the place, from her past, a bad place. From the receiver, her husband screams and then phone cuts off. And the reader is hooked.
The first half of this story is perfectly paced and plotted, but about halfway through the style seems to shift and the tension evaporates along with plausibility. I suspect that perhaps this story was written by a younger Mr. Prunty, although that's pure speculation on my part. The primary flaw with the story is that it reveals its hand prematurely, and by the reveal of the big bad (pulled straight out of SWAN SONG), the reality of the story has transformed into dreamland. Could be better with some work.
***** Cruel Women with Whiplike Smiles
Quantum leap in quality from the preceding story. This story ranks way up there as one of best written things I've ever read. Flowing, lyrical, magical, like a dose of salvia in written form. Though the ending was not a surprise, the trip getting there was so perversely beautiful I was sad it ended. I will be reading this again, many times, I'm sure. Well done.
*** The Smoke of Samuel
A newly wed painter loses his muse, then finds it again in the semi-living corpse of a man's daughter, hidden inside an abandoned mill...or something reasonably close to that. A bit of a muddled mess of a story, beautifully written in spots and baroquely overwritten in others. Characters don't ring quite true and motivations seem off. If I was to guess, I'd suppose that this story was written early in the writer's career and was possibly based on a dream. Some interesting set pieces (well, one - inside the mill) but not much else to recommend it.
*** Sad Clown, Kentucky
The odd title of this story had me excited to read it, but really is no indication of what lies in store.
A severely average man divorces his average wife, quits his average job, amd moves in with his elderly mother and wastes his days staring at the TV in a stupor. When he finds her dead in her bed one morning, he can't quite muster up the energy to do the things he needs to do to deal with her loss, so he brews a pot of coffe and settles back down in front of the TV. A hallucinatory sequence suggests that perhaps the man is dead, too, but that never seems to go anywhere and the story goes on to a decidedly average conclusion. An average tale of self-inflicted pathos that may be a good cure if you happen to be feeling a little to upbeat at the moment.
*** Sunruined
My parents never really loved me, the story. An unloved child, now grown and moved away, returns home to dispose of the family home after the closely-timed deaths of his parents. At night he revisits the mysterious unused nursery they had kept unoccupied since his older brother had died as an infant, and discovers the answer to the mystery of why he was unloved. Spoiler: the mystery is about as unlikely as the man never looking into the nursery more than once during his entire life. The tale started of intruguing enough, but ultimately ended up in a very silly place.
This is the first collection I've read by Andersen Prunty, and it may be an early example of his work. I'm definitely now a fan of his writing, and will read more of his stories to see if I can find others that live up to the best found here.
The good stories in this collection are REALLY good, and the others aren't necessarily bad, just not great. I'd recommend reading THE JACKTHIEF, THE SCREAMING ORCHARD, and CRUEL WOMEN WITH WHIPLIKE SMILES. The rest of the stories left me unsatisfied.
Individual story reviews:
*** The Jackthief
A Halloween fairy tale of sorts. Very poetic, but I was hoping for more depth in the plot after the excellent opening. Worth reading. Reminiscent of Bradbury.
**** The Screaming Orchard
A great Halloween read. Dark gruesome fun, reads like a lost Laymon tale. Pure pulpy entertainment. Recommended. Looking forward to reading more of this collection.
** Glowers Point
This one started out strong. A woman cheating on her out-of-town husband gets a call from him while still in bed with her lover. Her husband says he's in the middle of nowhere, wait, there's a sign...he's near Glowers Point. Her heart sinks she knows the place, from her past, a bad place. From the receiver, her husband screams and then phone cuts off. And the reader is hooked.
The first half of this story is perfectly paced and plotted, but about halfway through the style seems to shift and the tension evaporates along with plausibility. I suspect that perhaps this story was written by a younger Mr. Prunty, although that's pure speculation on my part. The primary flaw with the story is that it reveals its hand prematurely, and by the reveal of the big bad (pulled straight out of SWAN SONG), the reality of the story has transformed into dreamland. Could be better with some work.
***** Cruel Women with Whiplike Smiles
Quantum leap in quality from the preceding story. This story ranks way up there as one of best written things I've ever read. Flowing, lyrical, magical, like a dose of salvia in written form. Though the ending was not a surprise, the trip getting there was so perversely beautiful I was sad it ended. I will be reading this again, many times, I'm sure. Well done.
*** The Smoke of Samuel
A newly wed painter loses his muse, then finds it again in the semi-living corpse of a man's daughter, hidden inside an abandoned mill...or something reasonably close to that. A bit of a muddled mess of a story, beautifully written in spots and baroquely overwritten in others. Characters don't ring quite true and motivations seem off. If I was to guess, I'd suppose that this story was written early in the writer's career and was possibly based on a dream. Some interesting set pieces (well, one - inside the mill) but not much else to recommend it.
*** Sad Clown, Kentucky
The odd title of this story had me excited to read it, but really is no indication of what lies in store.
A severely average man divorces his average wife, quits his average job, amd moves in with his elderly mother and wastes his days staring at the TV in a stupor. When he finds her dead in her bed one morning, he can't quite muster up the energy to do the things he needs to do to deal with her loss, so he brews a pot of coffe and settles back down in front of the TV. A hallucinatory sequence suggests that perhaps the man is dead, too, but that never seems to go anywhere and the story goes on to a decidedly average conclusion. An average tale of self-inflicted pathos that may be a good cure if you happen to be feeling a little to upbeat at the moment.
*** Sunruined
My parents never really loved me, the story. An unloved child, now grown and moved away, returns home to dispose of the family home after the closely-timed deaths of his parents. At night he revisits the mysterious unused nursery they had kept unoccupied since his older brother had died as an infant, and discovers the answer to the mystery of why he was unloved. Spoiler: the mystery is about as unlikely as the man never looking into the nursery more than once during his entire life. The tale started of intruguing enough, but ultimately ended up in a very silly place.
This is the first collection I've read by Andersen Prunty, and it may be an early example of his work. I'm definitely now a fan of his writing, and will read more of his stories to see if I can find others that live up to the best found here.
May 13, 2012
I was pretty impressed by Prunty's short story collection, The Overwhelming Urge. However Sunruined and its seven pieces of fiction makes the previous collection look like a sunny walk in the park. All seven stories are horror tales of the most harrowing kind. They bring out the best in Andersen Prunty and his best may be way too strong for the casual reader. "The Jackthief" is my favorite. It was originally featured in the novel The Sorrow King but it stands beautifully on its own. I also liked "The Screaming Orchard" which gives us a taste of what Algernon Blackwood may have been like if he was a bizarro author. This is my new pick for those who have not read Prunty and want to. But read a story a day. All seven in one sitting may be harmful to your psyche.
January 1, 2012
Prunty is just the master of creepiness and creeping sadness. All the stories in this book deal with memories, pain, and regret. Some explore change and escape. And they're all so damned well-written! The fact that this man's name is not up there with the greats of horror writing, I can ascribe only to nepotism, intrique, and some sort of conspiracy cooked up by Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann.
Lessons learned?
1) When a creepy old man tells you, "She died in there. Still in there." --- for God's sake - don't go IN THERE!
2) If someone says "Can't catch me!" --- don't chase them!
3) You can go home again, but you're likely to regret it.
Lessons learned?
1) When a creepy old man tells you, "She died in there. Still in there." --- for God's sake - don't go IN THERE!
2) If someone says "Can't catch me!" --- don't chase them!
3) You can go home again, but you're likely to regret it.
July 19, 2019
The bleak darkness Prunty puts in his writing has soulless yet a saddening pace and sets the mood behind his disturbing settings, characters and sometimes a small laugh.
“Screaming Orchards” is my second favorite next to “The Smoke of Samuel”.
A collection worth every cent.
“Screaming Orchards” is my second favorite next to “The Smoke of Samuel”.
A collection worth every cent.
October 31, 2019
This was a bizare collection of graphic horror stories. I can honestly say that I’ve never read anything like this, but my eyes were bulging quite a few times. The stories were truly unique and I feel like the author put a lot of thought into each one with their plots and characters. I did enjoy Glowers Point and the creepiness of the location. I’m not sure if I would ever reread this or pick up something else tagged “bizarro fiction” again, but it was a refreshing and totally new experience.
January 3, 2020
Andersen Prunty writes horror stories that really aren't horror stories. They are poetic prose that have an otherworldly quality. Often, there is a supernatural thing in them, often at the end of a story, but the stories are far richer than you would think if you merely labelled them horror stories.
This is an excellent collection and if you have never read Prunty before, you are in for a treat. The seven stories are about lost childhoods and things that live in the woods and succubus witches and
enchanting places. There is a darkness and a sadness in them and people lost and all alone, so desperate for that human touch that they would risk everything to enter the deep pits and the witch's embrace. I didn't think there was a single clunker here.
Beware of people who pick up hitchhikers. Beware of locked rooms. Beware of sexy women who are just too good to be true. Remember those things you were scared of when you were a child. You were right to be scared. Right to run away. Right to stay away. Your instincts were on the ball.
This is an excellent collection and if you have never read Prunty before, you are in for a treat. The seven stories are about lost childhoods and things that live in the woods and succubus witches and
enchanting places. There is a darkness and a sadness in them and people lost and all alone, so desperate for that human touch that they would risk everything to enter the deep pits and the witch's embrace. I didn't think there was a single clunker here.
Beware of people who pick up hitchhikers. Beware of locked rooms. Beware of sexy women who are just too good to be true. Remember those things you were scared of when you were a child. You were right to be scared. Right to run away. Right to stay away. Your instincts were on the ball.
December 30, 2011
Andersen Prunty’s book Sunruined says it contains seven short horror stories, but these stories are more than just horror stories. Prunty has a way with dark and depressing stories, he seems to love putting his characters through some rough situations. I personally enjoyed each one of these stories, The Screaming Orchard is probably my favorite though I don’t feel there is a bad one in the bunch. If you’ve read The Sorrow King then you’ve already read the story The Jackthief, but that’s not a reason to not read it again. If you’ve never read anything from Andersen Prunty before this would be a good book to start with, between the seven stories you can get a good feel of his abilities as a storyteller.
June 8, 2016
Once again; beautiful, soulful, heartbreaking, nightmare inducing. This was maybe my least favorite of the Prunty short story collections. That is to say, I only love it lots and lots, but I would not kill for it.
July 6, 2012
Great collection of horror stories. By far, my favorite Prunty work to date
December 21, 2020
A collection of horror stories, competently written, with occasional sections of purple prose, though this is rarely sustained (most often used as an introduction) and the stories are the usual fare. When Prunty rises above the tropes of the genre (The Smoke of Samuel, much of The Jackthief) he shows some promise, but the rest of the collection (bar The Screaming Orchard, an unsettling folk horror, spoiled by the threat of rape as character motivation) is predictable and recycled stuff.
October 24, 2019
Another great example of how diverse Andersen prunty can be
Less extreme then some of his work these are more psychological horror
Well narrated by the man himself highly recommended
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review
Less extreme then some of his work these are more psychological horror
Well narrated by the man himself highly recommended
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review
June 5, 2021
I am not a huge fan of short story collections sometimes, but I am a fan of Prunty.
November 7, 2019
I received a review copy of this audiobook.
It’s been a few years since I’ve read or listened to horror, and it’s possible that I’ve just lost my taste for the genre, but my impression is that this collection of stories isn’t so much horrific as it is grotesque. I didn’t feel a mounting sense of dread and it didn’t hit me where I live: it just was an unpleasant series of experiences to ponder.
In the audiobook in particular, the author reads the story with an extremely flat affect that there is no sense of tension.
It’s been a few years since I’ve read or listened to horror, and it’s possible that I’ve just lost my taste for the genre, but my impression is that this collection of stories isn’t so much horrific as it is grotesque. I didn’t feel a mounting sense of dread and it didn’t hit me where I live: it just was an unpleasant series of experiences to ponder.
In the audiobook in particular, the author reads the story with an extremely flat affect that there is no sense of tension.
May 16, 2012
I bought this on a whim for 99 cents, mainly because I liked the cover, which is funny because ebooks don't really have covers. While the writing isn't, say, up there with Clive Barker, and while the stories aren't exactly on par with Thomas Ligotti in their strangeness, these stories all kicked ass, all of them!! Weird, violent, stark horror; most stops pulled out, no futile attempt to make them weightier than they are, no attempt to explain super fucking cool shit that just happens. Great great book, and I'll be getting many more of them.
May 28, 2013
bite-sized Grimm's Fairy Tales from an author who devours tears, writes short stories, then flays the words until the paint flakes off and show terrible white bone. expect depravities and horrors to ooze everywhere.
'Jackthief' was a surprise in this collection, due to the sadness and deep emotion not often seen in the standard Prunty. it's a shame he doesn't explore this more in his work--i feel that would easily provide the 'meat' to his plot, and carry the stories to the end of an actual full-length novel.
'Jackthief' was a surprise in this collection, due to the sadness and deep emotion not often seen in the standard Prunty. it's a shame he doesn't explore this more in his work--i feel that would easily provide the 'meat' to his plot, and carry the stories to the end of an actual full-length novel.
January 1, 2013
As with most collections, this one contained a few great stories and some that I didn't enjoy nearly as much. If I were rating each story individually, there would have been a couple 4 or 5 star ratings.
December 15, 2011
This collection contains what might be Prunty's best story, The Jackthief. While all of it is awesome, that one is worth the price of admission.
July 28, 2012
Most of the stories are really good, highly recommend this book.
May 26, 2015
Trees... churches... crazy kid rooms and dead mothers..... yes please!
January 20, 2016
Good stories, but after a few books the stories don't seem as original...
May 20, 2014
So, these stories were good... Interesting. Entertaining. Weird.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews