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The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows
From the deeply unsettling to the possibly supernatural, these thirty-one border-crossing stories from around the world explore the uncanny in literature, and delve into our increasingly unstable sense of self, home, and planet. The Uncanny Stories from the Shadows opens with "The Sand-man," E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1817 tale of doppelgangers and automatons—a tale that inspired generations of writers and thinkers to come. Stories by 19th and 20th century masters of the uncanny—including Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Shirley Jackson—form a foundation for sixteen award-winning contemporary authors, established and new, whose work blurs the boundaries between the familiar and the unknown. These writers come from Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, Scotland, England, Sweden, the United States, Uruguay, and Zambia—although their birthplaces are not always the terrains they plumb in their stories, nor do they confine themselves to their own eras. Contemporary authors Chris Adrian, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Jonathon Carroll, John Herdman, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Yoko Ogawa, Dean Paschal, Karen Russell, Namwali Serpell, Steve Stern and Karen Tidbeck.
574 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 24, 2015
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1006 people want to read
About the author
Marjorie Sandor
13 books29 followersMarjorie Sandor is the author of four books, and most recently, the editor of the anthology The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows. Her other books include The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction (2011), as well as a story collection, Portrait of my Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime, which won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award in Fiction, and an essay collection, The Night Gardener: A Search for Home won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary non-fiction. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review and The Harvard Review among others. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Oregon State University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
February 7, 2020
Takes stories that are decidedly genre-specific and those that are decidedly not and presents them, side by side, to prove that the weird (sorry, the uncanny) is not “a literary genre so much as a genre buster” and ends up tending, even more than most, toward the inclusion of literary stories that flirt with genre moreso than genre stories that flirt with being literary and is also (therefore?) rather front-loaded with recent stories.
The uncanny, editor Marjorie Sandor tells us, is the literature of uncertainty, liminality, and alienation; works which "take place in a recognizable world, in which something, or someone, begins to go unfamiliar" (7). The most common modern application of the idea is the "uncanny valley," that region where a construct looks enough like a human to pass at first glance, but enough not like a human to be unsettling on closer inspection. Indeed, automatons are the most frequently-recurring trope in the collection.
If weird fiction, then, is horror with some cultural capital, maybe uncanny fiction is quiet horror with some cultural capital.
Two chief flavors: something supernatural is happening, in a relatively subtle, understated manner, or there's no specific supernatural intrusion to be pointed to aside from a generalized feeling of wrongness.
Some facile capsule reviews:
The Sand-man /Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman
A deserved classic - an epistolary tale (partially) of a coward's lifelong encounters with an otherworldly force in the shape of a man. Eyes, and the stealing thereof, recur. The ur-tale of the uncanny automaton.
Berenice /Edgar Allan Poe
Decadent stagnation, sickness, trances, a beautiful woman's death, obsessive fixations, etc etc. I'm just going to start copying and pasting that for all of my Poe reviews.
One of twins /Ambrose Bierce
I've really enjoyed one of Bierce's stories ("The Moonlit Road"), mostly enjoyed another ("The Boarded Window"), and not been impressed with the others ("The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," the one about the ghost knocking on a second story window whose title I can't remember, etc). This one falls in with the latter bunch, sadly; a kind of Romeo-and-Juliet-by-way-of-Poe affair of identical twins and their unnatural bond and an unfaithful beautiful woman. I do appreciate his very bitter strains of black humor, though.
On the water /Guy de Maupassant
A basically plotless weird place story about a man stuck on a boat overnight. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I think it's hard to go wrong with weird stories about bodies of water.
Oysters /Anton Chekhov
A starving boy in Moscow has nightmarish daydreams about what these strange, edible creatures could be. Sandor acknowledges that this is a strange inclusion, but I am fascinated by the use of the uncanny here to draw attention to the alienating effects of poverty.
Pomegranate seed /Edith Wharton
A woman is bothered by the mysterious letters her husband (a widower) receives and refuses to talk to her about. I read this one a few years ago and was too annoyed with the protagonist's refusal to comprehend what was going on to really enjoy it. That didn't bother me so much this time, although I still think the story is longer than it needed to be. An interesting look at the bourgeois home as a sanctuary from the modernization of NYC, mirroring the husband's bondage to the past, even as our protagonist's wifely/domestic duties are impugned.
The stoker /Franz Kafka
An immigrant comes to America and descends into paranoia following a lost suitcase and some uncanny happenings with the crew and a lost uncle. I run hot and cold on Kafka, and while I liked this one in theory, in practice I thought it was much too long (even moreso than Wharton) and definitely a lesser entry in his oeuvre (down there with "Josephine the Singer").
Decay /Marjorie Bowen
An epistolary story in which a journalist frets over a school chum who married into money and, therefore, the stink of selling out to the low expectations of his fiancee ("the woman pervaded the whole house").
The music of Erich Zann /H.P. Lovecraft
A poor student residing on a street that later doesn't appear to exist is intrigued by his neighbor's weird viol performances. Relatively lucid/calm prose for Lovecraft, but still way too overt for this volume - the subtly off-kilter vibe of Sandor's "uncanny" was not so much HPL's thing.
The birds /Bruno Schulz
Schulz's surreal prose poetry has never clicked for me.
The usher /Felisberto Hernandez
A movie theater usher attends a bizarre dinner party and has flashlights for eyes. He is fixated first on shining his light on the hosts's knick knacks, then on a ghostly woman. I forget how all this resolves - this story was dreamlike in a way that did not appeal to me at all, maybe approaching bizarro more than anything else.
The waiting room /Robert Aickman
This story (where a man has to spend the night in a strange train station) is a surprisingly straightforward ghost tale, although me saying so probably just means I wasn't picking up on certain clues Aickman was dropping.
Paranoia /Shirley Jackson
A surprisingly urban entry for her, with big city crowds providing the unknowable intrusion of weirdness into the world. If Aickman is the example par excellence of the British uncanny, I think Jackson is probably the American author to beat. These two stories are particularly well-paired in terms of the connections one forms (or fails to form) with strangers.
The helper /Joan Aiken
A British Patent Officer visits an old acquaintance in Paris who has invented a functioning automaton (housed in a suit of armor), which gives him a "slight, uneasy feeling of repugnance." The men's daughters had been friends long ago until one succumbed to addiction, and this history, along with a present sense of ennui, unpleasantly colors their interaction. A very pleasant surprise - I don't know why I had never read anything by Aiken before.
The jesters /Joyce Carol Oates
A husband and wife, retirees in a gated community, fear the changing and encroaching outside world, personified by neighbors seen but not heard. The inverse of Shirley Jackson's "The Summer People," but similarly great.
The devil and Dr. Tuberose - John Herdman
Satire of academia and departmental politics, complete with goofy names, a faux folksy voice, and a grandiose delusional protagonist. Not particularly uncanny.
Phantoms /Steven Millhauser
A town is infested by phantoms, indistinguishable from normal citizens, but possessed of a faint unpleasantness and avoiding all attempts to communicate with them. The ne plus ultra of possible explanations for the weirdness being given and then discarded. Presented as something of a journalistic (academic?) report rather than a standard narrative; not dissimilar to Peter Straub's "A Short Guide to the City" either tactically or strategically. I loved this one.
On Jacob's ladder /Steve Stern
A Jewish concentration camp prisoner forced to work as a chimney sweep has lived much longer than his Nazi overseer expected (hoped) and thinks he's found the corpse of an angel. Fine enough on its own, but I'm sure there was a lot of allusion/depth here that sailed over my head.
The panic hand /Jonathan Carroll
This I did not care for. The voice grated on me, and the story itself (a man on a train in Germany meets a sexy woman, who turns out to be an imaginary mother projected by a girl who is practicing being sexually attractive to grown men) was not for me. Or anyone, frankly.
Moriya /Dean Paschal
Despite not being disposed to thinking positively of stories about boys and sex-bots (or sex clockwork automatons, in this case), I enjoyed this one. Being set in New Orleans didn't hurt.
The puppets /Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris
In Napoleonic France, a puppet writes a letter to her former mistress about the policeman who loves them both. Three stories in a row about sexy uncanny women is a bit much.
Old Mrs. J /Yoko Ogawa
An elderly landlady/masseuse, much stronger than she should be, spends most of her time gardening in the middle of her U-shaped building. Our narrator is a writer who's just moved in and becomes fixated on her uncanny qualities (and vegetables). A rare (and welcome) example of a Weird Woman story in which sexual attraction is not the driving force.
Whitework /Kate Bernheimer
In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait," a wounded traveler seeks refuge in a mountain house and becomes fixated on a painting therein of a woman so obedient to her husband that she posed unmoving for weeks as he painted, and then died. In Kate Bernheimer's "Whitework," a woman finds herself in a mountain cottage out of a fairy tale, her legs wounded, her memory mostly gone. She takes up residence in a turret of uncertain shape, invisible from the outside, and decorated throughout with whitework embroidery with the caption "Hommage a Ma Marraine" ("Tribute to my Godmother") and the image of a priest holding blackbirds (which we might interprate as a father holding ravens, hmm?). Much like Poe's work, we have an unhealthy fixation, but here perhaps it is a fixation on Poe himself and the anxiety of influence. Also, of course, a feminist flipping-on-its-head of the original: "I don't know how that phrase comes to me -ripening into womanhood- for I would prefer simply to describe the portrait as a very small portrait of a young lady." "The Yellow Wallpaper" also reverberates throughout, and there is a brief echo of Lovecraft's groan-worthy "The Statement of Randolph Carter." I loved this one.
Stone animals /Kelly Link
I skipped this one here because I've read it a couple of times recently - it's anthologized often for good reason, and that really is just one of the all-time greatest openings, isn't it?
Tiger mending /Aimee Bender
A quirky story about sisters and jobs and sewing tigers back together. Where the Bernheimer story was similar to the aspects of Link's fiction that I enjoy, this one mirrors some of her tendencies I find less interesting.
The black square /Chris Adrian
I read Adrian's The Children's Hospital a while back and thought it was an interesting failure, so I didn't have particularly high hopes, but was very pleasantly surprised by this beautiful, melancholic story. A mysterious square in Nantucket swallows up anything dropped into it, a message board springs up for those fixated on it, and we think on suicide and sexuality and loneliness. Shades of Paul Tremblay's "SWIM Wants To Know If It's As Bad as SWIM Thinks."
Foundation /China Mieville
I thought this was a story about reified dead labor ("Every home is built on them"), but it turns out to be about the Iraq war and blood and oil. Even as I would've preferred the former, a great nightmarish examination of hunger and the grim underpinnings of the modern world.
Gothic night /Mansoura Ez Eldin
A hazy, fractured narrative about a mysterious city and a blind giant searching for the night. More of a fantastical prose poem than a story of the uncanny, I'd say.
Reindeer mountain /Karin Tidbeck
A Swedish family deal with the government expropriation of their ancestral house, where their reclusive great-uncle still lives. Lots of parallels with Helen Marshall's "Ship House:" mental illness and folklore, returning to the fold, a sort-of-haunted-but-not-exactly house, etc. Not as weird as I expect/want Tidbeck's stories to be, but still solid.
Muzungu /C. Namwali Serpell
A miserable white expat child in Zambia experiences whiteness as uncanniness. Kafkaesque, one might say, and a welcome use of the trope (habit? practice? tendency? genre?), one might also say. I look forward to reading more from Serpell in the future.
Haunting Olivia /Karen Russell
Two brothers look for their missing (presumed dead) sister underwater in a boat graveyard. They find a pair of goggles that allow them to see ghostly marine life (death?), which is either a gift to help find Olivia or a punishment for their role in her death. Their parents are miserable and absent (especially the mother, who is a void in the shape of a character). I like stories about grief and the interstices between life and death, but I'm conflicted about this one, because it never seemed to decide how seriously it was taking itself or how childish a voice it wanted to have (these two going hand-in-hand and possibly a purposeful stylistic choice, but that doesn't mean I have to like it).
The uncanny, editor Marjorie Sandor tells us, is the literature of uncertainty, liminality, and alienation; works which "take place in a recognizable world, in which something, or someone, begins to go unfamiliar" (7). The most common modern application of the idea is the "uncanny valley," that region where a construct looks enough like a human to pass at first glance, but enough not like a human to be unsettling on closer inspection. Indeed, automatons are the most frequently-recurring trope in the collection.
If weird fiction, then, is horror with some cultural capital, maybe uncanny fiction is quiet horror with some cultural capital.
Two chief flavors: something supernatural is happening, in a relatively subtle, understated manner, or there's no specific supernatural intrusion to be pointed to aside from a generalized feeling of wrongness.
Some facile capsule reviews:
The Sand-man /Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman
A deserved classic - an epistolary tale (partially) of a coward's lifelong encounters with an otherworldly force in the shape of a man. Eyes, and the stealing thereof, recur. The ur-tale of the uncanny automaton.
Berenice /Edgar Allan Poe
Decadent stagnation, sickness, trances, a beautiful woman's death, obsessive fixations, etc etc. I'm just going to start copying and pasting that for all of my Poe reviews.
One of twins /Ambrose Bierce
I've really enjoyed one of Bierce's stories ("The Moonlit Road"), mostly enjoyed another ("The Boarded Window"), and not been impressed with the others ("The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," the one about the ghost knocking on a second story window whose title I can't remember, etc). This one falls in with the latter bunch, sadly; a kind of Romeo-and-Juliet-by-way-of-Poe affair of identical twins and their unnatural bond and an unfaithful beautiful woman. I do appreciate his very bitter strains of black humor, though.
On the water /Guy de Maupassant
A basically plotless weird place story about a man stuck on a boat overnight. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I think it's hard to go wrong with weird stories about bodies of water.
Oysters /Anton Chekhov
A starving boy in Moscow has nightmarish daydreams about what these strange, edible creatures could be. Sandor acknowledges that this is a strange inclusion, but I am fascinated by the use of the uncanny here to draw attention to the alienating effects of poverty.
Pomegranate seed /Edith Wharton
A woman is bothered by the mysterious letters her husband (a widower) receives and refuses to talk to her about. I read this one a few years ago and was too annoyed with the protagonist's refusal to comprehend what was going on to really enjoy it. That didn't bother me so much this time, although I still think the story is longer than it needed to be. An interesting look at the bourgeois home as a sanctuary from the modernization of NYC, mirroring the husband's bondage to the past, even as our protagonist's wifely/domestic duties are impugned.
The stoker /Franz Kafka
An immigrant comes to America and descends into paranoia following a lost suitcase and some uncanny happenings with the crew and a lost uncle. I run hot and cold on Kafka, and while I liked this one in theory, in practice I thought it was much too long (even moreso than Wharton) and definitely a lesser entry in his oeuvre (down there with "Josephine the Singer").
Decay /Marjorie Bowen
An epistolary story in which a journalist frets over a school chum who married into money and, therefore, the stink of selling out to the low expectations of his fiancee ("the woman pervaded the whole house").
The music of Erich Zann /H.P. Lovecraft
A poor student residing on a street that later doesn't appear to exist is intrigued by his neighbor's weird viol performances. Relatively lucid/calm prose for Lovecraft, but still way too overt for this volume - the subtly off-kilter vibe of Sandor's "uncanny" was not so much HPL's thing.
The birds /Bruno Schulz
Schulz's surreal prose poetry has never clicked for me.
The usher /Felisberto Hernandez
A movie theater usher attends a bizarre dinner party and has flashlights for eyes. He is fixated first on shining his light on the hosts's knick knacks, then on a ghostly woman. I forget how all this resolves - this story was dreamlike in a way that did not appeal to me at all, maybe approaching bizarro more than anything else.
The waiting room /Robert Aickman
This story (where a man has to spend the night in a strange train station) is a surprisingly straightforward ghost tale, although me saying so probably just means I wasn't picking up on certain clues Aickman was dropping.
Paranoia /Shirley Jackson
A surprisingly urban entry for her, with big city crowds providing the unknowable intrusion of weirdness into the world. If Aickman is the example par excellence of the British uncanny, I think Jackson is probably the American author to beat. These two stories are particularly well-paired in terms of the connections one forms (or fails to form) with strangers.
The helper /Joan Aiken
A British Patent Officer visits an old acquaintance in Paris who has invented a functioning automaton (housed in a suit of armor), which gives him a "slight, uneasy feeling of repugnance." The men's daughters had been friends long ago until one succumbed to addiction, and this history, along with a present sense of ennui, unpleasantly colors their interaction. A very pleasant surprise - I don't know why I had never read anything by Aiken before.
The jesters /Joyce Carol Oates
A husband and wife, retirees in a gated community, fear the changing and encroaching outside world, personified by neighbors seen but not heard. The inverse of Shirley Jackson's "The Summer People," but similarly great.
The devil and Dr. Tuberose - John Herdman
Satire of academia and departmental politics, complete with goofy names, a faux folksy voice, and a grandiose delusional protagonist. Not particularly uncanny.
Phantoms /Steven Millhauser
A town is infested by phantoms, indistinguishable from normal citizens, but possessed of a faint unpleasantness and avoiding all attempts to communicate with them. The ne plus ultra of possible explanations for the weirdness being given and then discarded. Presented as something of a journalistic (academic?) report rather than a standard narrative; not dissimilar to Peter Straub's "A Short Guide to the City" either tactically or strategically. I loved this one.
On Jacob's ladder /Steve Stern
A Jewish concentration camp prisoner forced to work as a chimney sweep has lived much longer than his Nazi overseer expected (hoped) and thinks he's found the corpse of an angel. Fine enough on its own, but I'm sure there was a lot of allusion/depth here that sailed over my head.
The panic hand /Jonathan Carroll
This I did not care for. The voice grated on me, and the story itself (a man on a train in Germany meets a sexy woman, who turns out to be an imaginary mother projected by a girl who is practicing being sexually attractive to grown men) was not for me. Or anyone, frankly.
Moriya /Dean Paschal
Despite not being disposed to thinking positively of stories about boys and sex-bots (or sex clockwork automatons, in this case), I enjoyed this one. Being set in New Orleans didn't hurt.
The puppets /Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris
In Napoleonic France, a puppet writes a letter to her former mistress about the policeman who loves them both. Three stories in a row about sexy uncanny women is a bit much.
Old Mrs. J /Yoko Ogawa
An elderly landlady/masseuse, much stronger than she should be, spends most of her time gardening in the middle of her U-shaped building. Our narrator is a writer who's just moved in and becomes fixated on her uncanny qualities (and vegetables). A rare (and welcome) example of a Weird Woman story in which sexual attraction is not the driving force.
Whitework /Kate Bernheimer
In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait," a wounded traveler seeks refuge in a mountain house and becomes fixated on a painting therein of a woman so obedient to her husband that she posed unmoving for weeks as he painted, and then died. In Kate Bernheimer's "Whitework," a woman finds herself in a mountain cottage out of a fairy tale, her legs wounded, her memory mostly gone. She takes up residence in a turret of uncertain shape, invisible from the outside, and decorated throughout with whitework embroidery with the caption "Hommage a Ma Marraine" ("Tribute to my Godmother") and the image of a priest holding blackbirds (which we might interprate as a father holding ravens, hmm?). Much like Poe's work, we have an unhealthy fixation, but here perhaps it is a fixation on Poe himself and the anxiety of influence. Also, of course, a feminist flipping-on-its-head of the original: "I don't know how that phrase comes to me -ripening into womanhood- for I would prefer simply to describe the portrait as a very small portrait of a young lady." "The Yellow Wallpaper" also reverberates throughout, and there is a brief echo of Lovecraft's groan-worthy "The Statement of Randolph Carter." I loved this one.
Stone animals /Kelly Link
I skipped this one here because I've read it a couple of times recently - it's anthologized often for good reason, and that really is just one of the all-time greatest openings, isn't it?
Tiger mending /Aimee Bender
A quirky story about sisters and jobs and sewing tigers back together. Where the Bernheimer story was similar to the aspects of Link's fiction that I enjoy, this one mirrors some of her tendencies I find less interesting.
The black square /Chris Adrian
I read Adrian's The Children's Hospital a while back and thought it was an interesting failure, so I didn't have particularly high hopes, but was very pleasantly surprised by this beautiful, melancholic story. A mysterious square in Nantucket swallows up anything dropped into it, a message board springs up for those fixated on it, and we think on suicide and sexuality and loneliness. Shades of Paul Tremblay's "SWIM Wants To Know If It's As Bad as SWIM Thinks."
Foundation /China Mieville
I thought this was a story about reified dead labor ("Every home is built on them"), but it turns out to be about the Iraq war and blood and oil. Even as I would've preferred the former, a great nightmarish examination of hunger and the grim underpinnings of the modern world.
Gothic night /Mansoura Ez Eldin
A hazy, fractured narrative about a mysterious city and a blind giant searching for the night. More of a fantastical prose poem than a story of the uncanny, I'd say.
Reindeer mountain /Karin Tidbeck
A Swedish family deal with the government expropriation of their ancestral house, where their reclusive great-uncle still lives. Lots of parallels with Helen Marshall's "Ship House:" mental illness and folklore, returning to the fold, a sort-of-haunted-but-not-exactly house, etc. Not as weird as I expect/want Tidbeck's stories to be, but still solid.
Muzungu /C. Namwali Serpell
A miserable white expat child in Zambia experiences whiteness as uncanniness. Kafkaesque, one might say, and a welcome use of the trope (habit? practice? tendency? genre?), one might also say. I look forward to reading more from Serpell in the future.
Haunting Olivia /Karen Russell
Two brothers look for their missing (presumed dead) sister underwater in a boat graveyard. They find a pair of goggles that allow them to see ghostly marine life (death?), which is either a gift to help find Olivia or a punishment for their role in her death. Their parents are miserable and absent (especially the mother, who is a void in the shape of a character). I like stories about grief and the interstices between life and death, but I'm conflicted about this one, because it never seemed to decide how seriously it was taking itself or how childish a voice it wanted to have (these two going hand-in-hand and possibly a purposeful stylistic choice, but that doesn't mean I have to like it).
December 13, 2014
Terrific anthology. It starts with "The Sand-Man" by E.T.A. Hoffmann which I knew about but hadn't actually read before. It's a terrific and terrifyingly disquieting tale. From there, the Reader goes on a journey into dark and unsettling territory--from Robert Aickman to Kelly Link. One of my favorite parts of the book was actually the intro. Sandor goes through what the term uncanny means exactly and the long and pervasive history its had. One of the most memorable books I read this year.
December 10, 2018
This is enjoyable enough so far. Pleasant surprises: E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edith Wharton (not my usual cup of tea, but nicely done), Aimee Bender (not a big fan before "Tiger Mending"). And I loved Dean Paschal's "Moriya", being somewhat mechanically minded myself.
Of course I do have issues with a number of the selections. Marjorie Bowen's "Decay" is already cliched and tiresome, then comes that awful ending. I've always had trouble with Aickman's "Waiting Room"; he's done much better uncanny writing. Similarly, Kelly Link has written much stronger pieces than the rambling "Stone Animals" (nice ending though).
For a contemporary Japanese author, I'd pick the more subtly inventive Yoko Tawada way ahead of Yoko Ogawa. I love Karin Tidbeck, but "Reindeer Mountain", despite its accolades, is really one of her most conventional stories.
And is all Chris Adrian's work like "The Black Square"? Nice concept, but there's nothing like this kind of long-winded, sentimental musing that ruins an uncanny idea for me.
Of course I do have issues with a number of the selections. Marjorie Bowen's "Decay" is already cliched and tiresome, then comes that awful ending. I've always had trouble with Aickman's "Waiting Room"; he's done much better uncanny writing. Similarly, Kelly Link has written much stronger pieces than the rambling "Stone Animals" (nice ending though).
For a contemporary Japanese author, I'd pick the more subtly inventive Yoko Tawada way ahead of Yoko Ogawa. I love Karin Tidbeck, but "Reindeer Mountain", despite its accolades, is really one of her most conventional stories.
And is all Chris Adrian's work like "The Black Square"? Nice concept, but there's nothing like this kind of long-winded, sentimental musing that ruins an uncanny idea for me.
May 6, 2015
It is not very often that a collection of short stories really grabs me as a reader as this one did. The theme connecting all of the stories is that they are "uncanny". Some are supernatural, some play on our fears, some are just a little different, but they are all certainly uncanny.
The stories move in chronological order from when they were written, and looking through the index, I worried that the latter stories would not be as good as those done by masters of the uncanny, such as Lovecraft, Poe and Kafka, but was amazingly surprised that the more modern authors not only held their own among these greats, but in some cases, should be considered modern greats. Every story was savoured and every story has lingered. It meant I took a little longer to read this collection than most, but these are not stories to be rushed.
Pick up this book, find a cozy, preferably dark, corner, pour a glass of wine or a pot of tea, and let yourself fall into the stories. They will bring you to amazing places.
The stories move in chronological order from when they were written, and looking through the index, I worried that the latter stories would not be as good as those done by masters of the uncanny, such as Lovecraft, Poe and Kafka, but was amazingly surprised that the more modern authors not only held their own among these greats, but in some cases, should be considered modern greats. Every story was savoured and every story has lingered. It meant I took a little longer to read this collection than most, but these are not stories to be rushed.
Pick up this book, find a cozy, preferably dark, corner, pour a glass of wine or a pot of tea, and let yourself fall into the stories. They will bring you to amazing places.
April 9, 2015
An excellent collection all around, but the story by Mansoura Ez-Eldin is the real standout to me. So frustrating that so little of her work has been translated into English.
May 4, 2016
I'm not a blood-and-guts-horror kind of person, but I really enjoy supernatural and uncanny tales. I even wrote a term paper that centered around the uncanny. So when I saw this in the store, it was an instant buy, and after reading, I can certainly say that it wasn't a disappointment. Each story is reviewed separately below. Stars denote favorites.
*The Sand-Man by ETA Hoffmann - 4 stars
By all accounts, this story should be ridiculous. Our hero Nathanael is a moron, though he sort of has to be for the story to work; the prose, being translated from a 19th century German story, can be somewhat stiff and short on description of certain scenes; and the plot combines several different uncanny elements that barely mesh together at all. And I love it. This is a tale of sinister doppelgangers, near-lifelike automatons, and eyes where eyes should definitely not be, and the one idiot who manages to get caught up in all of it. The problems I already mentioned prevented me from giving it five stars, but this story will always be a classic to me. My only real complaint is that I found myself wishing it had been longer, as there were several aspects that could have been expanded upon.
Berenice by Edgar Allen Poe - 2.5 stars
Not Poe's best, unfortunately. When Berenice falls ill, her cousin the narrator, who has a mental illness that causes him to fixate on strange things, notices that something about her has changed. An interesting idea here for sure, but the execution was somewhat muddled - I couldn't really tell what about struck the narrator as uncanny, and the ending was far too easy to predict.
One of Twins by Ambrose Bierce - 4 stars
A nicely creepy tale of what happens when twins begin to know things that only the other should know. The ending is a bit ambiguous, but it's easy enough to guess at what might have happened.
On the Water by Guy de Maupassant - 4 stars
A fisherman's anchor gets stuck in the river, and he becomes increasingly paranoid as he is forced to spend the night on his boat. The translation is lovely, but most of the story is more picturesque than creepy. The ending packs quite a punch, though, and leaves you reevaluating the reason for the fisherman's distress.
Oysters by Anton Chekhov - 3.5 stars
A very strange vignette about a boy who, quite randomly, becomes obsessed with the idea of oysters. The story is just short of five pages long, so any real summary would be a spoiler, but this is a story that will leave you a bit unsettled, even if you're not quite sure why.
*Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton - 4.5 stars
When Charlotte becomes suspicious of letters her husband has been receiving, which always leave him in great distress, she uncovers something that seems impossible. The mystery of the letters is very compelling and moves the story along at a steady pace, though the footnote at the beginning explaining the story's title made the twist easy to guess. The only thing stopping me from giving this one five stars is the extremely abrupt ending. I very much want to know what happened next.
The Stoker by Franz Kafka - 3 stars
A young man emigrating to America befriends the ship's stoker, which leads him to an unlikely meeting. This wasn't a bad story, but it didn't really feel like it fit the collection; although the protagonist's backstory was disturbing, the only really "uncanny" element was the aforementioned unlikely meeting. I don't know how much of this is due to the translation, but the story was also very awkward grammatically, with run-on sentences and enormous paragraphs that did not break between dialogue. Again, not exactly a bad story, but unless you're a completest like me, probably wholly skippable for this particular collection.
*Decay by Marjorie Bowe - 4.5 stars
While visiting an old friend and his wife, the narrator notices something strange about their relationship - and the awful smell that permeates their house. A suspenseful story with a chilling conclusion. Some of the ideas of what marriage "should" be like are a bit archaic, but that's to be expected from a story written in the twenties. One of the best examples so far of uncanny as a perversion of everyday life.
The Music of Erich Zann by HP Lovecraft - 4 stars
Amazingly, this was my first Lovecraft story, and it didn't disappoint. A university student meets an old violist named Erich Zann who seems to be afraid of something - something to do with the strange music Erich plays at night. An interesting, atmospheric story with none of the racist undertones I've heard are common in Lovecraft's works. It's vague as to what exactly happened, but since Lovecraft is all about the unknowable, that's to be expected; still, I wanted to know a lot more than we were told. In particular,
The Birds by Bruno Schulz - 3 stars
No, not that The Birds. Rather, this is the story of a man who, seemingly going mad, neglects his family and becomes obsessed with raising birds. The descriptions of the birds were beautiful, and I wanted to give this a higher rating, but I couldn't tell what the abrupt ending was supposed to signify, and the man's adoration of his young daughter is borderline creepy.
The Usher by Felisberto Hernandez - 3.5 stars
A down-on-his-luck usher develops night vision, which leads him to a mysterious woman. An intriguing story, but something seemed to be missing. I really wanted to know what the deal with the woman was - Ultimately another story that leaves you with more questions than answers, and not in a satisfying way.
The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman -3.5 stars
And contrarily, here we have a story that is explained. Here, a man spends the night in a train station waiting room after taking the wrong train, and discovers that there is more to it than meets the eye. This story effectively captures how eerie it can be to spend the night in a strange place, but I didn't much care for the writing style.
Paranoia by Shirley Jackson - 4 stars
While attempting to get home for his wife's birthday, Mr. Beresford finds himself seemingly followed by a strange man, and soon begins to think that everyone who slows him down is out to get him. A suspenseful story with an ending I didn't see coming (though I probably should have).
*The Helper by Joan Aiken - 4.5 stars
Another story where it's vague as to what happens, but in this case this works to its advantage. Frank Frost agrees to help the father of his daughter's childhood friend patent his new invention, a mechanical "helper." But Frost cannot forget that associating with this family led to his daughter's death, and begins to let spite get the better of him. The uncanny elements don't come in until the very end, but I found them highly satisfying. I seem to have a liking for creepy automatons.
The Jesters by Joyce Carol Oates - 4 stars
An aging couple eavesdrops on their neighbors across the woods, whom they can hear almost as clearly as if they were outside their door. Although the neighbors (whom the husband nicknames "the Jesters") seem like the perfect family at first, something sinister slowly begins to reveal itself. This story is quite fully realized; you really get to know the unnamed couple, especially the wife, and the final line is fantastically chilling. Grammarwise, however, the story is rather awkward, with sentence fragments and commas used seemingly at random.
The Devil and Dr. Tuberose by John Herdman - 4 stars
A paranoid English professor begins to suspect that his professional rival is something more sinister, leading to a bizarre confrontation. A solid story with an interesting look into a delusional man's mind, but overall not as memorable as other similarly-rated stories.
*Phantoms by Steven Millhauser - 4.5 stars
I enjoy stories told in unusual formats, and this is one of the most successful examples I've read. Told in the style of an academic report, but with significant characterization in its "case studies" (which read like miniature stories in themselves), Millhauser's tale examines the strange phenomenon of "phantoms" that appear in a certain town. No definitive answers are given, but definitive answers aren't the point; rather, the point is what the phantoms mean to the townspeople.
On Jacob's Ladder by Steve Stern - 4 stars
At once surreal and all-too-realistic, this story follows a Jewish prisoner in a German camp whose job is to clean the crematoria chimneys. While working, he finds his way blocked by a very strange obstruction. The details of his life in the camp are truly disturbing and the "obstruction" is fascinatingly weird, but very little time is actually spent with the uncanny element, and I would've liked to see it expanded on.
The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll - 3.5 stars
This was a hard story to rate, as the concept and writing are solid but the execution is just so icky that I can't really say I "enjoyed" it. It centers on a man who meets a strange mother and daughter on the train, and finds that there is more to them than meets the eye. Their secret is a unique and interesting one, but if you're uncomfortable with the idea of - and really, you probably should be - then you'll understand why I can't exactly say I liked it.
*Moriya by Dean Paschal - 5 stars
Another story that was incredibly hard to rate, as it contains some of the same uncomfortable themes as The Panic Hand, but the execution is much better, and I was captivated all the way through. Moriya chronicles the bizarre sexual and emotional relationship a young teenager develops with a lifelike mechanical doll, and it is at once disturbing and bizarrely heartfelt. Odd to say, but the boy's misplaced love for Moriya becomes truly heartwrenching by the end, and that's an impressive feat on the part of Paschal.
The Puppets by Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris - 2.5 stars
Another good idea with a less-than-stellar execution. Told through a puppet's point of view, we see the tale of her "Mistress," who is being investigated for anti-empire sentiments in her puppet shows and forms a quasi-romantic relationship with the police commissioner in charge of the case. This relationship really needed a bit more time and development for the ending to pay off, and the sentience of the puppets wasn't really explored outside of the narrator. It might seem hypocritical after my praise for Moriya, but this makes quite off-putting. In all, a story I wanted to like more, but which really could have used more development.
*Old Mrs. J by Yoko Ogawa - 4 stars
A straightforward tale of a landlady whose behavior quickly goes from annoying to disturbing, and the hand-shaped carrots that grow in her garden. A short and enjoyable story that does a good job of developing Mrs. J and slowly revealing her hidden creepiness.
Whitework by Kate Bernheimer - 2 stars
I'll admit, I don't actually know what happened in this story. An injured woman and her friend take up residence in a seemingly-abandoned cottage, where the woman becomes fascinated with the whitework on the walls... but then what? I feel like this premise could have been interesting, but the execution was sloppy and confusing.
Stone Animals by Kelly Link - 3 stars
The longest story in the book at 50 pages, Stone Animals tells the tale of a struggling marriage against the backdrop of a "haunted" house. This is another story that just sort of ends. The characters aren't very likable, and the uncanny elements seem disjointed and tenuously connected. In all, not cohesive or enjoyable enough to justify its length.
Tiger Mending by Aimee Bender - 3.5 stars
A gifted seamstress receives an unusual assignment. Well written with a unique idea, but something just seemed to be missing, and the ending felt rushed.
The Black Square by Chris Adrian - 4 stars
In this introspective tale, the eponymous square is something of a cult object - those who "believe" travel to Nantucket to jump through it, not knowing if oblivion or a new world awaits beyond the mysterious hole. Henry, a gay man depressed after a failed relationship, is one such traveler, until he meets a man who makes him rethink everything. This story feels like it comes from somewhere personal, and the ending is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
*Foundation by China Mieville - 5 stars
This haunting story follows a man who can speak to the foundation of buildings, and gets slowly more unsettling as we learn what the foundation actually is and how it came to be. A short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly eerie tale.
Gothic Night by Mansoura Ez Eldin - 3 stars
In a city where the sun always shines, a giant wants to know what "night" is. An interesting concept with a surprising twist, but when you think about it, the twist doesn't really make much sense.
Reindeer Mountain by Karin Tidbeck -3.5 stars
When two girls visit their late great-grandmother's home, they learn that there may be more to the family history of insanity that meets the eye. A solid story with a well-rounded cast for such a short length. However, I did not find it to be particularly "uncanny"; certainly fantastical, but not immediately recognizable as an uncanny tale.
Muzungu by C Namwali Serpell - 4 stars
Vivid imagery abounds in this story, in which a white girl living in Africa learns about race in an unusual way. However, sometimes the writing style made it a bit hard for me to picture what was going on, although I could guess. was especially eerie, and may be one of the best examples of the uncanny in this collection. The story does not explain the true meaning of "muzungu," but if you don't know it, I recommend looking it up to fully understand Serpell's themes.
Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell - 4 stars
I'd read this story before, in St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, a collection that I enjoyed but that had some flaws. Haunting Olivia is the perfect example of why: a unique concept - two brothers searching the ocean for their dead sister with goggles that let them see ghosts - with exciting imagery (I particularly love the pleiosaur scene) but an abrupt ending that resolves nothing. This is typical of Russell, whose writing is good, but whose endings nearly always fail to satisfy. Still, a good story to end the collection.
In all, this is a good, creepy collection that everyone with an interest in the uncanny should check out. Not all of the stories were great, but the ones that were are definitely worth the read.
*The Sand-Man by ETA Hoffmann - 4 stars
By all accounts, this story should be ridiculous. Our hero Nathanael is a moron, though he sort of has to be for the story to work; the prose, being translated from a 19th century German story, can be somewhat stiff and short on description of certain scenes; and the plot combines several different uncanny elements that barely mesh together at all. And I love it. This is a tale of sinister doppelgangers, near-lifelike automatons, and eyes where eyes should definitely not be, and the one idiot who manages to get caught up in all of it. The problems I already mentioned prevented me from giving it five stars, but this story will always be a classic to me. My only real complaint is that I found myself wishing it had been longer, as there were several aspects that could have been expanded upon.
Berenice by Edgar Allen Poe - 2.5 stars
Not Poe's best, unfortunately. When Berenice falls ill, her cousin the narrator, who has a mental illness that causes him to fixate on strange things, notices that something about her has changed. An interesting idea here for sure, but the execution was somewhat muddled - I couldn't really tell what about struck the narrator as uncanny, and the ending was far too easy to predict.
One of Twins by Ambrose Bierce - 4 stars
A nicely creepy tale of what happens when twins begin to know things that only the other should know. The ending is a bit ambiguous, but it's easy enough to guess at what might have happened.
On the Water by Guy de Maupassant - 4 stars
A fisherman's anchor gets stuck in the river, and he becomes increasingly paranoid as he is forced to spend the night on his boat. The translation is lovely, but most of the story is more picturesque than creepy. The ending packs quite a punch, though, and leaves you reevaluating the reason for the fisherman's distress.
Oysters by Anton Chekhov - 3.5 stars
A very strange vignette about a boy who, quite randomly, becomes obsessed with the idea of oysters. The story is just short of five pages long, so any real summary would be a spoiler, but this is a story that will leave you a bit unsettled, even if you're not quite sure why.
*Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton - 4.5 stars
When Charlotte becomes suspicious of letters her husband has been receiving, which always leave him in great distress, she uncovers something that seems impossible. The mystery of the letters is very compelling and moves the story along at a steady pace, though the footnote at the beginning explaining the story's title made the twist easy to guess. The only thing stopping me from giving this one five stars is the extremely abrupt ending. I very much want to know what happened next.
The Stoker by Franz Kafka - 3 stars
A young man emigrating to America befriends the ship's stoker, which leads him to an unlikely meeting. This wasn't a bad story, but it didn't really feel like it fit the collection; although the protagonist's backstory was disturbing, the only really "uncanny" element was the aforementioned unlikely meeting. I don't know how much of this is due to the translation, but the story was also very awkward grammatically, with run-on sentences and enormous paragraphs that did not break between dialogue. Again, not exactly a bad story, but unless you're a completest like me, probably wholly skippable for this particular collection.
*Decay by Marjorie Bowe - 4.5 stars
While visiting an old friend and his wife, the narrator notices something strange about their relationship - and the awful smell that permeates their house. A suspenseful story with a chilling conclusion. Some of the ideas of what marriage "should" be like are a bit archaic, but that's to be expected from a story written in the twenties. One of the best examples so far of uncanny as a perversion of everyday life.
The Music of Erich Zann by HP Lovecraft - 4 stars
Amazingly, this was my first Lovecraft story, and it didn't disappoint. A university student meets an old violist named Erich Zann who seems to be afraid of something - something to do with the strange music Erich plays at night. An interesting, atmospheric story with none of the racist undertones I've heard are common in Lovecraft's works. It's vague as to what exactly happened, but since Lovecraft is all about the unknowable, that's to be expected; still, I wanted to know a lot more than we were told. In particular,
The Birds by Bruno Schulz - 3 stars
No, not that The Birds. Rather, this is the story of a man who, seemingly going mad, neglects his family and becomes obsessed with raising birds. The descriptions of the birds were beautiful, and I wanted to give this a higher rating, but I couldn't tell what the abrupt ending was supposed to signify, and the man's adoration of his young daughter is borderline creepy.
The Usher by Felisberto Hernandez - 3.5 stars
A down-on-his-luck usher develops night vision, which leads him to a mysterious woman. An intriguing story, but something seemed to be missing. I really wanted to know what the deal with the woman was - Ultimately another story that leaves you with more questions than answers, and not in a satisfying way.
The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman -3.5 stars
And contrarily, here we have a story that is explained. Here, a man spends the night in a train station waiting room after taking the wrong train, and discovers that there is more to it than meets the eye. This story effectively captures how eerie it can be to spend the night in a strange place, but I didn't much care for the writing style.
Paranoia by Shirley Jackson - 4 stars
While attempting to get home for his wife's birthday, Mr. Beresford finds himself seemingly followed by a strange man, and soon begins to think that everyone who slows him down is out to get him. A suspenseful story with an ending I didn't see coming (though I probably should have).
*The Helper by Joan Aiken - 4.5 stars
Another story where it's vague as to what happens, but in this case this works to its advantage. Frank Frost agrees to help the father of his daughter's childhood friend patent his new invention, a mechanical "helper." But Frost cannot forget that associating with this family led to his daughter's death, and begins to let spite get the better of him. The uncanny elements don't come in until the very end, but I found them highly satisfying. I seem to have a liking for creepy automatons.
The Jesters by Joyce Carol Oates - 4 stars
An aging couple eavesdrops on their neighbors across the woods, whom they can hear almost as clearly as if they were outside their door. Although the neighbors (whom the husband nicknames "the Jesters") seem like the perfect family at first, something sinister slowly begins to reveal itself. This story is quite fully realized; you really get to know the unnamed couple, especially the wife, and the final line is fantastically chilling. Grammarwise, however, the story is rather awkward, with sentence fragments and commas used seemingly at random.
The Devil and Dr. Tuberose by John Herdman - 4 stars
A paranoid English professor begins to suspect that his professional rival is something more sinister, leading to a bizarre confrontation. A solid story with an interesting look into a delusional man's mind, but overall not as memorable as other similarly-rated stories.
*Phantoms by Steven Millhauser - 4.5 stars
I enjoy stories told in unusual formats, and this is one of the most successful examples I've read. Told in the style of an academic report, but with significant characterization in its "case studies" (which read like miniature stories in themselves), Millhauser's tale examines the strange phenomenon of "phantoms" that appear in a certain town. No definitive answers are given, but definitive answers aren't the point; rather, the point is what the phantoms mean to the townspeople.
On Jacob's Ladder by Steve Stern - 4 stars
At once surreal and all-too-realistic, this story follows a Jewish prisoner in a German camp whose job is to clean the crematoria chimneys. While working, he finds his way blocked by a very strange obstruction. The details of his life in the camp are truly disturbing and the "obstruction" is fascinatingly weird, but very little time is actually spent with the uncanny element, and I would've liked to see it expanded on.
The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll - 3.5 stars
This was a hard story to rate, as the concept and writing are solid but the execution is just so icky that I can't really say I "enjoyed" it. It centers on a man who meets a strange mother and daughter on the train, and finds that there is more to them than meets the eye. Their secret is a unique and interesting one, but if you're uncomfortable with the idea of - and really, you probably should be - then you'll understand why I can't exactly say I liked it.
*Moriya by Dean Paschal - 5 stars
Another story that was incredibly hard to rate, as it contains some of the same uncomfortable themes as The Panic Hand, but the execution is much better, and I was captivated all the way through. Moriya chronicles the bizarre sexual and emotional relationship a young teenager develops with a lifelike mechanical doll, and it is at once disturbing and bizarrely heartfelt. Odd to say, but the boy's misplaced love for Moriya becomes truly heartwrenching by the end, and that's an impressive feat on the part of Paschal.
The Puppets by Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris - 2.5 stars
Another good idea with a less-than-stellar execution. Told through a puppet's point of view, we see the tale of her "Mistress," who is being investigated for anti-empire sentiments in her puppet shows and forms a quasi-romantic relationship with the police commissioner in charge of the case. This relationship really needed a bit more time and development for the ending to pay off, and the sentience of the puppets wasn't really explored outside of the narrator. It might seem hypocritical after my praise for Moriya, but this makes quite off-putting. In all, a story I wanted to like more, but which really could have used more development.
*Old Mrs. J by Yoko Ogawa - 4 stars
A straightforward tale of a landlady whose behavior quickly goes from annoying to disturbing, and the hand-shaped carrots that grow in her garden. A short and enjoyable story that does a good job of developing Mrs. J and slowly revealing her hidden creepiness.
Whitework by Kate Bernheimer - 2 stars
I'll admit, I don't actually know what happened in this story. An injured woman and her friend take up residence in a seemingly-abandoned cottage, where the woman becomes fascinated with the whitework on the walls... but then what? I feel like this premise could have been interesting, but the execution was sloppy and confusing.
Stone Animals by Kelly Link - 3 stars
The longest story in the book at 50 pages, Stone Animals tells the tale of a struggling marriage against the backdrop of a "haunted" house. This is another story that just sort of ends. The characters aren't very likable, and the uncanny elements seem disjointed and tenuously connected. In all, not cohesive or enjoyable enough to justify its length.
Tiger Mending by Aimee Bender - 3.5 stars
A gifted seamstress receives an unusual assignment. Well written with a unique idea, but something just seemed to be missing, and the ending felt rushed.
The Black Square by Chris Adrian - 4 stars
In this introspective tale, the eponymous square is something of a cult object - those who "believe" travel to Nantucket to jump through it, not knowing if oblivion or a new world awaits beyond the mysterious hole. Henry, a gay man depressed after a failed relationship, is one such traveler, until he meets a man who makes him rethink everything. This story feels like it comes from somewhere personal, and the ending is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
*Foundation by China Mieville - 5 stars
This haunting story follows a man who can speak to the foundation of buildings, and gets slowly more unsettling as we learn what the foundation actually is and how it came to be. A short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly eerie tale.
Gothic Night by Mansoura Ez Eldin - 3 stars
In a city where the sun always shines, a giant wants to know what "night" is. An interesting concept with a surprising twist, but when you think about it, the twist doesn't really make much sense.
Reindeer Mountain by Karin Tidbeck -3.5 stars
When two girls visit their late great-grandmother's home, they learn that there may be more to the family history of insanity that meets the eye. A solid story with a well-rounded cast for such a short length. However, I did not find it to be particularly "uncanny"; certainly fantastical, but not immediately recognizable as an uncanny tale.
Muzungu by C Namwali Serpell - 4 stars
Vivid imagery abounds in this story, in which a white girl living in Africa learns about race in an unusual way. However, sometimes the writing style made it a bit hard for me to picture what was going on, although I could guess. was especially eerie, and may be one of the best examples of the uncanny in this collection. The story does not explain the true meaning of "muzungu," but if you don't know it, I recommend looking it up to fully understand Serpell's themes.
Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell - 4 stars
I'd read this story before, in St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, a collection that I enjoyed but that had some flaws. Haunting Olivia is the perfect example of why: a unique concept - two brothers searching the ocean for their dead sister with goggles that let them see ghosts - with exciting imagery (I particularly love the pleiosaur scene) but an abrupt ending that resolves nothing. This is typical of Russell, whose writing is good, but whose endings nearly always fail to satisfy. Still, a good story to end the collection.
In all, this is a good, creepy collection that everyone with an interest in the uncanny should check out. Not all of the stories were great, but the ones that were are definitely worth the read.
November 23, 2021
A collection of strange tales. First half are stories written in the 1800s-early 1900s, while the second half focuses on the 20th century authors. There were a few duds but for the most part I enjoyed the stories immensely. Most of the early authors I had heard of or read before but the newer authors were unknown to me. Recommended for readers of the strange and weired.
July 4, 2017
This is one of those books where I get the uncomfortable feeling that I missing something. It may be that these stories tend to be more poetic and literary, I don't tend to do those. I'll probably read it again someday; maybe I'll like it then?
Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe was good. Everyone knows the story; it's always good.
The Music of Erich Zann was also good, I love that story.
The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman was good, a bit predictable but good.
Phantoms by Steven Millhauser was very good.
Tiger Mending by Aimee Bender was pretty unsettling.
The Black Square by Chris Adrian was absolutely fantastic.
Reindeer Mountain by Karin Tidbeck was good. And a little painful.
Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell was also good and painful.
Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe was good. Everyone knows the story; it's always good.
The Music of Erich Zann was also good, I love that story.
The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman was good, a bit predictable but good.
Phantoms by Steven Millhauser was very good.
Tiger Mending by Aimee Bender was pretty unsettling.
The Black Square by Chris Adrian was absolutely fantastic.
Reindeer Mountain by Karin Tidbeck was good. And a little painful.
Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell was also good and painful.
May 25, 2017
Started out with v. virtuous intent to read every story in chronological order & got halfway through a reread of "The Sandman" before just skipping ahead to Kelly Link & Kate Bernheimer like a little kid picking all of the M&Ms out of the trail mix.
FABULOUS project -- will read again in order when it's not 2017 and I have a shred of self-control left.
FABULOUS project -- will read again in order when it's not 2017 and I have a shred of self-control left.
August 1, 2015
I just could not get into this. I think the older stories are always overrated (as with most "classics") and I had read a few of the more recent stories already. These just couldn't keep my attention.
June 5, 2015
This was a really good anthology collected and edited by my English professor Marjorie Sandor. Each story has a unique feel, although they are all considered "uncanny" or "unheimlich." I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of unsettling short stories!
October 29, 2018
4.5
A thoroughly excellent, varied anthology. Sandor sets out the boundaries of the uncanny in her thoughtful introduction and then proceeds to explore them through a selection of stories that illuminate every last metaphorical inch.
While a few of these stories did not quite work for me (Jonathan Carroll's "The Panic Hand" encapsulates pretty much everything I loathe about his writing in one compact, icky package; Steven Stern's "On Jacob's Ladder" seems like it's trying too hard, and I'm not sure I find John Herdman's dark academic comedy "The Devil and Dr. Tuberose" uncanny in any sense), and I felt the book was a bit heavily weighted towards the contemporary, mostly bypassing a vast chunk of worthy work written between the beginning of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st, this is an extremely generous collection of fine, disquieting tales. Beyond the obvious classics (Hoffman's "The Sandman", Poe's "Berenice"), highlights for me were Steven Millhauser's enigmatic "Phantoms", Joyce Carol Oates' melancholy and anxious take on aging "The Jesters", a poetic "Gothic Night" from Mansoura Ez Eldin, C. Namwali Serpell's richly detailed "Muzungu", Aimee Bender's distinctly odd "Tiger Mending", and a charming historical fantasy, "The Puppets", by Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris (what I wouldn't give for a full translation of the book this last is excerpted from).
Highly recommended to any reader who wants a break from the mundane.
A thoroughly excellent, varied anthology. Sandor sets out the boundaries of the uncanny in her thoughtful introduction and then proceeds to explore them through a selection of stories that illuminate every last metaphorical inch.
While a few of these stories did not quite work for me (Jonathan Carroll's "The Panic Hand" encapsulates pretty much everything I loathe about his writing in one compact, icky package; Steven Stern's "On Jacob's Ladder" seems like it's trying too hard, and I'm not sure I find John Herdman's dark academic comedy "The Devil and Dr. Tuberose" uncanny in any sense), and I felt the book was a bit heavily weighted towards the contemporary, mostly bypassing a vast chunk of worthy work written between the beginning of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st, this is an extremely generous collection of fine, disquieting tales. Beyond the obvious classics (Hoffman's "The Sandman", Poe's "Berenice"), highlights for me were Steven Millhauser's enigmatic "Phantoms", Joyce Carol Oates' melancholy and anxious take on aging "The Jesters", a poetic "Gothic Night" from Mansoura Ez Eldin, C. Namwali Serpell's richly detailed "Muzungu", Aimee Bender's distinctly odd "Tiger Mending", and a charming historical fantasy, "The Puppets", by Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris (what I wouldn't give for a full translation of the book this last is excerpted from).
Highly recommended to any reader who wants a break from the mundane.
Currently reading
February 19, 2024I read some of these short stories back in college and I decided to read them all. (It was a class about how different sorts of mass media have uncanny themes). Anyways, I'll rate each one and hopefully it doesn't take me more than a month to finish this book.
The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann - 3 stars
The uncanny feeling started off strong. We have a possible doppelganger and a automaton that looks real. The narrator is a friend of the Nathanael and he doesn't tell us if Coppelius/Coppola are two different people or if it's one person (like the MC thought). But for the MC madness, I have to blame his mother for not teaching him that the sandman isn't real or not telling him the real reason why his father died. You have to snuff that delusion out when they are young.
Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe - 4 stars
You can always expect Poe to deliver an eerie vibe and a shocking ending in his stories. It never gets old. Also you don't normally see stories about an unreliable narrator dealing with an illness where they can't control their thoughts. It creates a interesting paradox.
One of Twins by Ambrose Bierce - 3 stars
Imagine if you can have a psychic connection with your twin and practically experience a double life.
On the Water by Guy de Maupassant - 2 stars
This is based on my enjoyment and I didn't care for it. Twist at the end didn't add to the story either.
Oysters by Anton Chekhov - 3 stars
Strange how someone can be obsessed with a food they know nothing about.
Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton - 4 stars
I read this in one sitting. I had to know what the letters contained. But what's interesting is that the story had nothing to do with Persephone and her consequence of eating pomegranate seeds.
The Stroker by Franz Kafka - 3 stars
I had to read many reviews to understand the ending because I didn't understood the point. For me, it didn't felt complete as a stand alone story. Then I found out it is the first chapter in Amerika, it makes more sense to me.
Decay by Marjorie Bowen - 4 stars
I never expected the ending. If it smells that strong of decay, then I don't want to know what happens behind closed doors.
The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft - 4 stars
I have so many unanswered questions. What does his music sound like and who is he playing it for?
The Birds by Bruno Schulz - 3 stars
When obsessing about birds turns into becoming a bird.
The Usher by Felisberto Hernandez - 4 stars
It has magical realism, the light symbolizing finding joy in the mundane, and the foreshadowing of host's daughter as she meets the MC. What more can you ask?
The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman - 3 stars
Very straight forward as to the uncanniness. Wish he could have done more.
Paranoia by Shirley Jackson - 4 stars
I rationalized this story; the man in the light hat is a PI, his wife hired him because she was worried, and people keeping him from leaving were just coincidences. But it doesn't completely fit with what happened. Besides that, it's one of my favorites.
The Helper by Joan Aiken - 3 stars
Simple story about a grieving father who blames his friend and their daughter for his daughter's death. His friends created a robot that can do tasks. His friend's daughter died and possibly possessing the robot now. Ooo a cliff hanger.
The Jesters by Joyce Carol Oates - 3 stars
It was too long. It would have the same outcome if it was shorter.
The Devil and Dr Tuberose by Joh Herdman - 2 stars
Sadly, this couldn't hold my attention. Another mad man story
Phantoms by Steven Millhauser - 3 stars
How cool it would be to witness a phantom. They just appear and disappear.
On Jacob's Ladder by Steven Stern - 3 stars
If you're in a tough situation, let go of your prize.
The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll - 4 stars
I had to read it twice because I was panicking. I don't understand the ending. Why was he excited to see Celine's daughter? Weird
Moriya by Dean Paschal - 4 stars
Jaw dropped! Too graphic. He was projecting himself onto the doll. But was she programmed to do that? What is the meaning of "Such shadows rule the world?"
The Puppets by Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris - 3 stars
Almost like writing a love letter through the POV of a puppet.
Old Mrs. J by Yoko Ogawa - 2 stars
Strange garden could have been stranger.
Whitework by Kate Bernheimer - 2 stars
Apparently it is compared to an Edgar Allan Poe story but as a stand alone, its about wishing to stay in a fairy tale than be in reality.
The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann - 3 stars
The uncanny feeling started off strong. We have a possible doppelganger and a automaton that looks real. The narrator is a friend of the Nathanael and he doesn't tell us if Coppelius/Coppola are two different people or if it's one person (like the MC thought). But for the MC madness, I have to blame his mother for not teaching him that the sandman isn't real or not telling him the real reason why his father died. You have to snuff that delusion out when they are young.
Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe - 4 stars
You can always expect Poe to deliver an eerie vibe and a shocking ending in his stories. It never gets old. Also you don't normally see stories about an unreliable narrator dealing with an illness where they can't control their thoughts. It creates a interesting paradox.
One of Twins by Ambrose Bierce - 3 stars
Imagine if you can have a psychic connection with your twin and practically experience a double life.
On the Water by Guy de Maupassant - 2 stars
This is based on my enjoyment and I didn't care for it. Twist at the end didn't add to the story either.
Oysters by Anton Chekhov - 3 stars
Strange how someone can be obsessed with a food they know nothing about.
Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton - 4 stars
I read this in one sitting. I had to know what the letters contained. But what's interesting is that the story had nothing to do with Persephone and her consequence of eating pomegranate seeds.
The Stroker by Franz Kafka - 3 stars
I had to read many reviews to understand the ending because I didn't understood the point. For me, it didn't felt complete as a stand alone story. Then I found out it is the first chapter in Amerika, it makes more sense to me.
Decay by Marjorie Bowen - 4 stars
I never expected the ending. If it smells that strong of decay, then I don't want to know what happens behind closed doors.
The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft - 4 stars
I have so many unanswered questions. What does his music sound like and who is he playing it for?
The Birds by Bruno Schulz - 3 stars
When obsessing about birds turns into becoming a bird.
The Usher by Felisberto Hernandez - 4 stars
It has magical realism, the light symbolizing finding joy in the mundane, and the foreshadowing of host's daughter as she meets the MC. What more can you ask?
The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman - 3 stars
Very straight forward as to the uncanniness. Wish he could have done more.
Paranoia by Shirley Jackson - 4 stars
I rationalized this story; the man in the light hat is a PI, his wife hired him because she was worried, and people keeping him from leaving were just coincidences. But it doesn't completely fit with what happened. Besides that, it's one of my favorites.
The Helper by Joan Aiken - 3 stars
Simple story about a grieving father who blames his friend and their daughter for his daughter's death. His friends created a robot that can do tasks. His friend's daughter died and possibly possessing the robot now. Ooo a cliff hanger.
The Jesters by Joyce Carol Oates - 3 stars
It was too long. It would have the same outcome if it was shorter.
The Devil and Dr Tuberose by Joh Herdman - 2 stars
Sadly, this couldn't hold my attention. Another mad man story
Phantoms by Steven Millhauser - 3 stars
How cool it would be to witness a phantom. They just appear and disappear.
On Jacob's Ladder by Steven Stern - 3 stars
If you're in a tough situation, let go of your prize.
The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll - 4 stars
I had to read it twice because I was panicking. I don't understand the ending. Why was he excited to see Celine's daughter? Weird
Moriya by Dean Paschal - 4 stars
Jaw dropped! Too graphic. He was projecting himself onto the doll. But was she programmed to do that? What is the meaning of "Such shadows rule the world?"
The Puppets by Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris - 3 stars
Almost like writing a love letter through the POV of a puppet.
Old Mrs. J by Yoko Ogawa - 2 stars
Strange garden could have been stranger.
Whitework by Kate Bernheimer - 2 stars
Apparently it is compared to an Edgar Allan Poe story but as a stand alone, its about wishing to stay in a fairy tale than be in reality.
Read
October 8, 2022Reading or rereading all the tales in Marjorie Sandow’s anthology “The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows” has confirmed for me that after a certain saturation point the uncanny stops seeming so uncanny. Such is the magic of overexposure. Of course some of these stories are classics with plenty of staying power, including Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” Poe’s “Berenice,” Wharton’s “The Pomegranate Seed,” Jackson’s “Paranoia,” Hernández’s “The Usher,” Oates’s “The Jester,” Kafka’s “The Stoker,” and Bowen’s “Decay,” and I really like Lovecraft’s excellent “The Music of Erich Zann,” which I surprisingly don’t remember reading before. On the downside, Maupassant’s “On the Water” lands with a dull splash, and many of the more recent pieces failed to make strong impressions on me, although Paschal’s “Moriya” is a nice variation on the old automaton theme and Ez Eldin’s “Gothic Night” is as atmospheric as the title suggests. In all, an enjoyable but uneven collection. I’m sure I’ll return to the uncanny after a vacation from the genre.
September 2, 2018
3 stars because while some of them were out of this world amazing, others were either terrible or inappropriate.
The bad: Moriya, the puppets, and the black square (all in appropriate and the stories weren't great in the first place, the puppets might've been good but...ewww. the black square had the worst plot though it was so boring)- there were others with some bad content but these were definitely the worst.
The good: I don't think I can list the good cause there were more good than bad and I enjoyed most the other stories. But for example: the devil and Dr tuberose, whitework, old mrs.j, phantoms, the helper, paranoia, on the water...whatever i give up already, there are too many good stories.
The bad: Moriya, the puppets, and the black square (all in appropriate and the stories weren't great in the first place, the puppets might've been good but...ewww. the black square had the worst plot though it was so boring)- there were others with some bad content but these were definitely the worst.
The good: I don't think I can list the good cause there were more good than bad and I enjoyed most the other stories. But for example: the devil and Dr tuberose, whitework, old mrs.j, phantoms, the helper, paranoia, on the water...whatever i give up already, there are too many good stories.
January 7, 2019
A very enjoyable anthology, spiced with several stories by authors who have become favorites of mine, but I also was introduced to a few authors whose work is new to me. Overall, a really strong selection of stories which truly do represent the uncanny in literature. I had read the Jonathan Carroll selection (The Panic Hand) previously, but it was still as chilling as the first time I read it. Ditto Kelly Link's story Stone Animals (surreal and dreamlike) and Steven Millhauser's Phantoms. Good stuff!
December 7, 2022
Hard to give this collection of "weird stories" anything but a good review. It's got something for everyone, and every single story is worth a read.
That said, this is NOT a horror anthology. At least not a standard one. It's a collection of surreal stories (though there are a few ghost stories too) written for the most part by literary masters — Kafka, Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Joyce Carol Oates. This is less "spooky reading before bed" and more like an exploration of unsettling situations and experiences (Shirley Jackson's "Paranoia" alone was worth picking up this book!).
That said, this is NOT a horror anthology. At least not a standard one. It's a collection of surreal stories (though there are a few ghost stories too) written for the most part by literary masters — Kafka, Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Joyce Carol Oates. This is less "spooky reading before bed" and more like an exploration of unsettling situations and experiences (Shirley Jackson's "Paranoia" alone was worth picking up this book!).
June 7, 2018
This collection walks a reader through a vast history of uncanny stories. I would expect nothing less from the inimitable Marjorie Sandor, editor. A few of my favorite stories from this collection: "Haunting Olivia" by Karen Russell, "Stone Animals" by Kelly Link, "The Devil and Dr. Tuberose" by John Herdman, "Phantoms" by Steven Millhauser, "The Jesters" by Joyce Carol Oates, "The Music of Erich Zann" by H.P. Lovecraft. So much to love, and so much to be unsettled by.
August 13, 2018
DNF
Overall, I was underwhelmed by this short story collection although I was intrigued by the premise of uncanny stories. Some were decent, but some were so slow I just skipped them.
My favorite was Phantoms by Steven Millhauser. I also liked Berenice by Edgar Allen Poe, The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft, and Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell. But as a whole, I felt pretty meh about this collection.
Overall, I was underwhelmed by this short story collection although I was intrigued by the premise of uncanny stories. Some were decent, but some were so slow I just skipped them.
My favorite was Phantoms by Steven Millhauser. I also liked Berenice by Edgar Allen Poe, The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft, and Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell. But as a whole, I felt pretty meh about this collection.
November 20, 2021
Read a long time ago.
Sandor collects thirty-one stories from the last two centuries, each one creepy, uncanny, and/or strange in its own way. From unfamiliar stories by familiar authors (“Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe) to stories from more modern authors ("Foundation" by China Mieville), each leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling.
Sandor collects thirty-one stories from the last two centuries, each one creepy, uncanny, and/or strange in its own way. From unfamiliar stories by familiar authors (“Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe) to stories from more modern authors ("Foundation" by China Mieville), each leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling.
March 6, 2022
Tried 8 stories and found them all terrible: they were all of them fragmentary, uninteresting, and not even remotely “uncanny.” A nice cover and a promising list of authors, but a very poor anthology.
July 22, 2017
What grabbed my attention was an anthology of stories from around the world. Other than that some stories I had to pick through because they were not that interesting.
April 10, 2018
There were some phenomenal stories in this collection. "Pomegranate Seed", "Paranoia", and "The Jesters" especially stand out.
November 1, 2018
A delightful collection of stories that unsettle and frighten, this anthology perfectly captures the nature of the uncanny.
February 11, 2019
DNF at it 229. I didn't find most of the stories up to that point to have much "uncanny" about them.
May 7, 2019
Not scary in any way whatsoever
June 3, 2020
A collection of the best and weirdest stories that you’ll ever read thrice.
March 13, 2021
These short stories start off strong and then taper down.
Many classic authors from antiquity.
Many classic authors from antiquity.
February 23, 2022
Good collection of stories although, to my disappointment, some of the tales were very canny indeed.
April 23, 2023
An excellent collection.
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