Shadows & Tall Trees 7

Shadows & Tall Trees #7

by Michael Kelly (Editor), Alison Moore, Brian Evenson

"Shadows and Tall Trees is a smart, soulful, illuminating investigation of the many forms and tactics available to those writers involved in one of our moment's most interesting and necessary projects, that of opening up horror literature to every sort of formal interrogation. It is a beautiful and courageous series." - Peter Straub

The acclaimed literary anthology Shadows & Tall Trees has featured authors short-listed for the Man Booker Award, and World Fantasy Award winners. Several of our stories have been reprinted in "Year's Best" anthologies and have garnered numerous award nominations. This volume features all-oroiginal new fiction from these masters of weird fiction:

Malcolm Devlin

Brian Evenson

Rebecca Kuder

V.H. Leslie

Robert Levy

Laura Mauro

Manish Melwani
Alison Moore
Harmony Neal
Rosalie Parker
M. Rickert
Nicholas Royle
Robert Shearman
Christopher Slatsky
Simon Strantzas
Steve Rasnic Tem

Michael Wehunt

Charles Wilkinson

Conrad Williams

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies, Weird Fiction, Fiction, 21st Century

306 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2017

About the author

Michael Kelly is the Series Editor for the Year's Best Weird Fiction, and author of Undertow and Other Laments, and Scratching the Surface; as well as co-author of the novel Ouroboros.

His short fiction has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including All Hallows, Best New Horror, Black Static, Dark Arts, the Hint Fiction Anthology, PostScripts, Space & Time, Supernatural Tales, Tesseracts 13, and Weird Fiction Review.

Michael is a World Fantasy Award, Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award Nominee.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Shadows & Tall Trees Volume 7" is the latest in a series begun a few years ago by a man I greatly admire Michael Kelly. The book is touted as being composed of dark and fantastic fiction by some of today's top artisans in that field.

As I made my way through the stories, what stuck out to me was so many of them dealt with death, loss and an overall lingering sadness within it's characters and narratives. The stories were wonderfully written and the oozing of emotions was well captured by the authors. I am sure that there will be many of these stories included in the Years Best collections.

Of the stories offered here there are perhaps a small number that went beyond the emotional quicksand which is hard to escape. My favorites among those offered were (in no particular order)

"The Swimming Pool Party" by Robert Shearman
"Curb Day" by Rebecca Kruder
"Sun Dogs" by Laura Mauro

And I am sure some of the other stories would have made that list if they were not read in the context of the stories surrounding them. There was just too much of the "sameness" through out this collection.

However judge for yourself.

[Merl Fluin · Rating 4 out of 5]

42 SHORT STORIES IN 42 DAYS*

DAY 35: Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying, by M. Rickert
This story slightly overplays its hand by trying to cram in too much too fast, but I love the scale of its ambition, and the final paragraph is gorgeous.

*The rules:
– Read one short story a day, every day for six weeks
– Read no more than one story by the same author within any 14-day period
– Deliberately include authors I wouldn't usually read
– Review each story in one sentence or less

Any fresh reading suggestions/recommendations will be gratefully received 📚

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meanwhile, this book will be read and read again, spoken about and lent out, extending its own disarmingly metamorphosing ouroboros of itself. A significant Weird Fiction book that is the best and longest kept secret, till it is finally out. But never completely divulged. It needs to harbour its own existence for others to discover. And reviews like this one are only ever half the battle. After me comes the flood.
It is the sort of book endlessly to be re-read by one reader as well as by many, and I don’t say that lightly.

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

[Ian Scuffling · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend floated the LARB review of Shadows & Tall Trees, Vol. 7 (edited by Michael Kelly) to me back in September. The review was more of an overview of the burgeoning literary genre known as the “New Weird.” In the essay, Paul StJohn Mackintosh posits that too much of what’s fitted into this genre floats around as ephemeral half-full pieces: meditations, moody pieces, thought pieces, plot-driven and even pulpy pieces. But there are true gems that can apply a full gamut of literary and stylistic effects to achieve an elevated piece of writing. Herein lies the rub of S&TT7: while there are many stories in here that are good, few of them are truly excellent as they feel half-formed or simply experiments in evoking a mood rather than pushing a genre into new ground with risky moves and truly original concepts.

One story that stuck out to me as particularly good was Robert Shearman’s “The Swimming Pool Party,” which offers not only the unique perspective of a mother who cannot love her awkward and bullied tween boy, but also a strange and ethereal event that serves metaphorically to the narrative while also being a climactic plot point. This is an elegant and gracefully written story that sinks hooks into you, planting strands of ambiguity and narrative unreliability in the reader to create and flout expectations, as if Shearman has anticipated all thoughts that will go through a reader’s mind as he/she reads the piece. It was a really affirming and truly “literary” piece of horror writing, and a hopeful key of where the genre can go in the future.

There are other stories in the collection that get close to new heights, but many others wallow in their goodness, failing to really level up to something supremely memorable or deeply affecting. Some of the really good ones (but not knock you off your feet good): “Slimkins” plays with narrative form in a kind of staggered flashback that harkens back to the best tales of Poe. “In the Tall Grass” and “Engines of the Ocean” paint surreal and dark images full of sadness that are viscerally affecting (in visuals and emotions). “Shell Baby” features the grotesque with some excellent prose styling that makes the piece feel like it’s coming off the pages in a deep blue-toned full color HD. But none of these are quite as good as Shearman’s piece. Perhaps my least favorite piece was “Sun-Dogs” which really felt like a corny, pulpy bad horror flick that was made for a cable TV network.

I think there’s a lot of value in the mentality that a typically pulpy form can and should be elevated—like many do with the sci-fi genre, horror lends itself easily to metaphorizing the human psyche, exploring the unknown and the unknowable, and examine humanity’s full range of sciences and psychologies. I appreciate what editor Michael Kelly is doing with this anthology series and hope to find myself reading another one soon. And hopefully, the writers exploring this new, weird writing will keep getting better and better—so far, they’ve got a good start.

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong selection, almost dud-free. Recommended.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a volume of modern weird stories, the kind that aspire to fine writing and a certain atmosphere of dread rather than hero overcoming a succession of crises to win out in the last act plot shenanigans. Heroes overcoming a succession of crises to win out in the last act plots are good for trilogies or endless series if the publisher lets you get away with it, but the short story is a place for experiments of this kind. Maybe.

‘Line Of Sight’ by Brian Evenson has third person narration with a neat point of view switch at the end. Todd directs a film but is sure there’s something wrong with it. He goes back to view the finished version and there seems to be something amiss with the eye-lines in scenes shot in an old house. So he goes back to the house. ‘Being in the house was like being in the belly of something. It was like they’d been swallowed, and that the house, seemingly inert, was not inert at all.’ A nicely spooky atmosphere is evoked and the author clearly knows something about filmmaking.

‘Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying’ by M.Rickert. First person narration. Two girls, best friends, look similar and dress in similar clothes so that they are often mistaken for twins. One is murdered. Although she is not found guilty in court everyone thinks the other girl did it and earns a certain notoriety. A film is made. Strangers come to town, identifiable by their clothes and manner so that ‘like belled cats they give their trespass away’. This was one of those stories that works by revealing bits of information slowly until you get a whole picture. A feeling of dread is evoked.

‘Shell Baby’ by V.H. Leslie. Third person narration. On a remote island in the Orkneys, Elspeth rents an isolated cottage for the winter. She wants to be alone. After swimming in the sea, amid a strange green light which she presumes to be the aurora borealis, she finds a small creature on the shore. She begins to consider it the child she always wanted, born of the sea like the goddess Aphrodite or it may be a monster. ‘After all, it’s a fine line between monsters and gods, a vague boundary like the shoreline itself where neither the land nor the sea hold dominion.’ The theme of the maternal instinct is perhaps not so comprehensible to a mere man but it was good.

‘The Water Kings’ by Manish Melwani is based on Balzac’s notion that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. A family of shipping magnates in Singapore may pay the price for their ancestors’ misdeeds. The similes tie in nicely to the main theme: ‘Tankers and cargo ships buoyed the horizon like floating coffins.’ ‘Adulthood and its inheritance weighed on him like rusty chains slipping beneath dark water.’ Partly, perhaps, because of the exotic background, this worked really well. Manish Melwani has a book of Singapore ghost stories coming out soon and it will be worth watching out for.

‘The Attempt’ by Rosalie Parker is a charming childhood fable. ‘The Tall Grass’ by Simon Strantzas was too weird for me. A plant comes to life. ‘The Erased’ by Steve Rasnic Tem was far too weird with things disappearing in a surreal world. ‘We Can Walk It Off Come The Morning’ by Malcolm Devlin evoked a vague sense of menace with some people lost in the fog in Ireland but ended with a whimper. Not unusual in this sort of story but even by those standards this was weak.

‘The Swimming Pool Party’ by Robert Shearman was downright chilling, reminding me of some old saying about the banality of evil. Some kids have a swimming pool party to celebrate Nicky’s birthday and Max, not at all popular, is invited, much to the surprise of his mother. Nicky’s mother is welcoming but odd. Kids birthday parties have gone mad in our time with Mum’s trying to outdo each other but this one was particularly bad. Genuine horror.

‘The Cenacle’ by Robert Levy is about a widow who can’t face going back to her ordinary life so she stays in the graveyard. It turns out there are others doing the same thing. Definitely weird.

‘Slimikins’ by Charles Wilkinson is one of those pieces that lets slip information bit by bit until you get a complete picture at the end. It’s about a former schoolteacher. Few people can stand teaching under modern conditions and they’re leaving the profession in droves but hopefully the robots can take over soon.

‘The Voice Of The People’ by Alison Moore is about a town with a factory that gives off unknown emissions which seem to cause lethargy in everyone. In ‘Curb Day’ by Rebecca Kuder everyone has to put out a certain weight of rubbish in black bags every year in May. No explanation is given. In ‘Engines Of The Ocean’ by Christopher Slats, a woman receives a letter from her father who is dead. She goes to investigate in the seaside town where he lived and everything is covered in salt. No explanation.

‘Sun Dogs’ by Laura Mauro was unreadable because narrative was addressed to ‘you’ as in ‘you did this, you did that’. I found this so annoying I couldn’t finish it.

Many of these stories are over-written but ‘Root Light’ by Michael Wehunt takes the practice to new levels. To be fair, the protagonist is a poet so the excessive descriptiveness may have been meant to reflect that. To be even fairer, it got quite gripping in the middle and had an ending, too. I’m not quite sure what the ending meant but it had one.

‘The Triplets’ by Harmony Neal is great. Three wealthy, beautiful women decide to conceive their girls under the same blue moon, outside, as according to some legend this will produce the perfect child. Three beautiful girls are born and grow up doing everything together. This razor-sharp social satire was an absolute joy to read and laugh out loud funny. The fantastical bit tacked on the end is almost irrelevant.

‘Dispossession’ by Nicholas Royle was a sad story about a Peeping Tom. There was no discernible fantasy element and it wasn’t very nice.

It’s a moot point whether this collection was front loaded with the best stuff at the beginning or whether the later stories didn’t appeal, with the notable exception of ’The Triplets’, because I was getting tired of the ‘New Weird’. There’s a lot of perceptive writing about everyday life today along with carefully worded prose that evokes an atmosphere of dread and as this is the aim perhaps that is how it should be judged.

I have a lot of respect for the authors. To get this kind of thing right takes a much skill and doesn’t pay much. There’s heaps more money in writing chase plots in bestsellerese that will get picked up by Hollywood. The writers obviously do it for the pure love of prose as opposed to story and if you share that affection you might like this book. It won’t be to everyone’s taste and didn’t really fit mine but ‘Shadows & Tall Trees 7’ is a shining example of ‘New Weird’ if you like that sort of thing. It may win awards but fantasy has joined the mainstream in that the stuff which wins awards and the stuff people actually like to read have mostly become separate.

It’s almost worth buying just for ‘The Triplets’. That was hilarious.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Undertow’s newer series, The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Shadows & Tall Trees is a premier publication for literary, difficult-to-pigeonhole horror. All of the short stories are original to this new collection and the roster is an impressive mix of new and fan-favorite authors including Brian Evenson, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Simon Strantzas. Brian Evenson (A Collapse of Horses, The Warren) opens the anthology with an unsettling story about a film whose production is more difficult than anyone might have known to imagine. The next story, M. Rickert’s “Everything Beautiful is Terrifying,” also involves a film about the notorious murder of a teen girl and the cult following it inspires, and that fandom’s effect on the murder victim’s surviving best friend. It’s a sad and beautiful story, one of my favorites in the collection, and makes for an interesting companion to Evenson’s preceding piece.

Things get less cinema-centric, but no less uncanny from there as horror, as a genre and as an emotion, is explored in broad strokes. There’s the straightforward horror of a family curse elevated to a stinging revenge tale in “The Water-Kings” by Singaporean author Manish Melwani. There’s the more nebulous, disorientating decluttering of Rebecca Kuder’s “Curb Day.” Strong offerings are also on hand from Robert Levy, Laura Mauro, and Michael Wehunt, who is becoming one of my favorite new voices. Not every story will appeal to every reader’s definition of frightening—horror is largely subjective—but the quality of writing is overwhelmingly consistent throughout, making Shadows & Tall Trees 7 one of the stand-out anthologies of 2017.

[S.J. Townend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me a while to get through this. Some of the stories were brilliant, others quite hard work. Evenson's opener Line of Sight was by far my favourite shortly chased by Leslie's Shell Baby which also moved me, loved its folksy tone. My third fave was Shearman's The Swimming Pool Party - a creepy, original tale I won't forget in a hurry!

This is the first of the Shadows and Tall Trees series I've read and although I'll certainly read the other books Kelly has published in this line, I'm going to work my way through Evenson's back catalogue first!

[Pearse Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am sorry to say that this antho surprised me with how so many of the stories left me saying "eh, that was a waste." Just like The Dream operator collection. Bouncing off of Vandermeer's Borne, a ton of these stories were about people taking care of non-human child-like creatures, all of which they treated as a family member: they weren't done as well as Borne. They fell flat for me, dawg. A lot took place in rando English towns, so it was great to see a regional Weird piece like Manish Melwani's, which I thought needed a bit more plot but loved the background of. Pieces like "Sun Dogs," "We Can Walk It Off Come The Morning," and "Slimikins" were so incredibly basic in their design, I felt bored reading them. Some great prose though! Really poetic sentences at times, good bits of characterization, but twists that could be seen from seven miles away and arcs that didn't do anything to my brain. Why, Brian Evenson, did your "Line of Sight" story go not really anywhere?! Alison Moore, what am I missing from your piece? Where is the Weird?

This anthology is a 5/10. The best pieces came in the last third, with Michael Wehunt not disappointing, and the last two bits, "The Triplets" and "Dispossession" doing great things with summary and voice, but beyond that, woof.

The BEST thing in this is "The Swimming Pool Party" by Robert Shearman. Of course it is. This is one of the scariest things I have read in a while, and taking it in outside of Bombay Grill, an Indian restaurant my friends were late to, was great. I felt strong emotion. I was frightened. I understood everything to the degree that was necessary. It was a brilliant horror story, something I have not seen before, and something that rivals his last piece, "Blood," magnificently. Very happy he'll be taking over for Year's Best Weird Fiction 5.

Connection: I am friends with Michael Kelly on FB, and have talked to him a couple of times. I also interviewed Michael Wehunt and am friends with him. Oh, and Simon Strantzas.

[Shikhar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volume 7 is the first of SHADOWS AND TALL TREES that I’ve read. This particular gathering of stories tends towards sadness, particularly “Dispossession” by Nicholas Royle, the closing story about mental illness and trauma. “Engines of the Ocean,” by Christopher Slatsky, is by turns sad and frightening. The scarier works included the opening tale, “Line of Sight” by Brian Evenson. I hadn’t thought, after reading so much horror over so many years, that such a short work would scare me into keeping the light over my reading chair turned on for the rest of the night. “We Can Walk It Off Come the Morning” by Malcolm Devlin is another fearful high point in the anthology, as is the unexpectedly frightening “The Water Kings “ by Manish Melwani, which also gives the reader a look into a different culture if, like me, you happen to be American. And fear loses to laugh-out-loud funny in “The Swimming Pool Party,” by Robert Shearman, also with a healthy dose of weirdness. “The Closure” by Conrad Williams is deeply unsettling, while “The Attempt” by Rosalie Parker, is a rather delightful tale. Editor Michael Kelly deserves great credit, not just for publishing such a variety of the weird, but also for his choices in story order. Other favorite tales: “The Erased” by Steve Rasnic Tem, is perhaps the weirdest of the lot. “Slimkins” by Charles Wilkinson is, by turns, enraging and sad. Laura Mauro’s “Sun Dogs” takes readers through fear into uplifting territory, while Michael Wehunt’s “Root-light” goes in the opposite direction. Ultimately, Mr. Kelly has turned a collection of differently weird stories into a cohesive book, which remains engaging from beginning to end.

[Joe Zanetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading editor Michael Kelly's anthology series, "Shadows and Tall Trees," and I regret not reading it sooner. The stories contained within are some of the finest examples of quiet/subtle horror. The table of contents is stacked with some great writers working in the horror field today. I don't know if Michael looks for certain elements in the stories he chooses for the anthology, but the majority of them are explorations of grief, mourning, loss, guilt, regret, closure, isolation, depression, and more; yet I did not feel any sort of repetitiveness in the stories, each one being its own individual entity, and ranging from unsettling, harrowing, saddening, to creepy. I will definitely be reading more of this series from Michael's Undertow Publications. My favorite stories are:

Everything Beautiful is Terrifying - Mary Rickert
Shell Baby - V.H. Leslie
The Water Kings - Manish Melwani
The Erased - Steve Rasnic Tem
The Swimming Pool Party - Robert Shearman
The Cenacle - Robert Levy
Engines of the Ocean - Christopher Slatsky
Sun Dogs - Laura Mauro
Root-Light - Michael Wehunt

[Michael Knipp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went into this book with high hopes based on seeing other positive reviews of both this series and also this specific collection. Unfortunately I was extremely disappointed through most of this book and truly had to force myself through it as a test of endurance. Most of the endings to these stories felt like they were being much more clever than they really were. Many of the stories would end having only established their core concept without having exposited very much about their scenario at all. Additionally, as others have noted her, there are quite a few stories in this collection with nearly identical themes and extremely similar "climaxes." Very little of the stories contained within are actually that unnerving, frightening, or overtly "weird." Some of these tales are so kitschy in their delivery that when the story ends unexpectedly, you are left, not trying to piece together mysterious elements and internalize their relevance, but feeling like you are out of the loop. A few times, I reread one of the entries in this collection to ensure that I had not missed some crucial detail that would add any form of meaning to the time I had wasted. Eventually concluding that there was nothing wrong with my reading comprehension, I instead spent my brain power trying to understand the type of person this might appeal to.

[Chris Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another successful accomplishment from Undertow Publications. As usual, the volume was well-edited and aesthetically pleasing, with fantastic artwork. The stories were quite weird, and quite mixed--a few brilliant ones, a few plodders, and dare I say, a few yawners. But that's what I expect in an anthology such as this, as it shows the story selection process was well thought out. And speaking of stories, the best ones (IMO) were Robert Shearman's The Swimming Pool Party; Laura Mauro's Sun Dogs; and Harmony Neal's The Triplets. Those stories alone made this anthology worth its time in reading.

[Ryan Pidhayny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shadows & Talls Trees 7 collects a wide variety of stories. Some are supernatural horror, some are more straight weird, and some are even harder to classify, but all are dark. It's a decent enough anthology. There were only a few stories I didn't like, but there were also only a couple that I really did like. 'The Erased' by Steve Rasnic Tem, 'The Water Kings' by Manish Melwani, and 'Sun Dogs' by Laura Mauro were the bright spots for me.

[Steven Dines · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of varied and beautifully written weird fiction from some of the genre's biggest names, ranging from traditional horror to the surreal. Personally, I preferred the slightly less weird entries, with my favourites being those by V H Leslie, Laura Mauro, Robert Shearman, and Malcolm Devlin. Those four were worth the cover price alone.

[Shawn Nerenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not too bad at all.

This was a good collection overall. I wouldn't exactly call it a horror anthology, it's more a collection of odd and slightly disturbing stories. I've never read the previous six books, but I'll read them based on this book.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites: "Root-Light" & "We Can Walk it Off Come Morning"

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read.

A solid anthology. I loved M. Rickert's Everything Beautiful is Terrifying. It is so distinctive, subtle and creepy - everything I look for in a story!

[P · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were ok but nothing exceptional.

[Lauren L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only about a quarter of a way through it, but I'm trying to get into writing reviews, and I am enjoying this so... what the hell, here goes. I will update this once I've read more and/or finished it.

My thoughts about the stories I've read so far:

Line of Sight by Brian Evenson | 3/5 | Enjoyably weird. I would have preferred it without the very last section of the actor, Steven's viewpoint, and I would have preferred a different ending or pay-off, but overall I did enjoy it.

Everything Beautiful is Terrifying by M. Rickert | 1/5 | I really disliked this one, but that's just me. The writing style made me uncomfortable, which could be a pro or a con, but also failed to keep my attention, which is definitely a con. I had to fight not to skip this one.

Shell Baby by V. H. Leslie | 4.5/5 | Weird, beautiful, horrible and horrific... I found the protagonist a little bit infuriating, if it weren't for that it would be a 5/5... and really, I think I'm being very picky in criticising the protagonist, because if it weren't for her 'weird' and 'stupid' decisions, and her weird personality, there would be no story at all, so... yeah, I can cope with finding her a little grating. She's necessarily weird and odd. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one, and it was rather original whilst still very much being a horror (in the most horrific way) story. It has layers. I like that. I feel that this one might be one of the strong offerings of the collection, which isn't to the detriment of the collection at all - it's a pretty great story.

The Attempt by Rosalie Parker | 3/5 | It's...okay. It's not really horror. If it is horror, it's so gentle and psychological is-it-or-isn't-it-horror that it's just on the edge between horror and none-horror. After the weird and visceral Shell Baby, any horror this has falls flat. It is a 'weird fiction' story, but that's it for me. I didn't dislike it, but it also didn't have any impact on me, and the only reason I feel it deserves inclusion in this book is the 'weird lit' plot. Honestly, I feel that it's more of a 2.5/5 than a 3/5, but I'll be generous.

The Closure by Conrad Williams | 3.5/5 | A ghost story, in more than one way - both a traditional haunting, and a man haunted by his past and the life he wanted rather than the life he has. Well written and melancholy. I felt this wasn't a particularly original story compared to the ones that have gone before it, but it had a nice depth, and the writing was nice too.

The Water Kings by Manish Melwani | 4/5 | Well-written, wildly weird, creative, and, as the story progresses, creepy. It's flush with weirdness and the lushness of Indian culture, which makes quite a heady combo. It's much more horror-based (or 'weird horror') than The Attempt and The Closure, which I was happy about. And I thought the end was satisfyingly creepy. However, it is written with a 'we' perspective, which is unusual, odd even, and the shifting 'we' perspective sometimes took me out of the story or was a bit confusing. So, not quite a 4.5 or 5 from me, but still another solid entry.

I'm now on In the Tall Grass by Simon Strantzas. I've heard good things about him, so we'll have to see how it goes.

I'll update when I've read some more!

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the risk of damning with faint praise, so far I'm enjoying this more than Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4.

Brian Evenson's "Line of Sight" is intriguing but probably not among his best. Rosalie Parker's "The Attempt" is a lovely little Aickmann-esque piece with one of her trademark endings. Simon Strantzas' "In the Tall Grass" doesn't live up to the strong opening, unfortunately.

"The Swimming Pool Party" is the best thing by far that I've read from Robert Shearman; the social awkwardness and discomfort slides into a kind of dark, absurd, relatively open-ended catastrophe. (I would remove the last sentence, but I'm that kind of cut-throat editor.)

Unfortunately, the next few stories are long-winded and mired in cliches, IMHO.

(3 stars is very generous, for the overall collection.)