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My House Gathers Desires
Adam McOmber's lush, hallucinatory stories are both familiar and wholly original. Drawn from the historical record, Biblical lore, fairy tales, science fiction, and nightmares, these offbeat and fantastical works explore gender and sexuality in their darkest and most beautiful manifestations. In the tradition of Angela Carter or Kelly Link, My House Gathers Desires is covertly funny and haunting, seeking fresh ways to consider sexual identity and its relation to history.
In "Sodom and Gomorrah," readers encounter a subversive, ecstatic new version of the Old Testament story. In "The Re'em," a medieval monk's search for a mythic beast conjures forbidden desire. And in "Notes on Inversion," the German psychiatrist Kraft-Ebbing receives a surreal retort to his clinical descriptions of same-sex desire.
From "Sodom and Gomorrah":
The strangers then are no longer like two men at all. They have undressed themselves, giving up the pretense of skin and becoming a denser part of the air. We are hungry for them. Ours is a sacred desire that was buried too long in our chests, like some city beneath the sand.
In "Sodom and Gomorrah," readers encounter a subversive, ecstatic new version of the Old Testament story. In "The Re'em," a medieval monk's search for a mythic beast conjures forbidden desire. And in "Notes on Inversion," the German psychiatrist Kraft-Ebbing receives a surreal retort to his clinical descriptions of same-sex desire.
From "Sodom and Gomorrah":
The strangers then are no longer like two men at all. They have undressed themselves, giving up the pretense of skin and becoming a denser part of the air. We are hungry for them. Ours is a sacred desire that was buried too long in our chests, like some city beneath the sand.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
2 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Adam McOmber
14 books96 followersAdam McOmber is the author of three novels, The White Forest (Simon and Schuster), Jesus and John (Lethe), and The Ghost Finders (JournalStone) as well as three collections of stories, This New & Poisonous Air and My House Gathers Desires (BOA Editions) and Fantasy Kit (Black Lawrence). His queer, erotic reimagining of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles was released by Lethe Press in October 2022. His work has appeared recently in Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Salt Hill and Diagram. He teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program and is the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Hunger Mountain.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 19, 2017
This is Adam McOmber's third book and second story collection - let me put it this way, I'll read anything he publishes. His imagination is a spooky, strange, stunning place. I loved these stories!
September 22, 2017
My House Gathers Desires (2017) is the the most recent story collection by Adam McOmber. Like his earlier collection, This New & Poisonous Air, these stories are not strictly scary, but they do have a very unsettling, Gothic feel. He uses dark and unusual settings and atmosphere to explore the hidden corners of the human psyche. The tales are sometimes uncomfortable but always compelling and this collection in particular examines haunting manifestations of gender and sexuality. The backdrops come from the worlds of science fiction, history, fairy tales, and the Bible. In "Petit Trianon" we find two women who have a most disturbing experience in the refuge of Marie Antoinette when they visit the Palace of Versailles years later. "History of a Saint" describes the separate obsessions of a man and his wife with the incorruptible body of a dead woman...who was never quite designated a saint. "The Rite of Spring" is the story that most closely falls into the horror category. It features Mrs. Elizabeth Jordan who teaches at a boys' school and who faces a terrifying horror on a nearby island when two of the students take her teachings about myth and ritual a little too literally.
There was a difference, she thought, between a god and monster. She should have told them while she could.
And "Metempsychosis" tells the tale of a young man who is led to the secrets behind the scenes of a traveling museum and discovers that some secrets are better left unknown.
These are (for me) the most affecting of the stories, but even the weakest are very, very good. Some of the other stories feature a confederate soldier, a retelling of Sodom and Gomorrah, and slightly different take on ghost stories. McOmber takes the stuff of nightmares and sets it to lyrical music. He opens up Pandora's box and the reader is both horrified and delighted at what flies out.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
There was a difference, she thought, between a god and monster. She should have told them while she could.
And "Metempsychosis" tells the tale of a young man who is led to the secrets behind the scenes of a traveling museum and discovers that some secrets are better left unknown.
These are (for me) the most affecting of the stories, but even the weakest are very, very good. Some of the other stories feature a confederate soldier, a retelling of Sodom and Gomorrah, and slightly different take on ghost stories. McOmber takes the stuff of nightmares and sets it to lyrical music. He opens up Pandora's box and the reader is both horrified and delighted at what flies out.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
August 15, 2020
So far, this is one of my favourite summer reads, and certainly one of the strongest short story collections I've read this year. Increasingly, I find myself drawn to small press publications, as their authors seem more free to experiment and explore without a mandated adherence to Save the Cat tyle plots, or some Disneyfied version of queerness. I certainly wasn't let down by this collection.
McOmber's stories are consistently beguiling, regardless of their particular focus, and fans of moody, Gothic horror; body horror; and the weird, will find much to love here.
The true strength of the collection is its refusal of easy answers, and its willingness to bare its teeth. These days, I've had a hard time finding queer fiction that is allowed to be both unapologetically queer and dark (it seems like the emphasis has to be on fluff if you're a queer writer). I was therefore thrilled to read My House Gathers Desires, which tackles a number of different themes, ideas, and styles, while simultaneously creating a sense of cohesion in terms of general atmosphere and mood. The stories in this book, each very singular and different, are nonetheless threaded together by a common sense of mystery, of folklore, and of experimentation. Many of the stories read as if they were time-honoured fairy tales you simply hadn't heard before, and were lucky enough to be reading for the first time.
This was my introduction to McOmber's work, and I'm excited to sink into the rest of his fiction. As a queer reader and writer who loves darker stories, McOmber's writing is a breath of fresh air.
McOmber's stories are consistently beguiling, regardless of their particular focus, and fans of moody, Gothic horror; body horror; and the weird, will find much to love here.
The true strength of the collection is its refusal of easy answers, and its willingness to bare its teeth. These days, I've had a hard time finding queer fiction that is allowed to be both unapologetically queer and dark (it seems like the emphasis has to be on fluff if you're a queer writer). I was therefore thrilled to read My House Gathers Desires, which tackles a number of different themes, ideas, and styles, while simultaneously creating a sense of cohesion in terms of general atmosphere and mood. The stories in this book, each very singular and different, are nonetheless threaded together by a common sense of mystery, of folklore, and of experimentation. Many of the stories read as if they were time-honoured fairy tales you simply hadn't heard before, and were lucky enough to be reading for the first time.
This was my introduction to McOmber's work, and I'm excited to sink into the rest of his fiction. As a queer reader and writer who loves darker stories, McOmber's writing is a breath of fresh air.
April 9, 2021
(4.5 stars)
Welp, his house sure gathers desires.
This is a pretty solid atmospheric horror collection, but my favorite thing about it is how short most of the stories are. You can read most of them in around 5 minutes before going to bed, and they're truly wonderful bedtime stories, not even kidding. The tales in this anthology range in their settings, medieval or classical, grand or claustrophobic, detached or intimate, but all of them are truly dream-like. Not things out of nightmares, they're things that give you a gentle chill to accompany your slumber.
Welp, his house sure gathers desires.
This is a pretty solid atmospheric horror collection, but my favorite thing about it is how short most of the stories are. You can read most of them in around 5 minutes before going to bed, and they're truly wonderful bedtime stories, not even kidding. The tales in this anthology range in their settings, medieval or classical, grand or claustrophobic, detached or intimate, but all of them are truly dream-like. Not things out of nightmares, they're things that give you a gentle chill to accompany your slumber.
March 24, 2021
Decadent horror that hits too close to home at times. The worlds within each short story are so rich and dark, I fear I could almost slip into them.
March 16, 2020
This was a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing collection of bite-sized stories that explore strange architectures, occult histories, creepy landscapes, hypnotic arts, Cthonic madness, and homosexual longing. The language is ornate, as are the labyrinths of fear within. I loved this magisterial work of dark and eldritch horror.
January 1, 2018
Every story but the last one was so, so good. I feel so lucky to have found this author! All the stories in this volume are strange in multiple ways, with unexpected twistiness everywhere.
December 8, 2017
I will read anything McOmber writes. I adored his first collection of short stories: This New and Poisonous Air, and was quite taken by his gothic novel The White Forest. When I saw that he was releasing a new collection of short stories I immediately placed a hold at the library. McOmber posesses a uniquely gourmet imagination that reminds me of Elizabeth Hand, or even Tanith Lee's earlier works.
June 24, 2018
Such a rich, engrossing collection. Every story was worth reading, but here are 5 stories that I’ll definitely read again in the future:
Hydrophobia
The Coil
Night is Nearly Done
The Re’em
History of a Saint
Hydrophobia
The Coil
Night is Nearly Done
The Re’em
History of a Saint
February 23, 2022
What a nice surprise.
These were curious, sometimes captivating and sometimes chilling, stories that display a range of skill and some backbone.
I thought they were engrossing, evocative, well written, and a pleasure to read. Which really checks all the boxes for me.
These were curious, sometimes captivating and sometimes chilling, stories that display a range of skill and some backbone.
I thought they were engrossing, evocative, well written, and a pleasure to read. Which really checks all the boxes for me.
May 22, 2024
It's refreshing to run across a writer who puts real literary backbone into their prose. While reading these unsettling and poetic tales of cosmic horror and queer longing, I often felt each turning page was a corner leading me further in darkness, and closer to the Minotaur.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews