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The Lost District
A collection of fantastic and horrific stories that deal thematically address the core relationships of ones life, be they parental, first loves, best friends, or lovers (of both the hetero and homosexual variety). The decaying industrial backdrop of England's midlands provides a working class context that is both uniquely English, but universally accessible.
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Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 29, 2006
15 people are currently reading
410 people want to read
About the author
Joel Lane
128 books60 followersJoel Lane was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic and anthology editor. He received the World Fantasy Award in 2013 and the British Fantasy Award twice.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
January 18, 2026
Weird fiction derives much of its weirdness from atmosphere and tone. This genre—like most types of genre fiction—struggles with originality, as every plot construct has been done to death a thousand times over. Tropes can be spotted hurtling toward a reader from miles away. So, what I look for in Weird fiction is unresolved mystery and/or unease relayed within a well-crafted atmosphere. It is difficult to create and maintain this throughout a story. If you try too hard, the artifice is exposed and spoils the mood. On the other hand, if you’re self-conscious about trying too hard and overcompensate by focusing only on plot, it will also be obvious. The balance will feel natural to the reader; it will be noticeable without being intrusive, immersive but not smothering. Certain writers of the Weird excel at this, such as Robert Aickman, Arthur Machen, Jean Ray, Sarban, Thomas Ligotti (at his best), and Joel Lane.
Lane is remarkably consistent in both his tone and atmosphere. Once you become familiar with his work, you can slip into a story and immediately recognize that Lane effect wash over you. It’s like being lowered into a vat of dark, viscous fluid. Even if you’ve never visited the West Midlands post-deindustrialization, Lane sears the area into your mind with the grimy, blackened branding iron of his prose. You also feel the compassion he has for his characters: the working class folks, the struggling and/or failed musicians and artists, the lost and lonely, the downtrodden and alienated—all of them desperate and forgotten, clinging to each other in search of respite, however brief and bereft of significance it will inevitably be.
All of Lane’s work is suffused with the social consciousness that he was known to exhibit outside of his writing. It is what tempers the bleakness of his otherwise doomed tales. His efforts to lend a voice to those ground down by the cold inhumanity of the capitalist state elevates his fiction above that of less sensitive writers. That these particular victims of social neglect and economic disinvestment tend to be goths and post-punkers is so much the better, as it suits the milieu that Lane so magically conjures.
Some readers may find that Lane’s stories tend to run together, in part due to his aforementioned stylistic consistency. To that criticism, I would say to try not reading them back to back, which is a good rule in general for short story collections. A little bit of Lane goes a long way, and with these new Influx Press reissues, there is now plenty of his work to indulge in.
Lane is remarkably consistent in both his tone and atmosphere. Once you become familiar with his work, you can slip into a story and immediately recognize that Lane effect wash over you. It’s like being lowered into a vat of dark, viscous fluid. Even if you’ve never visited the West Midlands post-deindustrialization, Lane sears the area into your mind with the grimy, blackened branding iron of his prose. You also feel the compassion he has for his characters: the working class folks, the struggling and/or failed musicians and artists, the lost and lonely, the downtrodden and alienated—all of them desperate and forgotten, clinging to each other in search of respite, however brief and bereft of significance it will inevitably be.
All of Lane’s work is suffused with the social consciousness that he was known to exhibit outside of his writing. It is what tempers the bleakness of his otherwise doomed tales. His efforts to lend a voice to those ground down by the cold inhumanity of the capitalist state elevates his fiction above that of less sensitive writers. That these particular victims of social neglect and economic disinvestment tend to be goths and post-punkers is so much the better, as it suits the milieu that Lane so magically conjures.
Some readers may find that Lane’s stories tend to run together, in part due to his aforementioned stylistic consistency. To that criticism, I would say to try not reading them back to back, which is a good rule in general for short story collections. A little bit of Lane goes a long way, and with these new Influx Press reissues, there is now plenty of his work to indulge in.
November 6, 2020
Abandon all hope ye who enter here. This is dark stuff even by the standard I usually read. These are stories of urban blight, decaying factories, ash and gasoline, rusted metal and mold. Kids selling pills, suicides and decaying societies.
The sense of loss and pain is deep. These characters inhabit a nightmare world of dark enchantment that makes the supernatural and horrific elements almost an afterthought when they do appear; as unsurprising as anything in a dream. It is the world itself that is horrific.
I think this is as good as Lane's Where Furnaces Burn, which I read some years ago. Lane's stories are typically quite short, but make good use of their length, nothing is wasted. There's a more explicit political bent with these stories compared to his later collection. Thatcher heralds and solidifies the inescapable doom of the neoliberal hellscape, and you can tell some of these were written with a genuine, white-hot anger. The painful failed relationships and lost friends happen in a context in which everything seems to have gone wrong.
People knew the risks of everything now, and they didn’t care. What had once been tried for the sake of excitement or image was just a neutral fact. The garden had been paved over. A generation of free-market economics had not only killed off the revolution, it had killed the idea of change. [...] Running down public transport was another way of isolating people, breaking up the sense of anything being shared. -The Outside World
Years of suppressed fatigue dropped their black leaves inside him. -The Country of Glass
I walked on into a crater that sucked in everything real and turned it to nothing. An abscess of infected brick and concrete. A pit where every kind of loss found its true meaning. -You Could Have It All
Telford was strange, like somebody’s dream of a town that had been left unfinished when they woke up. [...] People had more money there than round here, but they didn’t go out. They worked and bought things and went on holiday and lived in debt. The streets were always empty. -Prison Ships
These are stories for our age, unmistakably; unremittingly grim, emotionally punchy and haunting long after you've read them. I can understand why some want a lighter form of escapism (I do occasionally), or feel these stories can "run together." (I read this collection over the course of about two weeks and really savored it). I also thought some of these end on a deus ex machina, effectively unresolved, or simply unresolveable.
But there's 24 stories here and not a single one I didn't at least enjoy, which is a rare event in itself. They're so genuinely felt, the prose is "effortless" to wade through and they always managed to hold surprises. I even found myself reading them aloud at times, the language is so darkly beautiful.
The Lost District - Such a haunting story, full of regret and misery, with an overriding helplessness within the hints of the horrific about which nothing can be done. A man recounts his first love, with a strange girl from a town that seemed to sap the life out of everyone who lived there.
The Pain Barrier - This is another grim tale of societal decay, and what we will do, and sell, to survive. The black economy had been steadily growing for years, as more services were deregulated and real jobs evaporated like so many verbal contracts. You learned how to improvise. There's also mention of the environmental destruction causing a blood thinning disease which plagues one of the central characters. This story manages to have a very weird moment, but enough subtlety to leave us plenty to guess at. A man meets a guy at a gay club he recognizes from extreme BDSM films and follows him back to the abandoned building he's living in.
The Bootleg Heart - In some ways this story isn't as impressive as the very best here, but it still carries that creepy, haunting feel quite effectively. And it has one "scene" in particular that is very unnerving. A freshman in college becomes fascinated and obsessed with the couple upstairs' loud lovemaking.
Scratch - A brutal story, about poverty and abuse and growing up. This one really hits hard. There's a supernatural aspect, but it's held off until the end. A young man describes his upbringing and how he survived on the streets.
Coming Of Age - The ending of this one left me both numb and stunned, it doesn't explicitly explain a lot and still packs a punch. After a young man disappears without a trace his father walks the blighted streets looking for him.
Mine - A very short story, and a minor one by comparison with the rest. A man visiting a seedy brothel is haunted by his dark memories.
Prison Ships - This is another good example of a non-supernatural story taking on such a nightmarish mood by description of societal decay alone that it feels otherworldly and dreamlike. A young woman returns to her hometown, finding it has continued to hopelessly disintegrate.
Like Shattered Stone - This is another good story, and the ending is haunting and yet not entirely satisfying in my opinion. A sculptor finds himself sculpting something in his sleep which is far above his caliber.
Among The Dead - A corporate horror tale, and also the most gruesome in the book I'd say. This story really pushes how awful things can degenerate when society falls apart. A man working a high-pressure job relieves the pressure in a most macabre way.
The Window - This one is a bit tender-hearted by comparison to most here, but still incredibly grim. There's a lot of eerie moments, and a couple ways to interpret the end. The main character is well fleshed-out and the end comes with a jolt. A older man develops a S/m relationship with a younger man who is perhaps more than he seems.
The Quiet Hours - This reminds me of the work of Brian Evenson for some reason, it's a simple and affecting story, and a break from the urban decay. A man begins to lose his memory of who he, and everyone in his life is.
Exposure - This is another of the more tender, emotional stories. The ending reminded me of Lane's other tale "Waiting for the Thaw." An old friend asks a man to contact someone who has recently died so he can get closure.
The Outside World - This one has a more explicitly political bent, another story of a hopeless world encapsulated in a brief, sad rendezvous between characters therein. A man finds himself attracted to failed suicides.
The Country Of Glass - This is another hard-edged tale, but it offers a ray of hope at the end. An alcoholic in a downward spiral seeks a mythical land of peace.
The Night That Wins - This is a very different story, I assume this is a Clark Ashton Smith tribute. If it isn't, it certainly shows his influence. Although I didn't care for this at first it really grew on me, a really great Gothic atmosphere. A man tells of his long search for those who murdered his family.
Against My Ruins - A short, grim tale of a post-apocalyptic world.
The Only Game - This is a very uncanny story, also quite short. A man has agonizing visions of people in his life as dead.
Contract Bridge - I liked this story a lot, it's not as much focused on urban decay or atmosphere as it is on a very original idea at its core that I found quite compelling. A young man out with friends is haunted by a tragedy in his past associated with a stone bridge.
Beyond The River - Another favorite, in the top five, and another tender and sad one, reflecting on the taming and watering-down of art from the encroaching corporatization of everything in our lives. It's not exactly subtle, you can feel the anger in it, but it makes its point and is very affecting. A young woman meets an author of children's books to discuss the difficulties she encountered with a new publisher.
The Plans They Made - This one really got me, because I knew someone a lot like the character this story's about, and it's both heartbreaking and strange how similar it feels to real life. An excellent story. A man recalls a friend of his whose life never got off the ground and tried to live in a world of fantasy instead.
The Drowned - This one is milder than the others, but still has a tinge of weirdness. A man recalls a brief relationship he had with a man afraid of water.
Reservoir - A very disturbing story, and a bit creepier than most here. A man tracks down a prostitute with a very strange talent.
An Unknown Past - This was probably among my least favorites here, but it still has some good points. A musician finds his apartment haunted by a drug-addicted former tenant.
You Could Have It All - A great story to end on. I can't see this title without hearing that Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" in my head, and not the lighter Johnny Cash cover either. This is another tale of the death of a friend, and trying to put together the pieces. There's such a sad sense of futility in this one. A man is tasked with reconstructing the last novel of a deceased friend.
The sense of loss and pain is deep. These characters inhabit a nightmare world of dark enchantment that makes the supernatural and horrific elements almost an afterthought when they do appear; as unsurprising as anything in a dream. It is the world itself that is horrific.
I think this is as good as Lane's Where Furnaces Burn, which I read some years ago. Lane's stories are typically quite short, but make good use of their length, nothing is wasted. There's a more explicit political bent with these stories compared to his later collection. Thatcher heralds and solidifies the inescapable doom of the neoliberal hellscape, and you can tell some of these were written with a genuine, white-hot anger. The painful failed relationships and lost friends happen in a context in which everything seems to have gone wrong.
People knew the risks of everything now, and they didn’t care. What had once been tried for the sake of excitement or image was just a neutral fact. The garden had been paved over. A generation of free-market economics had not only killed off the revolution, it had killed the idea of change. [...] Running down public transport was another way of isolating people, breaking up the sense of anything being shared. -The Outside World
Years of suppressed fatigue dropped their black leaves inside him. -The Country of Glass
I walked on into a crater that sucked in everything real and turned it to nothing. An abscess of infected brick and concrete. A pit where every kind of loss found its true meaning. -You Could Have It All
Telford was strange, like somebody’s dream of a town that had been left unfinished when they woke up. [...] People had more money there than round here, but they didn’t go out. They worked and bought things and went on holiday and lived in debt. The streets were always empty. -Prison Ships
These are stories for our age, unmistakably; unremittingly grim, emotionally punchy and haunting long after you've read them. I can understand why some want a lighter form of escapism (I do occasionally), or feel these stories can "run together." (I read this collection over the course of about two weeks and really savored it). I also thought some of these end on a deus ex machina, effectively unresolved, or simply unresolveable.
But there's 24 stories here and not a single one I didn't at least enjoy, which is a rare event in itself. They're so genuinely felt, the prose is "effortless" to wade through and they always managed to hold surprises. I even found myself reading them aloud at times, the language is so darkly beautiful.
The Lost District - Such a haunting story, full of regret and misery, with an overriding helplessness within the hints of the horrific about which nothing can be done. A man recounts his first love, with a strange girl from a town that seemed to sap the life out of everyone who lived there.
The Pain Barrier - This is another grim tale of societal decay, and what we will do, and sell, to survive. The black economy had been steadily growing for years, as more services were deregulated and real jobs evaporated like so many verbal contracts. You learned how to improvise. There's also mention of the environmental destruction causing a blood thinning disease which plagues one of the central characters. This story manages to have a very weird moment, but enough subtlety to leave us plenty to guess at. A man meets a guy at a gay club he recognizes from extreme BDSM films and follows him back to the abandoned building he's living in.
The Bootleg Heart - In some ways this story isn't as impressive as the very best here, but it still carries that creepy, haunting feel quite effectively. And it has one "scene" in particular that is very unnerving. A freshman in college becomes fascinated and obsessed with the couple upstairs' loud lovemaking.
Scratch - A brutal story, about poverty and abuse and growing up. This one really hits hard. There's a supernatural aspect, but it's held off until the end. A young man describes his upbringing and how he survived on the streets.
Coming Of Age - The ending of this one left me both numb and stunned, it doesn't explicitly explain a lot and still packs a punch. After a young man disappears without a trace his father walks the blighted streets looking for him.
Mine - A very short story, and a minor one by comparison with the rest. A man visiting a seedy brothel is haunted by his dark memories.
Prison Ships - This is another good example of a non-supernatural story taking on such a nightmarish mood by description of societal decay alone that it feels otherworldly and dreamlike. A young woman returns to her hometown, finding it has continued to hopelessly disintegrate.
Like Shattered Stone - This is another good story, and the ending is haunting and yet not entirely satisfying in my opinion. A sculptor finds himself sculpting something in his sleep which is far above his caliber.
Among The Dead - A corporate horror tale, and also the most gruesome in the book I'd say. This story really pushes how awful things can degenerate when society falls apart. A man working a high-pressure job relieves the pressure in a most macabre way.
The Window - This one is a bit tender-hearted by comparison to most here, but still incredibly grim. There's a lot of eerie moments, and a couple ways to interpret the end. The main character is well fleshed-out and the end comes with a jolt. A older man develops a S/m relationship with a younger man who is perhaps more than he seems.
The Quiet Hours - This reminds me of the work of Brian Evenson for some reason, it's a simple and affecting story, and a break from the urban decay. A man begins to lose his memory of who he, and everyone in his life is.
Exposure - This is another of the more tender, emotional stories. The ending reminded me of Lane's other tale "Waiting for the Thaw." An old friend asks a man to contact someone who has recently died so he can get closure.
The Outside World - This one has a more explicitly political bent, another story of a hopeless world encapsulated in a brief, sad rendezvous between characters therein. A man finds himself attracted to failed suicides.
The Country Of Glass - This is another hard-edged tale, but it offers a ray of hope at the end. An alcoholic in a downward spiral seeks a mythical land of peace.
The Night That Wins - This is a very different story, I assume this is a Clark Ashton Smith tribute. If it isn't, it certainly shows his influence. Although I didn't care for this at first it really grew on me, a really great Gothic atmosphere. A man tells of his long search for those who murdered his family.
Against My Ruins - A short, grim tale of a post-apocalyptic world.
The Only Game - This is a very uncanny story, also quite short. A man has agonizing visions of people in his life as dead.
Contract Bridge - I liked this story a lot, it's not as much focused on urban decay or atmosphere as it is on a very original idea at its core that I found quite compelling. A young man out with friends is haunted by a tragedy in his past associated with a stone bridge.
Beyond The River - Another favorite, in the top five, and another tender and sad one, reflecting on the taming and watering-down of art from the encroaching corporatization of everything in our lives. It's not exactly subtle, you can feel the anger in it, but it makes its point and is very affecting. A young woman meets an author of children's books to discuss the difficulties she encountered with a new publisher.
The Plans They Made - This one really got me, because I knew someone a lot like the character this story's about, and it's both heartbreaking and strange how similar it feels to real life. An excellent story. A man recalls a friend of his whose life never got off the ground and tried to live in a world of fantasy instead.
The Drowned - This one is milder than the others, but still has a tinge of weirdness. A man recalls a brief relationship he had with a man afraid of water.
Reservoir - A very disturbing story, and a bit creepier than most here. A man tracks down a prostitute with a very strange talent.
An Unknown Past - This was probably among my least favorites here, but it still has some good points. A musician finds his apartment haunted by a drug-addicted former tenant.
You Could Have It All - A great story to end on. I can't see this title without hearing that Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" in my head, and not the lighter Johnny Cash cover either. This is another tale of the death of a friend, and trying to put together the pieces. There's such a sad sense of futility in this one. A man is tasked with reconstructing the last novel of a deceased friend.
July 29, 2024
My seventh Joel Lane, and I continue to marvel at what he could do with language; how fresh each book feels despite so many recurring themes and motifs. Here, as in so many of his books, there are lives lived on the edges of society, lostness and disappearance, the unreliability of memory, the startling brutality of children. People drift through existence, forgetting everything; feeling tiredness so profound the whole world seems like a dream, or desperately searching for a portal to another world. There’s so much cold, wintry imagery, a poetry of abandoned things.
In the atmospheric ‘The Lost District’, a man tries in vain to locate a strange, depressing area he visited as a teen. In ‘The Bootleg Heart’ a student gets obsessed with noises coming from the flat above him, and eventually makes a grim discovery about their origins. These stories both feel like things that could really happen, urban legends passed on by a friend of a friend. ‘Scratch’, in which a neglected boy’s only real attachment is to the cat he names after his murdered sister, is harrowing and deeply effective. ‘Like Shattered Stone’ and ‘The Country of Glass’ – both about a person searching for something in broken urban corners, and not alone in that – contain some of the best writing in the book. There are shades of Dennis Cooper to stories like ‘The Pain Barrier’, with its sadistic porn, and ‘The Window’, which has a killer first line: It wasn’t until their third date that the boy asked Richard to behead him.
As I read through Lane’s oeuvre, I’m also coming to realise just how prolific he was. Like Where Furnaces Burn, this is an extensive collection, featuring 24 stories. And exactly as with Where Furnaces Burn, ultimately the length of the book works against it somewhat. Some of the weaker entries – ‘The Quiet Hours’, ‘Against My Ruins’ – seem superfluous because other stories in the same book are, essentially, better versions of them. Others (‘Among the Dead’, ‘The Night That Wins’) are great in themselves but, because of significant tonal or thematic differences to the bulk of the book, don’t quite fit here.
Towards the end of the book, a quartet of stories – ‘Beyond the River’, ‘The Plans They Made’, ‘An Unknown Past’ and ‘You Could Have It All’ – are concerned with the interaction between people and art and/or cultural products: books, music, films. These are all good; I particularly liked ‘Beyond the River’, which, with its journalist narrator seeking out an author of children’s fiction, reminded me of Nina Allan’s ‘Bellony’. But these stories seem to be pursuing a different set of themes than everything else – it’s like they’re the start of another collection.
The first half of The Lost District is exhilarating; an edited version of this book would have been up there with the best things I’ve read by Lane. This book is not, however, a place to start if you haven’t read his work before. (What is? The Earth Wire, The Witnesses Are Gone or From Blue to Black.)
In the atmospheric ‘The Lost District’, a man tries in vain to locate a strange, depressing area he visited as a teen. In ‘The Bootleg Heart’ a student gets obsessed with noises coming from the flat above him, and eventually makes a grim discovery about their origins. These stories both feel like things that could really happen, urban legends passed on by a friend of a friend. ‘Scratch’, in which a neglected boy’s only real attachment is to the cat he names after his murdered sister, is harrowing and deeply effective. ‘Like Shattered Stone’ and ‘The Country of Glass’ – both about a person searching for something in broken urban corners, and not alone in that – contain some of the best writing in the book. There are shades of Dennis Cooper to stories like ‘The Pain Barrier’, with its sadistic porn, and ‘The Window’, which has a killer first line: It wasn’t until their third date that the boy asked Richard to behead him.
As I read through Lane’s oeuvre, I’m also coming to realise just how prolific he was. Like Where Furnaces Burn, this is an extensive collection, featuring 24 stories. And exactly as with Where Furnaces Burn, ultimately the length of the book works against it somewhat. Some of the weaker entries – ‘The Quiet Hours’, ‘Against My Ruins’ – seem superfluous because other stories in the same book are, essentially, better versions of them. Others (‘Among the Dead’, ‘The Night That Wins’) are great in themselves but, because of significant tonal or thematic differences to the bulk of the book, don’t quite fit here.
Towards the end of the book, a quartet of stories – ‘Beyond the River’, ‘The Plans They Made’, ‘An Unknown Past’ and ‘You Could Have It All’ – are concerned with the interaction between people and art and/or cultural products: books, music, films. These are all good; I particularly liked ‘Beyond the River’, which, with its journalist narrator seeking out an author of children’s fiction, reminded me of Nina Allan’s ‘Bellony’. But these stories seem to be pursuing a different set of themes than everything else – it’s like they’re the start of another collection.
The first half of The Lost District is exhilarating; an edited version of this book would have been up there with the best things I’ve read by Lane. This book is not, however, a place to start if you haven’t read his work before. (What is? The Earth Wire, The Witnesses Are Gone or From Blue to Black.)
May 31, 2024
Lane has always been a master of desolation, selecting something mundane and finding its dark, decaying side but in The Lost district he manages to take things to the next level. Taking a genre as simple as an apocalypse which is already in a state of dis-repair, Lane manages to somehow take what is left and destroy it further, all colour seems to be drained and the world becomes like a painting where that small slice of life that the protagonist sees is all that is left and even that seems to be flaking away. Or a ghost story becomes a slow spiral into heroin addiction and finding true love leaves the main character drowning in a sea of dead fish.
Each of these stories has a dream-like quality to them, none so more than “Like Shattered Stone” where a sculptor carves in his sleep, there is a beauty to what is being pulled out of the stone but it makes the reader wonder just what is compelling the artist. There is more sex here than the previous books and there is a lot of death blended in with these scenes, “The Pain Barrier” was quite shocking and did remind me of the movie Audition, if you’ve seen that then you’ll appreciate just how twisted this story is.
There are a few stories here that feel almost autobiographic and these were the stand-out stories for me, “Beyond The River” is very different to anything else, a children’s author whose world has been shattered by her publisher being bought by a big firm who are only interested in profits, I don’t know if Lane ever experienced this but the writing was very bitter. And the most shocking story in the bunch “The Quiet Hours”, an author who is losing his memory, one of the saddest things I’ve ever read, it really did feel like Lane was writing about himself, there is a self-reflected tenderness here you don’t normally see in his writing and at the end I had to put the book down for a while, I felt like I had been put through the wringer.
Hopefully my review doesn’t put you off, this is one of the darkest books I’ve ever read but it is also one of the best, it feels like all of Lane’s previous works were training for this, so go grab all his books and start the training.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2024...
Each of these stories has a dream-like quality to them, none so more than “Like Shattered Stone” where a sculptor carves in his sleep, there is a beauty to what is being pulled out of the stone but it makes the reader wonder just what is compelling the artist. There is more sex here than the previous books and there is a lot of death blended in with these scenes, “The Pain Barrier” was quite shocking and did remind me of the movie Audition, if you’ve seen that then you’ll appreciate just how twisted this story is.
There are a few stories here that feel almost autobiographic and these were the stand-out stories for me, “Beyond The River” is very different to anything else, a children’s author whose world has been shattered by her publisher being bought by a big firm who are only interested in profits, I don’t know if Lane ever experienced this but the writing was very bitter. And the most shocking story in the bunch “The Quiet Hours”, an author who is losing his memory, one of the saddest things I’ve ever read, it really did feel like Lane was writing about himself, there is a self-reflected tenderness here you don’t normally see in his writing and at the end I had to put the book down for a while, I felt like I had been put through the wringer.
Hopefully my review doesn’t put you off, this is one of the darkest books I’ve ever read but it is also one of the best, it feels like all of Lane’s previous works were training for this, so go grab all his books and start the training.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2024...
December 21, 2020
I'm kind of sad I didn't like this more. There were pieces in Lane's first collection that knocked my socks off. Most of the stories here are reasonably well-executed, but neither the prose nor the uncanny moments seem up to my favorites in the earlier collection.
The first few stories are relatively straightforward: bleak realist vignettes familiar from Lane's first collection, IMO well-executed but not particularly memorable. Then comes "Scratch", and the language seems to kick up a notch. It opens:
The depressing vérité backdrop lulls us into expecting another outing similar to the earlier stories. But a brief flash of the fantastic careens into that ending. Whew.
"The Window" is a nuanced and sympathetic portrait of an aging gay man, in an SM relationship with a younger partner. The relationship is presented in a casual and matter-of-fact way. There are only a handful of small weird fiction moments, including one involving a "window", that I found very unsettling and changed my reading of the story. The ending, despite what it seems to imply, stops just short of laying out what happened; the kind of Joel Lane touch that I really like.
The last story, "You Could Have It All", was an uncomfortable read for me. One of the characters is a writer, with more than a passing resemblance to Lane, whose career and life go downhill, has a stroke and dies. While I never met Lane (I only discovered his work a few weeks ago), he seemed like the kind of guy I'd enjoy hanging out with; we have similar politics, somewhat overlapping tastes in music and movies, I've spent less happy weeks in gloomy Birmingham, etc. So the writer character in this story just felt uncomfortably close to being autobiographical. There's an uncanny disruption in the story, but it didn't work for me as well as some of his other pieces.
The first few stories are relatively straightforward: bleak realist vignettes familiar from Lane's first collection, IMO well-executed but not particularly memorable. Then comes "Scratch", and the language seems to kick up a notch. It opens:
Do you know, I can't remember the name my mother gave her? All I can remember is my secret name for her, Sara. Without an "h". It was my sister's name.
The depressing vérité backdrop lulls us into expecting another outing similar to the earlier stories. But a brief flash of the fantastic careens into that ending. Whew.
"The Window" is a nuanced and sympathetic portrait of an aging gay man, in an SM relationship with a younger partner. The relationship is presented in a casual and matter-of-fact way. There are only a handful of small weird fiction moments, including one involving a "window", that I found very unsettling and changed my reading of the story. The ending, despite what it seems to imply, stops just short of laying out what happened; the kind of Joel Lane touch that I really like.
The last story, "You Could Have It All", was an uncomfortable read for me. One of the characters is a writer, with more than a passing resemblance to Lane, whose career and life go downhill, has a stroke and dies. While I never met Lane (I only discovered his work a few weeks ago), he seemed like the kind of guy I'd enjoy hanging out with; we have similar politics, somewhat overlapping tastes in music and movies, I've spent less happy weeks in gloomy Birmingham, etc. So the writer character in this story just felt uncomfortably close to being autobiographical. There's an uncanny disruption in the story, but it didn't work for me as well as some of his other pieces.
January 17, 2014
It's very difficult to pigeonhole this book into one genre, I guess the best description is dark fiction. There are whiffs of horror, fantasy, a small bit of gore and some sex, both gay and straight. If you think about it, that's pretty much what life is, a little of this and that mixed together into one experience. I will say that these stories are bleak, dark and at times, depressing. Many, though not all, take place in a setting of urban decay. This is one of the few collections I have read that I had to put the book down and walk away, sometimes for days, before returning.There were one or two stories that didn't move me but they were few and far between.
A couple that stand out:
The Quiet Hours-a man slowly loses his memory
"No, no," he said, confused. "I meant...out of all the fragments of time. All the chaos of things happening. For us to be alive, to be together. There's no story to anything. No plot. But when you hold me...the fragments connect up. Your face, your hair, our bodies wrapped together. Our child. It all holds together. Nothing else does but that. Time sleeps when you kiss me."
Mine- a rocker who has certain rituals he has to follow before a gig, even though his girlfriend is "gone".
But always, for him, it started with this visit. His songs needed it. His voice needed it.
Coming of Age- a man searches for his missing 17 year old son
And being home by twelve was a given. But not this time. It was only after midnight that a typical evening had become that night. The coach of normality had become a pumpkin, with a candle flickering through carved teeth.
The Country of Glass- a search for the alcoholics mythical land of Vitraea
Alcohol was a factor in his lack of ambition, if not in his actual performance. He never drank before work or even at lunchtime, because he didn't want his drinking to be tainted by the unwholesome vibes of the office.
Beyond the River-a journalist interviews a beloved children's book author about her dispute with a corporation after a takeover of her publisher
She was pointing down to the water's edge. The river was a dark skinless muscle with threads of moonlight. Just where the grass ended and the river-mud began, I could see two stone steps. The water smelt brackish. Susanne gripped my hand and pulled me forward. I felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of strangeness, as when you develop a fever or get caught between sleeping and waking. I didn't think about my clothes, or my inability to swim. I just followed.
A fantastic, horrible and emotional book.
A couple that stand out:
The Quiet Hours-a man slowly loses his memory
"No, no," he said, confused. "I meant...out of all the fragments of time. All the chaos of things happening. For us to be alive, to be together. There's no story to anything. No plot. But when you hold me...the fragments connect up. Your face, your hair, our bodies wrapped together. Our child. It all holds together. Nothing else does but that. Time sleeps when you kiss me."
Mine- a rocker who has certain rituals he has to follow before a gig, even though his girlfriend is "gone".
But always, for him, it started with this visit. His songs needed it. His voice needed it.
Coming of Age- a man searches for his missing 17 year old son
And being home by twelve was a given. But not this time. It was only after midnight that a typical evening had become that night. The coach of normality had become a pumpkin, with a candle flickering through carved teeth.
The Country of Glass- a search for the alcoholics mythical land of Vitraea
Alcohol was a factor in his lack of ambition, if not in his actual performance. He never drank before work or even at lunchtime, because he didn't want his drinking to be tainted by the unwholesome vibes of the office.
Beyond the River-a journalist interviews a beloved children's book author about her dispute with a corporation after a takeover of her publisher
She was pointing down to the water's edge. The river was a dark skinless muscle with threads of moonlight. Just where the grass ended and the river-mud began, I could see two stone steps. The water smelt brackish. Susanne gripped my hand and pulled me forward. I felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of strangeness, as when you develop a fever or get caught between sleeping and waking. I didn't think about my clothes, or my inability to swim. I just followed.
A fantastic, horrible and emotional book.
January 7, 2009
Joel is a friend of mine and a great writer - I meant to give him 5 stars, but saw just that it was only 4. What am I thinking of, should be 6! His stories are atmospheric, sometimes weird, but always with a realism: the factories, streets, bars, trains and buses of the West Midlands as a backdrop. His stories can be political, poetic, gay, straight, dryly humourous, shocking and unnerving, often all at the same time.
October 17, 2013
Earlier February 2011 I started reading this collection: "The Lost District" and "Mine". I liked both, they are unsettling in a nice quiet, weird way, with a delicate touch of eroticism that doesn't get in the way of the actual story. A kind of male version of Caitlín R. Kiernan, one might be tempted to say.
FEB. 26, 2011:
"Against My Ruins" and "The Only Game": Marvelous, subdued tales. The latter about seeing death all the time.
APRIL 17, 2011:
"The Country of Glass": A story about an alcholic man trying to get sober. That's how I read it, anyway. Truth be told, it didn't do much for me. Well written, though.
MAY 16, 2011:
"The Night That Wins":
The most powerful story so far. Wow. And very quotable: "it had the cold strength of a buried memory." Lovely, poetic.
The rest read Summer 2012 + October 2013. Because of other things in my life requiring my attention, no individual review for each story this time.
Just to be clear, though, this is a marvelous, dark collection by a unique writer. Highly recommended.
FEB. 26, 2011:
"Against My Ruins" and "The Only Game": Marvelous, subdued tales. The latter about seeing death all the time.
APRIL 17, 2011:
"The Country of Glass": A story about an alcholic man trying to get sober. That's how I read it, anyway. Truth be told, it didn't do much for me. Well written, though.
MAY 16, 2011:
"The Night That Wins":
The most powerful story so far. Wow. And very quotable: "it had the cold strength of a buried memory." Lovely, poetic.
The rest read Summer 2012 + October 2013. Because of other things in my life requiring my attention, no individual review for each story this time.
Just to be clear, though, this is a marvelous, dark collection by a unique writer. Highly recommended.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 13, 2009
In these stories Joel Lane gives us some wonderfully pitch-perfect dark urban fantasy/horror. While his prose isn't as poetic as M. John Harrison's and his characterization lacks the psychological plumb-bob of J. G. Ballard, Lane excels in settings, all of which are dark and dangerous and unreal, and the subtle, often grotesque plot twists.
March 7, 2024
This was a fantastically diverse anthology of stories, from horror to urban fantasy to grimdark to near-future dystopia, but with every single story grounded in the gritty real world working class setting of the industrial West Midlands in the UK, which is what knitted the entire collection together, be it gay or straight, genre or literary. The prose itself was absolutely gorgeous. Honestly, some of the best descriptions of decay and working class ruination I've ever had the misfortune to read. If you see what I mean. Atmospherics off the fucking charts. In fact, the first 60% of this book was a solid 5 star read, with hit after hit after hit. Although the whole collection is worth it just for the one story called "Scratch" alone, which had me gasping out loud at how beautiful and terrible it was. Truly awe-inspiring stuff. And I loved how with each story, the outside world seemed to degrade a little bit more, until we were firmly in horrific grimdark territory. It was as if we were getting little slices of life from all the different folk who lived in this one city. However, after about the 60% mark, I found it all got a little bit random and slightly repetitive. If this had been 16 stories instead of 24, this would be getting an easy 5 stars, but as it is, that final chunk knocked it down to 4. Still worth looking into for the first half alone, though. Will definitely be reading more of Joel Lane.
May 19, 2024
Wow. I am so SO happy to have devoured this and finally read Joel Lane's work. I am so happy to have found his work. I loved this collection.
It was so bizarre and felt really personal to read his work. Growing up & living in Birmingham, where most of his work is based, I was sucked into each story from the areas he wrote and mentioned. It really helped me get more involved in the stories.
The stories all differ, but all hold a dark, melancholy feeling to them, but yet the writing held such emotion and beauty within ways that are hard to explain, but I loved every bit!
The Lost District has finally been published in the UK!! Coming out this month, MAY 2024!!
The collection explores many different themes such as urban horror, strange erotic fantasies, loss, abuse, etc. Definitely recommend it to those who enjoy this genre and want to dive deep into stories that will have an impact.
My rating is purely because I wanted some stories to go a certain way, but they didn't. Other than that, I can not wait to read more of the work he left behind.
It was so bizarre and felt really personal to read his work. Growing up & living in Birmingham, where most of his work is based, I was sucked into each story from the areas he wrote and mentioned. It really helped me get more involved in the stories.
The stories all differ, but all hold a dark, melancholy feeling to them, but yet the writing held such emotion and beauty within ways that are hard to explain, but I loved every bit!
The Lost District has finally been published in the UK!! Coming out this month, MAY 2024!!
The collection explores many different themes such as urban horror, strange erotic fantasies, loss, abuse, etc. Definitely recommend it to those who enjoy this genre and want to dive deep into stories that will have an impact.
My rating is purely because I wanted some stories to go a certain way, but they didn't. Other than that, I can not wait to read more of the work he left behind.
March 10, 2016
The Lost District and Other Stories by Joel Lane (2006): containing the following stories: The Lost District (2001); The Pain Barrier (1994); The Bootleg Heart (2000); Scratch (1996); Coming of Age (2003); Mine (2006); Prison Ships (1998); Like Shattered Stone (1994); Among the Dead (2005); The Window (2001); The Quiet Hours (2006); Exposure (2001); The Outside World (1995); The Country of Glass (1998); The Night That Wins (2005); Against My Ruins (2004); The Only Game (2006); Contract Bridge (1996); Beyond the River (2004); The Plans They Made (1997); The Drowned (2002); Reservoir (2006); An Unknown Past (2002); and You Could Have It All (2006).
The late Joel Lane, gone too soon at the age of 50 in 2013, was one of a handful of horror's finest modern short-story writers. Many of his stories were set in and around Birmingham, England. These stories presented a bleak, nightmarish, and very human universe of the lost and disconnected, generally trying to reconnect to something through sex, drugs, or alcohol.
And Lane really could be a short-story writer with the accent firmly on 'short' -- The Lost District and Other Stories brings together 26 stories in less than 200 pages. That's a lot of stories. Gratifyingly, none of the stories are hyper-short 'Flash Fiction,' and none of them are fragments or unfinished-feeling vignettes. They are actually stories, though often with equivocal endings.
Lane often deals with body horror, though generally in a subdued manner. When he does move into the graphically grotesque, as in "Coming of Age," the results are extremely disturbing given his general reticence when it comes to graphic violence. Otherwise, the horror and the weird intrude on the world in more muted ways, often leading to a final stinger of sentence.
In some cases, as in the title story, horror itself remains almost hidden. "The Lost District" could just be a standard-issue remembrance of things past. But if so, why the disquieting background of decaying Birmingham? And why the feeling that the civic 'renewal' that 'loses' that old district is some sort of malign, organic urban process and not simply a case of bureaucratic planning?
There's more than a hint of Ramsey Campbell in Lane's focus on urban and suburban English horrors, but there's also a more inchoate, almost miasmic sense of decay that recalls early J.G. Ballard in its emphasis on unexplained, gestating decay. Striking stories of disquiet, beautifully and sparsely told. Highly recommended.
The late Joel Lane, gone too soon at the age of 50 in 2013, was one of a handful of horror's finest modern short-story writers. Many of his stories were set in and around Birmingham, England. These stories presented a bleak, nightmarish, and very human universe of the lost and disconnected, generally trying to reconnect to something through sex, drugs, or alcohol.
And Lane really could be a short-story writer with the accent firmly on 'short' -- The Lost District and Other Stories brings together 26 stories in less than 200 pages. That's a lot of stories. Gratifyingly, none of the stories are hyper-short 'Flash Fiction,' and none of them are fragments or unfinished-feeling vignettes. They are actually stories, though often with equivocal endings.
Lane often deals with body horror, though generally in a subdued manner. When he does move into the graphically grotesque, as in "Coming of Age," the results are extremely disturbing given his general reticence when it comes to graphic violence. Otherwise, the horror and the weird intrude on the world in more muted ways, often leading to a final stinger of sentence.
In some cases, as in the title story, horror itself remains almost hidden. "The Lost District" could just be a standard-issue remembrance of things past. But if so, why the disquieting background of decaying Birmingham? And why the feeling that the civic 'renewal' that 'loses' that old district is some sort of malign, organic urban process and not simply a case of bureaucratic planning?
There's more than a hint of Ramsey Campbell in Lane's focus on urban and suburban English horrors, but there's also a more inchoate, almost miasmic sense of decay that recalls early J.G. Ballard in its emphasis on unexplained, gestating decay. Striking stories of disquiet, beautifully and sparsely told. Highly recommended.
August 29, 2012
This is an excellent collection of stories that skate the boundaries between horror and mainstream fiction amid disused buildings, decrepit housing estates, and characters weighed down by the emotional baggage of the past, present and future. Individually, the stories are grim - there are few upbeat endings here - and reading the collection as a whole in one go isn't advised (indeed, the repetition of some of the themes might dull the senses, even whilst each story is excellent in its own right). I'd suggest dipping in on days when you need to remind yourself that there are people worse off than yourself. The language is tight and expressive, the scenarios believeable and grotesque: if you like your horror quiet and everyday then this is where to come.
May 26, 2008
grim grimness in the style of M.John Harrison and Ramsey Campbell.
April 28, 2015
Don't like short stories but for this I will make an exception - some left shivers down my spine and so well written
October 13, 2020
Not for cat lovers, FYI. Joel Lane was apparently friends with all the big names in the weird/dark fiction space but his name doesn't come up that much if you're not rummaging around. Which is a shame because this is excellent. I guess it comes out of the Ramsey Campbell-Dennis Etchison thing a little bit, cities and bizarre sex and so on, but I like him more than those two.
In general the writing is definitely a cut above, as far as this stuff goes, pulpy enough that you don't forget what you're reading but also subtle, psychologically well-observed, darkly funny. Never too flashy or terse. "Out here the water was deep; it glinted blue and silver, the reflections of tower blocks corroding faster than the buildings themselves." Almost the entire collection is set in and around Birmingham and its environs, and while I hope for its residents' sake that Birmingham is not actually the blasted Thatcherite wasteland that Lane richly depicts, damn if it's not perfectly sketched. You really feel like you are there.
All of the stories are quite short and they are all more or less in the same vein. Many are elegiac, haunted by change, decay and disappearance, and there is much remembering of old friends and lovers gone down to dark fates. It's a depressing read but never nihilistic or miserablist, and Lane resists the classic (and to me at least despised) "end with a button" tic where the protagonist has to die or the house has to burn down: most of these end either in a quizzical Aickman-esque mode or they wind things up at the moment of greatest tension, which of course is where a scary story ought to end. Not everything hits the mark but the best ones - the title story, "Coming of Age", "Prison Ships", "The Quiet Hours", "Beyond the River", "You Could Have It All" - are unforgettable.
Anyway i only write these because i have no short term memory and forget what i liked and why I liked it within hours of finishing it, so hopefully I will stumble across this review later and remember to pick up more of Joel Lane's stuff.
In general the writing is definitely a cut above, as far as this stuff goes, pulpy enough that you don't forget what you're reading but also subtle, psychologically well-observed, darkly funny. Never too flashy or terse. "Out here the water was deep; it glinted blue and silver, the reflections of tower blocks corroding faster than the buildings themselves." Almost the entire collection is set in and around Birmingham and its environs, and while I hope for its residents' sake that Birmingham is not actually the blasted Thatcherite wasteland that Lane richly depicts, damn if it's not perfectly sketched. You really feel like you are there.
All of the stories are quite short and they are all more or less in the same vein. Many are elegiac, haunted by change, decay and disappearance, and there is much remembering of old friends and lovers gone down to dark fates. It's a depressing read but never nihilistic or miserablist, and Lane resists the classic (and to me at least despised) "end with a button" tic where the protagonist has to die or the house has to burn down: most of these end either in a quizzical Aickman-esque mode or they wind things up at the moment of greatest tension, which of course is where a scary story ought to end. Not everything hits the mark but the best ones - the title story, "Coming of Age", "Prison Ships", "The Quiet Hours", "Beyond the River", "You Could Have It All" - are unforgettable.
Anyway i only write these because i have no short term memory and forget what i liked and why I liked it within hours of finishing it, so hopefully I will stumble across this review later and remember to pick up more of Joel Lane's stuff.
March 5, 2021
What impresses me most about this collection is how varied it is in terms of viewpoint and subject while at the same time remaining laser focused on evoking a specific urban geography. Lane provides the reader with intimate, convincing portrayals of masculine inner life ranging socio-economically from homeless squatters to upper class BBC show runners, ranging in age-wise from boys at the cusp of adulthood to those approaching mandatory retirement, and terms of sexual orientation from the queer to the staunchly straight. And each of the inner life expeditions Lane takes the reader on is entirely convincing. In addition, the prose has a gritty poetry that I suspect will long resonate for most who sample it. There is so much in this volume that still haunts me even though I finished it several months ago.
October 18, 2020
Stories of encroaching rot and decay; of damaged, lonely souls making some sort of effort at connection and finding it futile, the world around them too grim and indifferent to allow it. Some of the stories here have a horror element that runs all the way through them (if subtly) and feels like it was part of their conception; in others it's a mere wisp, and those felt like glum little character sketches which, in their abundance, started to run together in my mind. Incredibly bleak and only occasionally rewarding, this is for literary weird-fiction die hards, I would say.
Read in Undertow Publications' gorgeous "Contemporary Classics" special edition.
Read in Undertow Publications' gorgeous "Contemporary Classics" special edition.
December 13, 2021
More of a 4.5 stars. I don't know where I originally read a recommendation for this book, but I picked it up and started reading it at random and I'm glad I did. The short stories here flirt with horror and the dread of post-industrial existence. The landscapes and characters and urban backdrops are all horribly broken, but the stories rarely play out the way you think they will. Out of probably 20 short stories, there were maybe only three that I was lukewarm on, but none that I didn't enjoy to some degree. Joel Lane's other works are now on my TBR list.
March 4, 2023
7.4
Not a bad read by any measure. A good number of stories in here really stuck out to me due to the visceral descriptions and often disturbing imagery. There were a number of times that I would finish a story in here and feel like I needed a shower immediately afterwords. I really liked the use of industrial horror, and the themes of loneliness and decay that come from it. Very reminiscent of Eraserhead or something else by David Lynch in that regard. The weird fascination with sex (quite literally pretty much every short story collected here has a rather graphic depiction of some sexual act) makes me think that Joel Lane had a very complex relationship with the topic as well. I honestly don’t think I needed to read the amount that he decided to put into his stories, but tried to overlook it all the same. In all likelihood, I’ll probably get around to reading another of his works at some point in the future.
Not a bad read by any measure. A good number of stories in here really stuck out to me due to the visceral descriptions and often disturbing imagery. There were a number of times that I would finish a story in here and feel like I needed a shower immediately afterwords. I really liked the use of industrial horror, and the themes of loneliness and decay that come from it. Very reminiscent of Eraserhead or something else by David Lynch in that regard. The weird fascination with sex (quite literally pretty much every short story collected here has a rather graphic depiction of some sexual act) makes me think that Joel Lane had a very complex relationship with the topic as well. I honestly don’t think I needed to read the amount that he decided to put into his stories, but tried to overlook it all the same. In all likelihood, I’ll probably get around to reading another of his works at some point in the future.
November 18, 2022
Beautifully grim, Lane fleshes out the ashen world of Thatcherite Britain, a world of zero escape from increasingly banalised horror. Glass-filled carpets, beds bursting with vomit from too much smack, the reader courses through the filth of an abandoned Britain, of a hellscape where even Lucifer and his charges have given up.
Never has the end of the world looked so normal, so expected--so capitalist.
Never has the end of the world looked so normal, so expected--so capitalist.
January 5, 2018
I read the first story and didn't like it. It hasn't stood the test of time and the story didn't seem to have much point to it. I couldn't gather enough motivation to read any more of the stories with the first one being so awful and so the book was cast in to the heap of the unread accompanied by the words 'away to the charity shop with you!'
November 1, 2020
I wouldn't have thought I'd enjoy this as much as I did, based on the description. The book reminds me of Ramsey Campbell's urban horror and certain Clive Barker - but so much more empathetic. The whole collection feels like deep, heartfelt grieving over dying cities & erosion of social contracts.
June 28, 2021
At first glance there seems to be very little actual horror in The Lost District. Most of the stories are snapshots of crumbling or troubled relationships mirrored by their bleak postindustrial surroundings. But then you realize the world itself is horrible. Joel Lane is the cosmic pessimism of Thomas Ligotti without the latter's sardonic edge. His characters are simply doomed and steeped in decay, remnants of better days gone by. A very haunting book.
February 15, 2025
Stories of the destitute and vulnerable told in the backdrop of urban decay and late-stage capitalism. There's a lot of pain in these pages, not for casual comfy readers.
March 27, 2020
A fine edition, though the gold stamping and sun-motif text dividers are at odds with the subject matter of most of these stories - the barbed-wire header decorations are more apt. Set mostly in and around Birmingham these short stories reflect urban blight and a seemingly equivalent moral decay (for want of a better term). Nearly all are set in a recognisably contemporary time - one or two in a dystopian future; one, with a superficially different - almost upbeat - tone is set in Devon. The overall sense is doom and depair...
The star rating reflects my appreciation of the writing, though the subject matter is less to my taste.
From the publisher's website (I should have included it in the blurb when I created new the listing for this edition): [ISBN is incorrect... ]
Volume 2 in our “Contemporary Classics” series.
First Hardcover Edition - 308 pages
Strictly limited to 100 copies
Hand-numbered
Bound in Red leather with gold foil stamping
Full wraparound Dust-jacket by Vince Haig
Spine number “2” in our Contemporary Classics Series
Smyth-sewn
80lb Creme paper
Red Silk Ribbon Marker
Matching Red Head and Tail Bands
Illustrated Colour Endpapers
The star rating reflects my appreciation of the writing, though the subject matter is less to my taste.
From the publisher's website (I should have included it in the blurb when I created new the listing for this edition): [ISBN is incorrect... ]
Volume 2 in our “Contemporary Classics” series.
First Hardcover Edition - 308 pages
Strictly limited to 100 copies
Hand-numbered
Bound in Red leather with gold foil stamping
Full wraparound Dust-jacket by Vince Haig
Spine number “2” in our Contemporary Classics Series
Smyth-sewn
80lb Creme paper
Red Silk Ribbon Marker
Matching Red Head and Tail Bands
Illustrated Colour Endpapers
December 1, 2013
Beautifully bleak. That is an excellent way of describing Lane's collection of short stories. They are beautiful to read, extremely poetic in the way that images are quickly and lovingly portrayed. I was continually amazed at how well portrayed the stories were. But at the same time the subject matter is brutal, harsh, emotionally honest and blunt. These are not stories to lightly parse over and continue reading back to back to back. About halfway through the collection, I had to stop and read another book in order to break the grim feelings. I remember when I read Harlan Ellison's DEATHBIRD STORIES the introduction for that collection warned about not reading the book in one continual string. The same thing should be said here. The stories are dark and creepy. For fans though who like facing their own horrors and being honest about affects them (emotionally and sexually), then this collection is for them. While an occasional story might be missing a plot (at least in my opinion), all of the stories invoke strong images and themes. My favorites are below.
"The Bootleg Heart" - A story summed up by the first line: "My first love was a girl I never actually met."
"The Only Game" - A man's girlfriend dies on him again and again.
"Beyond The River" - A writer takes a reporter into the world of her books.
"Reservoir" - A con visits the victim of his cellmate.
"The Bootleg Heart" - A story summed up by the first line: "My first love was a girl I never actually met."
"The Only Game" - A man's girlfriend dies on him again and again.
"Beyond The River" - A writer takes a reporter into the world of her books.
"Reservoir" - A con visits the victim of his cellmate.
October 5, 2013
If you are a fan of urban horror stories, this book is definitely for you. Although you shouldn't take "horror" too literally. The writing of Joel Lane is not as straight-forward gory as, say, Clive Barker's, and the supernatural element is mostly absent or subtly hinted. What takes central stage in these stories is love, loss, despair and social interactions between people better left unexplained -all played out under a gloomy, industrial Birmingham setting. Of course, it's still fiction, so be prepared for a plot that defies reality as we know it.
The prose and descriptions are wonderfully constructed and manage to create the exact claustrophobic atmosphere that stories like that need to shine (albeit in a darker light). One last point I have to make: Joel Lane tends to finish his stories somehow abruptly; to me, used to the end explaining everything, this at first seemed a bit off. But the main body of every story was so powerful that could certainly make up for one or two endings cut short. Again -a highly, highly recommended book.
The prose and descriptions are wonderfully constructed and manage to create the exact claustrophobic atmosphere that stories like that need to shine (albeit in a darker light). One last point I have to make: Joel Lane tends to finish his stories somehow abruptly; to me, used to the end explaining everything, this at first seemed a bit off. But the main body of every story was so powerful that could certainly make up for one or two endings cut short. Again -a highly, highly recommended book.
September 7, 2011
Although I generally find short story collections a bit unsatisfying, reading this book is a bit like listening to a grunge rock album. It is intense, gripping, oddly sensual, confusing, a bit weird but also fun.
August 21, 2024
Last night, one of the best writers of dark fiction past away.
The Lost District is a wonderful introduction to his bleak but beautiful vision, full of urban decay and prose-poetry that sings.
R.I.P., Joel Lane.
The Lost District is a wonderful introduction to his bleak but beautiful vision, full of urban decay and prose-poetry that sings.
R.I.P., Joel Lane.
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