Holidays from Hell

by Reggie Oliver, Robert Shearman (Introduction)

In this, Reggie Oliver’s seventh collection of stories the Devil and the Seven Deadly Sins go on holiday to an English seaside resort. And there are other visits to the seaside, which equally deserve Oliver’s suggestively ambiguous title of a ‘Holiday from Hell’, notably by a recently bereaved solicitor troubled by thoughts of mortality, and immortality in ‘The Rooms are High’. In ‘The Perfect Author’ a highly successful author at a seaside crime writing convention seems to be haunted by one of her less appealing creations.

And, with his gift for varied and unusual settings, Oliver takes us to late seventeenth-century Oxford in ‘Absalom’, to Paris in 1867 (‘The Green Hour’), to a remote and terribly strange hotel in Wales called ‘The Druid’s Rest’, to the London of the swinging sixties in ‘The Prince of Darkness’, and, in ‘Rapture’, to what could perhaps be the end of the world.

Genres: Horror, Weird Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction

328 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 25, 2017

About the author

Reggie Oliver is a stage actor and playwright. His biography of Stella Gibbons was praised as “a triumph” by Hilary Spurling in the Daily Telegraph, his play Winner Takes All, was described as “the funniest evening in London”, by Michael Billington in The Guardian, and his adaptation of Hennequin and Delacour’s Once Bitten opened at the Orange Tree Theatre in London in December 2010.

He is the author of four highly-praised volumes of short fiction: The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini (Haunted River 2003), The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (Haunted River 2005), Masques of Satan (Ash Tree 2007), and Madder Mysteries (Ex Occidente 2009). His stories have appeared in over 25 anthologies and, for the third year running, one of his stories appears in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, the most widely read and popular of contemporary horror anthologies.

Reviews

[Karl]

This hardcover is copy 368 of 500 signed and numbered copies, signed by Reggie Oliver,

All artwork by Reggie Oliver.

[Fraser Burnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll give him this, Reggie Oliver is immensely readable. Whether his output contains what you require is a different thing.

In his story notes he elucidates on his recent travails, and the artistic, and primarily personal crossroads that he has experienced of late. This is so typical of Oliver. Honest, and heart-wrenching.

This is not my favourite collection of his, but I will continue to read, and look forward to his latest outpourings, agog!

[Adam Nevill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another stunning collection of strange and supernatural short stories from the prodigiously talented author, actor and artist.

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭

“Holiday from Hell” (2013) ✭✭✭½
“The Silken Drum” (2013) ✭✭✭½
“The Green Hour” (2013) ✭✭✭
“The Perfect Author” (2013) ✭✭✭½
“Absalom” (2014) ✭✭✭½
“The Druid's Rest” (2014) ✭✭✭½
“The Rooms Are High” (2015) ✭✭½
“The Prince of Darkness” [alternate title: “Posessions”] (2015) ✭✭✭½
“The Book and the Ring” (2014) ✭✭✭
“The Maze at Huntsmeer” (2015) ✭✭½
“Trouble at Botathan” (2015) ✭✭✭
“A Day with the Delusionists” (2017) ✭✭½
“Rapture” (2016) ✭✭✭
“Love at Second Sight” (2016) ✭✭✭✭

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some excellent stories in this collection, but also several that didn't make much of an impression. Of course, my expectations when it comes to Reggie Oliver are impossibly high, so it is only in comparison with his other short story collections that this is a three-star rating.

[Patrick.G.P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holidays From Hell is my second collection of Reggie Oliver’s dark tales, like the first I read (Masques of Satan) this was an excellent collection. The tales here were a bit more varied, and not necessarily only ghostly tales, it even has a detective story. Oliver wears his influences on his sleeves in many of these stories, from sequels to an M.R James tale, to a tribute to Robert Aickman, and a murder-mystery in the vein of Poe, but all these tales feel entirely like Oliver’s own. He has the uncanny ability to produce the bizarre and otherworldly in such a way that his tales are uncomfortable to read even during daylight.

Reggie Oliver masterfully combines both the old, classic trappings of the genre, with more modern ones in a way that blends beautifully. From his take on Poe’s classic detective in The Green Hour which feels like a detective tale written in the late 1800s to the eerie and quite disturbing tale Rapture, which has a thoroughly more modern feel to it, Oliver’s prose in both tales are delightful and perfectly suits the moods of each tale. Some of the standout tales for me was: Holiday from Hell, The Druid’s Rest, The Rooms are High, The Prince of Darkness, The Book, and the Ring, Trouble at Botathan and Rapture. Reggie Oliver is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors of weird and ghostly fiction, and this collection is a must for any fan of the genre.

[Caleb.Lives · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the man's best offering so far. Few of these stories are quite good, but most of those gud 'uns I've read in the anthologies in which they made their original appearances. Out of those new to me (whether they are original to this collection or not), titular story is a fun yarn with a dash of Charles Williams io it, un-supernatural "Green Hour" is a fun period detective story (and a nice tribute to Poe original that served as its basis), while the "The Book and the Ring" and "A Day with the Delusionists" are my favourites. Latter one, in particular, is perhaps the best offering in this collection (even though it is relatively short by Oliverian standards). Good half of this collection, though, is forgettable-to-poor, and it also has the honor of being the Oliver collection with the single weakest story of his I've red so far. In the afterword, Oliver mentions how he initially thought that his previous collection will be his last. I sure hope that this one won't be his last one either, even though he produced surreal amount of quality fiction so far. I do hope that he'll fix his relationship with his muse before his next one is out.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reggie Oliver is wry, understated, and extremely British. More than hints of Aickman and M.R. James color his work, but Oliver is original. This collection can move a bit slow and often the horror is in the blurs of one's vision, but "Holidays from Hell" delivers a thematically and very subtle collection of stories that rewards multiple re-readings and savoring the collection. "Holiday from Hell" and "The Silken Drum" start the collection off and hit the thematic notes of intrusion, half-understood life interpretation, and the way horror can stroll in and out of one's life indirectly. "The Green Hour" picks with where Poe's C. Auguste Dupin left off, but Oliver does not dip into Poe's voice or pastiche. However, the collection begins to feel similar in the middle with stories like "The Prince of Darkness" and "The Rooms Are High" but these reward re-reading. Come back to these stories after you have palate-cleansed. The end of the collection is has a few stories that really stand out, particularly “Rapture" which builds on Christian culture. Many of the narrators have Oliver's love of theatre and there are many self-referential narrators who gentle mock Reggie Oliver's proclivity. Oliver needs to be more widely-read.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following a compact, honest, comprehensive 'Introduction', we have fourteen tales here, many of which contain extraordinary violence and nastiness benath their gentle and polished narratives. Some of my favourites were~
1. Holiday from Hell;
2. The Silken Drum;
3. The Green Hour;
4. The Perfect Author;
5. Absalom;
6. The Druid's Rest;
7. The Rooms are High;
8. The Prince of Darkness;
9. The Maze at Huntsmere.
Overall, despite there being several 'Meh' stories towards the end, I am being forced to award this book full five stars primarily due to the strength of the above-mentioned vicious yet sweet-looking stories. Superlative production values of Tartarus Press also deserve to be mentioned in this context.
Highly recommended.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is a portrait of truly insidious horror by dark implication and salacious insinuation, as well as conveying painterly and actorly-actressly dynamics as part of an eventually exponential threnody of domestic and eschatological seediness.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is one of its observations.

[Gabriel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chose this collection of short horror stories as a follow-up to Stephen King because it also appeared on The Kind of Face You Hate blog’s The Books of 2020 list. Unfortunately, this one was a chore to get through and set my return to reading fiction way back.

The main problem I had with the stories was the writing style, which seemed to be trying for a modern take on classic British horror (which I’ve never particularly cared for), often with a dash of “clever” humor. The humor was mostly lost on me, and I usually couldn’t relate to the (actor) protagonist or the situations he found himself in. The stories frequently relied on strangeness as a surrogate for horror, and were often to subtle or suggestive that failed to leave an impression.

Here are the ones I liked the most.

Holiday from Hell - Here the weirdness worked, with a group of diabolical elderly (who as a demographic are often creepy in normal circumstances) helping a starving artist staying in the same hotel as them.