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The Cranes That Build The Cranes
Jeremy Dyson is a master of the macabre, of stories brimming with black humour and the promise of something sinister just around the corner. In his new collection he explores the dark depths of the human condition, offering tales of death, disaster and - just occasionally - redemption.
An unhappy, near-autistic bookseller acquires miraculous powers over life and death and exacts his revenge on the world - in a cruel and unexpected way.
Alone in their isolated boarding school, three boys explore the mysterious cellar that is officially off-limits, only to discover something far worse than they expected about the building and themselves.
A pathological fear of violent crime drives a wealthy property developer to purchase a private island and build himself a home of absolute security. Unfortunately he succeeds in attracting the very thing he fears the most.
In these and other tales of suspense and horror, Jeremy Dyson introduces the reader to a world that is at once mysterious and strangely familiar . . .
- GenresShort StoriesHorror
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
11 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Jeremy Dyson
36 books52 followersJeremy Dyson is an English screenwriter and, along with Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, a participant in The League of Gentlemen. He has also created and co-wrote the popular west-end show Ghost Stories.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 6, 2016
‘…This was what he was like. His own actions were mysterious to him. He made himself feel sick.’
There are some works of fiction which readers will take to heart in spite of their quality. This is an unpredictable, unreliable process, and it is probably what certain people are talking about when they declare at all opinions about art are subjective; but they themselves know what they like, of course, and might even press upon you some treasured volume, their eyes full of hope. But when you read that book, it’s just as likely as not that you’ll fail to see what they saw in it. It is almost not enough to say it just wasn’t for you: more likely your eyes simply glazed over those passages which, to them, triggered some long dormant dream.
This is much how I feel about 'The Cranes That Build the Cranes' by Jeremy Dyson. Part of me wants to press the stories collected in this book on everyone I know, even while I’m unsure that anyone I know would actually enjoy them. For one thing, they are mostly what is sometimes called weird fiction, or horror stories. And some people are squeamish about such things. But it isn’t just that. As stories, they are excellent examples of their type, but the real problem — and their true appeal, for me at least — is that they are they are written in a way which I find uncannily familiar. In every story here I felt I understood exactly what the author was trying to do. It’s almost as though I had been presented with a set of dreams that I had forgotten I’d once had.
‘The first thing he registered were its tiny hands, almost vestigial, like a dinosaur’s. He didn’t want to look into its face. He’d expected the eyes to be closed, but they were open. Staring up at him. The sockets beneath were black.’
Dyson is probably still best known for his work as a writer for television, in particular for 'The League of Gentlemen', a show which I’ve sometimes enjoyed but never really followed. His love of the macabre is well known, and he also co-wrote the play 'Ghost Stories', which I wrote about on its initial release in 2010. I think his stories far surpass anything else I’ve encountered from him. The tales collected in this book are a slightly more diverse bunch than those collected in his later collection 'The Haunted Book' (which is also excellent). Some of them, like ‘The Coué’ and ‘Out of Bounds’, are straightforward genre pieces, influenced by the likes of M.R. James and Robert Aickman, and they provide pleasingly bleak portraits of horrible things discovered by unwary innocents who are punished for straying into the realms of the esoteric.
But then there’s something like ‘Yani’s Day’, which could almost be an especially grim extended comedy sketch about a mysterious employee of Waterstones who inexplicably develops the ability to kill people by force of will. (Naturally, he becomes a kind of terrifying supervillain, and forces the British government to nationalise the book industry in order to placate his wish to run Waterstones as a sort of private fiefdom entirely divorced from commercial realities.) Or there is ‘Isle of the Wolf’, which depicts a wealthy businessman’s attempt to create the most perfectly secure home imaginable; entirely and deliberately implausible, it is a neat slice of Ballardian psychological science fiction about the perils of suburban paranoia taken to a logical extreme. And then there is an oddity like ‘Bound South’, which starts out like a spy story by Somerset Maugham before veering into a peculiar sort of Borgesian parable about the nature of faith and religion.
‘‘…But don’t you find yourself thinking about the future — and not wanting it? Like something ugly someone’s given you.’
‘No.’
She turned and smiled at him. ‘Yes, you do. I know you do.’’
In almost every story here the protagonist is a young man who is in some way isolated, either by accident or by design. For the most part, this isolation is simply necessary for the stories to work: they are about an individual’s encounter with the darkest aspects of the human imagination, and if they were full of people and noise and all the comforts of human society, they simply wouldn’t work. Even something like ‘Yani’s Day’ seems to be really about pitting one form of individual solitude (quiet, reflective, forgiving) against another (dangerous, unstable, demanding).
But two of the stories are directly about isolation in a more direct sense. ‘Michael’ is a dark allegory following a young man who wanders into a local wood after a disastrous embarrassment at school; it’s a short, bleak tale which felt uncomfortably familiar to me. And then there’s ‘The Challenge Club’, which might be the oddest story here simply by virtue of how straightforward it is.
It’s about an entirely average man who finds himself involved with a semi-secret members’ club, one which contains a diverse range of incredible interior attractions as well as providing him with a network of new acquaintances. Of course, the world behind that plain doorway in Soho is much bigger and stranger on the inside than it appears from the street, and there’s all kinds of mysterious games to be played and sinister people to be met — but for, once the fantastical elements are not the point. It’s about what the feeling of being excluded can do to a person, and how those grievances still prick at the self, even years after they have ceased to become relevant to daily life. It’s about the hope that comes with making a new start, and the terror that follows when it becomes apparent when, driven by the same old fears, you make the same mistakes over again.
‘But what was vivid was the memory of standing there, before the class, grasping the side of the wooden table behind him, its splintered edge. A moment in which shame engulfed him like the blackest of clouds — a swelling horror that he had nothing to say to his classmates, nothing prepared to entertain them with, no jokes or stories. He didn’t in fact know how to. There was an abyss, an emptiness, filled only with his own stupid aspiration and its hollow consequence.’
The ending of this story, wrapped up in a little under two pages, is unexpectedly neat. It’s also by some distance the happiest ending in this collection, and in this regard I found it somewhat unconvincing, a bit like that notorious false ending in the movie 'Brazil'; there’s that same vague sense of absurd, imposed unreality about it. But perhaps that’s only me imposing my own narrative on somebody else’s story — the other side of that personal connection which stimulated my interest in the first place.
There are some works of fiction which readers will take to heart in spite of their quality. This is an unpredictable, unreliable process, and it is probably what certain people are talking about when they declare at all opinions about art are subjective; but they themselves know what they like, of course, and might even press upon you some treasured volume, their eyes full of hope. But when you read that book, it’s just as likely as not that you’ll fail to see what they saw in it. It is almost not enough to say it just wasn’t for you: more likely your eyes simply glazed over those passages which, to them, triggered some long dormant dream.
This is much how I feel about 'The Cranes That Build the Cranes' by Jeremy Dyson. Part of me wants to press the stories collected in this book on everyone I know, even while I’m unsure that anyone I know would actually enjoy them. For one thing, they are mostly what is sometimes called weird fiction, or horror stories. And some people are squeamish about such things. But it isn’t just that. As stories, they are excellent examples of their type, but the real problem — and their true appeal, for me at least — is that they are they are written in a way which I find uncannily familiar. In every story here I felt I understood exactly what the author was trying to do. It’s almost as though I had been presented with a set of dreams that I had forgotten I’d once had.
‘The first thing he registered were its tiny hands, almost vestigial, like a dinosaur’s. He didn’t want to look into its face. He’d expected the eyes to be closed, but they were open. Staring up at him. The sockets beneath were black.’
Dyson is probably still best known for his work as a writer for television, in particular for 'The League of Gentlemen', a show which I’ve sometimes enjoyed but never really followed. His love of the macabre is well known, and he also co-wrote the play 'Ghost Stories', which I wrote about on its initial release in 2010. I think his stories far surpass anything else I’ve encountered from him. The tales collected in this book are a slightly more diverse bunch than those collected in his later collection 'The Haunted Book' (which is also excellent). Some of them, like ‘The Coué’ and ‘Out of Bounds’, are straightforward genre pieces, influenced by the likes of M.R. James and Robert Aickman, and they provide pleasingly bleak portraits of horrible things discovered by unwary innocents who are punished for straying into the realms of the esoteric.
But then there’s something like ‘Yani’s Day’, which could almost be an especially grim extended comedy sketch about a mysterious employee of Waterstones who inexplicably develops the ability to kill people by force of will. (Naturally, he becomes a kind of terrifying supervillain, and forces the British government to nationalise the book industry in order to placate his wish to run Waterstones as a sort of private fiefdom entirely divorced from commercial realities.) Or there is ‘Isle of the Wolf’, which depicts a wealthy businessman’s attempt to create the most perfectly secure home imaginable; entirely and deliberately implausible, it is a neat slice of Ballardian psychological science fiction about the perils of suburban paranoia taken to a logical extreme. And then there is an oddity like ‘Bound South’, which starts out like a spy story by Somerset Maugham before veering into a peculiar sort of Borgesian parable about the nature of faith and religion.
‘‘…But don’t you find yourself thinking about the future — and not wanting it? Like something ugly someone’s given you.’
‘No.’
She turned and smiled at him. ‘Yes, you do. I know you do.’’
In almost every story here the protagonist is a young man who is in some way isolated, either by accident or by design. For the most part, this isolation is simply necessary for the stories to work: they are about an individual’s encounter with the darkest aspects of the human imagination, and if they were full of people and noise and all the comforts of human society, they simply wouldn’t work. Even something like ‘Yani’s Day’ seems to be really about pitting one form of individual solitude (quiet, reflective, forgiving) against another (dangerous, unstable, demanding).
But two of the stories are directly about isolation in a more direct sense. ‘Michael’ is a dark allegory following a young man who wanders into a local wood after a disastrous embarrassment at school; it’s a short, bleak tale which felt uncomfortably familiar to me. And then there’s ‘The Challenge Club’, which might be the oddest story here simply by virtue of how straightforward it is.
It’s about an entirely average man who finds himself involved with a semi-secret members’ club, one which contains a diverse range of incredible interior attractions as well as providing him with a network of new acquaintances. Of course, the world behind that plain doorway in Soho is much bigger and stranger on the inside than it appears from the street, and there’s all kinds of mysterious games to be played and sinister people to be met — but for, once the fantastical elements are not the point. It’s about what the feeling of being excluded can do to a person, and how those grievances still prick at the self, even years after they have ceased to become relevant to daily life. It’s about the hope that comes with making a new start, and the terror that follows when it becomes apparent when, driven by the same old fears, you make the same mistakes over again.
‘But what was vivid was the memory of standing there, before the class, grasping the side of the wooden table behind him, its splintered edge. A moment in which shame engulfed him like the blackest of clouds — a swelling horror that he had nothing to say to his classmates, nothing prepared to entertain them with, no jokes or stories. He didn’t in fact know how to. There was an abyss, an emptiness, filled only with his own stupid aspiration and its hollow consequence.’
The ending of this story, wrapped up in a little under two pages, is unexpectedly neat. It’s also by some distance the happiest ending in this collection, and in this regard I found it somewhat unconvincing, a bit like that notorious false ending in the movie 'Brazil'; there’s that same vague sense of absurd, imposed unreality about it. But perhaps that’s only me imposing my own narrative on somebody else’s story — the other side of that personal connection which stimulated my interest in the first place.
February 25, 2017
A mildly entertaining collection of macabre stories, penned by the co-writer of The League of Gentleman and Funland - the latter being a little-remembered BBC TV miniseries which I absolutely loved. A quick read and often intriguing, but patchy. I didn't like the first story, 'Isle of the Wolf', at all: it was too obvious, tried too hard to shock and the message was heavy-handed. Thankfully, most of the rest were better, with particular stand-outs being 'The Challenge Club' (an unremarkable accountant is invited to join an exclusive private club and quickly finds himself sucked into its debauched world) and 'The Coué' (a collector of oddities is offered the chance to buy a particularly curious object). I found the subject matter and execution interesting enough that I would still read something else by Dyson - indeed, it was while searching for the recently-published The Haunted Book that I found this at the library. But none of these stories were outstanding, and at the end I realised I hadn't liked a single character out of the whole lot.
October 12, 2019
I started halfway through the collection where it appears Dyson tucked away his weaker, more generic stories and, as such, was initially disappointed. The beginning and ending, however, reinstated my excitement at Dyson's 'Riga Mortis grin' writing style.
That being said, I did find my enjoyment jarred by screenwriter grammar and repetitious romantic relationships gone stale. Nevertheless when the momentum picks up, nothing could stop me reading.
Notable Stories
• Isle of the Wolf – it was a slow start but I was gripped by this story and what it says about wealth and security.
• Come April – I like to think this isn’t a supernatural conclusion but something thoughtfully orgasmic.
• Michael – I was more hypnotized by the pursuit than the skeletal pay-off or the fact that we never meet the ‘man’.
That being said, I did find my enjoyment jarred by screenwriter grammar and repetitious romantic relationships gone stale. Nevertheless when the momentum picks up, nothing could stop me reading.
Notable Stories
• Isle of the Wolf – it was a slow start but I was gripped by this story and what it says about wealth and security.
• Come April – I like to think this isn’t a supernatural conclusion but something thoughtfully orgasmic.
• Michael – I was more hypnotized by the pursuit than the skeletal pay-off or the fact that we never meet the ‘man’.
June 1, 2017
There were a couple of creepy stories here, but generally they were all far too long, with an awful lot of preamble for not a lot of payoff.
July 1, 2024
It's a short story anthology. It's hit or miss, but some gems in there.
Read
June 8, 2021... it is not for you to decide who is of no value
Я не ставлю звездочек, солнышек и сердечек, не отсчитываю бусин для туземцев, чтобы оценить предмет интеллектуального творчества. Не считаю возможным. Самым худшим образом снятые фильмы вдохновляли меня прожить еще один день. Самые прославленные произведения искусства не оставляли в моей голове ничего, кроме ощущения влипания в омерзительно-розовую жевательную резинку. Оценка чьего-либо творчества субъективна и не зависит ни от каких критериев. Пытаясь оценить это творчество в плоскости балльной системы, мы не делаем ничего, кроме акта ослепительнейшего идиотизма. Это просто так не работает.
А еще я не пишу рецензий на книги. Потому что я не знаю, как написать правильную книгу. С фильмами проще — у них есть какие-то критерии восприятия и каноны производства. Книги не имеют никаких стандартов. Черно-белый код, сплетающийся в нашем воображении в цельную картину, — это нейропсихологическая магия, не имеющая четких правил, сколько бы их не пытались вывести вездесущие тренинги эффективного писательства. Это слишком сложная сфера человеческого интеллекта, чтобы быть в ней хоть немного экспертом.
Но все же я пишу этот текст здесь. Возможно, это даже не рецензия, но что-то вроде читательского дневника. Мне нужно высказаться, слить куда-то этот кипящей поток мыслей из своей головы. Просто потому, что это была самая тяжелая книга в моей жизни, и для этого у меня есть причины.
Во-первых, и в порядке банальностей — моего уровня английского не хватало для легкого восприятия текста. Периодически. Понимаете ли, это сборник рассказов, не объединенных никакой общей идей. Если не считать за идею ауру «странности» — тут должно быть упоминание Роберта Эйкмана, который оказал довольно большое влияние на тексты Джереми Дайсона. Рассказы разнятся по стилистике и по широте вокабуляра. На Isle of the Wolf я думала, что морально умру, выключусь сознанием, так и не дойдя даже до середины текста. Мне кажется, выучи я все эти слова, я бы вполне могла бы работать продавцом строительных материалов на международном рынке. «Так жить нельзя», — говорила я себе, выписывая 164-е новое слово по счету. Все остальные рассказы пошли легче, но на Bound South я опять встряла, завязнув в философских размышлениях с соответствующей лексикой.
Во-вторых, и это главный пункт моего списка «Почему мне так тяжко читать эту книгу», я просто не была готова столкнуться с тем, что я там найду. Я нашла в этом сборнике свои ощущения. Нет, вы не поняли. Именно мои ощущения. И куски воспоминаний, о которых знаю только я и пачки моих дневников, распиханных по секретным углам квартиры. Я не сошла с ума, у меня есть справка от психиатра. Просто это действительно мои ощущения, мои триггеры и мои травмирующие воспоминания детства, о которых я не читала до этого ни у кого. Встретиться с ними лицом к лицу не было приятным времяпрепровождением. Я читала, периодически рыдая, кусая пальцы и, борясь с желанием швырнуть книжку в стенку, аккуратно закрывала ее и уходила подумать. The Cranes That Build the Cranes стала для меня чем-то вроде сеансов психотерапии. Только эффект посильнее — потому что психиатр не понимает, о чем ты думаешь, а эта книга понимала.
И третий пункт в списке. Люди любят классификацию. Это что-то вроде закэшированной интернет-страницы, которую можно загрузить один раз, и больше не обновлять. Это процесс, предохраняющий наш мозг от чрезмерной работы. Когда мы читаем книгу или смотрим книгу, мы знаем, нравится нам это или нет. В случае Джереми Дайсона и этого его сборника рассказов, после каждого удачного или неудачного (на мой взгляд) абзаца я пыталась понять, а нравится ли мне эта книга, или нет. И так и не пришла ни к какому определенному выводу. Мой мозг все это время оставался работающим на полной мощности и, кажется, перегорел. По крайней мере, пока я не готова читать что-то еще от этого же автора. Не потому, что это плохо, а потому, что мне нужен перерыв.
Пока я читала эту книгу, я записывала в заметки на телефоне какие-то комментарии к рассказам, но теперь, закрыв последнюю страницу, мне не кажется, что все это имеет какой-то смысл. Единственный вопрос, который мне бы хотелось задать в пустоту, это «Почему furry concertina, Джереми? Откуда это, блин, взялось в твоей голове?» :D Но это слишком дерзко, чтобы спрашивать об этом в твиттере. Кто я такой в этой цепочке жизненного цикла книги, чтобы цепляться к чужим метафорам.
И все же отдельно и совсем коротко мне бы хотелось сказать про Come April, который я читала и перечитывала несколько раз, и из-за которого я и купила этот сборник. Я до сих пор не знаю, люблю я или ненавижу этот рассказ. Люблю за то, что он дает мне надежду, будто бы и моя жизнь не бессмысленна. Ненавижу за то, что все надежды такого рода просто не могут быть правдой. Но я думаю, и думаю, и думаю об эти десяти страницах текста, и пока я продолжаю вертеть этот сюжет в своей голове, рассматривая его и так и этак, я забываю о том, что моя жизнь кончена. И, наверное, я просто должна сказать спасибо. Спасибо, правда.
Я не ставлю звездочек, солнышек и сердечек, не отсчитываю бусин для туземцев, чтобы оценить предмет интеллектуального творчества. Не считаю возможным. Самым худшим образом снятые фильмы вдохновляли меня прожить еще один день. Самые прославленные произведения искусства не оставляли в моей голове ничего, кроме ощущения влипания в омерзительно-розовую жевательную резинку. Оценка чьего-либо творчества субъективна и не зависит ни от каких критериев. Пытаясь оценить это творчество в плоскости балльной системы, мы не делаем ничего, кроме акта ослепительнейшего идиотизма. Это просто так не работает.
А еще я не пишу рецензий на книги. Потому что я не знаю, как написать правильную книгу. С фильмами проще — у них есть какие-то критерии восприятия и каноны производства. Книги не имеют никаких стандартов. Черно-белый код, сплетающийся в нашем воображении в цельную картину, — это нейропсихологическая магия, не имеющая четких правил, сколько бы их не пытались вывести вездесущие тренинги эффективного писательства. Это слишком сложная сфера человеческого интеллекта, чтобы быть в ней хоть немного экспертом.
Но все же я пишу этот текст здесь. Возможно, это даже не рецензия, но что-то вроде читательского дневника. Мне нужно высказаться, слить куда-то этот кипящей поток мыслей из своей головы. Просто потому, что это была самая тяжелая книга в моей жизни, и для этого у меня есть причины.
Во-первых, и в порядке банальностей — моего уровня английского не хватало для легкого восприятия текста. Периодически. Понимаете ли, это сборник рассказов, не объединенных никакой общей идей. Если не считать за идею ауру «странности» — тут должно быть упоминание Роберта Эйкмана, который оказал довольно большое влияние на тексты Джереми Дайсона. Рассказы разнятся по стилистике и по широте вокабуляра. На Isle of the Wolf я думала, что морально умру, выключусь сознанием, так и не дойдя даже до середины текста. Мне кажется, выучи я все эти слова, я бы вполне могла бы работать продавцом строительных материалов на международном рынке. «Так жить нельзя», — говорила я себе, выписывая 164-е новое слово по счету. Все остальные рассказы пошли легче, но на Bound South я опять встряла, завязнув в философских размышлениях с соответствующей лексикой.
Во-вторых, и это главный пункт моего списка «Почему мне так тяжко читать эту книгу», я просто не была готова столкнуться с тем, что я там найду. Я нашла в этом сборнике свои ощущения. Нет, вы не поняли. Именно мои ощущения. И куски воспоминаний, о которых знаю только я и пачки моих дневников, распиханных по секретным углам квартиры. Я не сошла с ума, у меня есть справка от психиатра. Просто это действительно мои ощущения, мои триггеры и мои травмирующие воспоминания детства, о которых я не читала до этого ни у кого. Встретиться с ними лицом к лицу не было приятным времяпрепровождением. Я читала, периодически рыдая, кусая пальцы и, борясь с желанием швырнуть книжку в стенку, аккуратно закрывала ее и уходила подумать. The Cranes That Build the Cranes стала для меня чем-то вроде сеансов психотерапии. Только эффект посильнее — потому что психиатр не понимает, о чем ты думаешь, а эта книга понимала.
И третий пункт в списке. Люди любят классификацию. Это что-то вроде закэшированной интернет-страницы, которую можно загрузить один раз, и больше не обновлять. Это процесс, предохраняющий наш мозг от чрезмерной работы. Когда мы читаем книгу или смотрим книгу, мы знаем, нравится нам это или нет. В случае Джереми Дайсона и этого его сборника рассказов, после каждого удачного или неудачного (на мой взгляд) абзаца я пыталась понять, а нравится ли мне эта книга, или нет. И так и не пришла ни к какому определенному выводу. Мой мозг все это время оставался работающим на полной мощности и, кажется, перегорел. По крайней мере, пока я не готова читать что-то еще от этого же автора. Не потому, что это плохо, а потому, что мне нужен перерыв.
Пока я читала эту книгу, я записывала в заметки на телефоне какие-то комментарии к рассказам, но теперь, закрыв последнюю страницу, мне не кажется, что все это имеет какой-то смысл. Единственный вопрос, который мне бы хотелось задать в пустоту, это «Почему furry concertina, Джереми? Откуда это, блин, взялось в твоей голове?» :D Но это слишком дерзко, чтобы спрашивать об этом в твиттере. Кто я такой в этой цепочке жизненного цикла книги, чтобы цепляться к чужим метафорам.
И все же отдельно и совсем коротко мне бы хотелось сказать про Come April, который я читала и перечитывала несколько раз, и из-за которого я и купила этот сборник. Я до сих пор не знаю, люблю я или ненавижу этот рассказ. Люблю за то, что он дает мне надежду, будто бы и моя жизнь не бессмысленна. Ненавижу за то, что все надежды такого рода просто не могут быть правдой. Но я думаю, и думаю, и думаю об эти десяти страницах текста, и пока я продолжаю вертеть этот сюжет в своей голове, рассматривая его и так и этак, я забываю о том, что моя жизнь кончена. И, наверное, я просто должна сказать спасибо. Спасибо, правда.
March 7, 2018
The Cranes That Built the Cranes
How horror has changed over the years – from the gorefests of the 1970’s to 1980’s body horror and now the living dead walk the earth on primetime TV seemingly unstoppable.
But there is a new strand of horror in which there’s an unsettling atmosphere, a strong sense of the world having gone slightly askew and that the reader is seeing it as in a shattered mirror with different images are shaped by the jagged edges of its shards.
I really enjoyed The Haunted Book which was Jeremy Dyson’s more recent collection of short stories. The Crane that Build the Cranes is its predecessor and in reading the 9 stories that make up this collection I had a strong and real sense of a writer beginning to find his feet and his inspirations.
Like most collections there are some stories that I preferred to others. This is because there were a couple that felt more like sketches for stories and so didn’t feel fully realized and there was one that I would have liked to have been longer. This was the first one, The Isle of The Wolf, in which a very wealthy property developer called David Spotpal (laptops spelled backwards) has an obsessional fear of becoming the victim of violent crime. Eventually he’s able to buy his own private island and employ a rising and expensive architect, Franz Fenster, to build him a crime proof home. All goes well and Spotpal feels that his safety is now assured until Fenster, who had boasted to his client that he was as discreet as a ‘Royal gynaecologist’ has blabbed to a Sunday supplement about his latest commission. Someone reads it and decides to pay Spotpal a visit and it’s not to say hello. I wanted it to be longer so that the tension could really be ratcheted up.
This is followed by Yani’s Day in which a bookshop worker becomes Death and walks the length and depth killing random strangers with a gesture. There’s no back story, it just begins with Yani’s long walk and the narrator remembering him from when they worked together and how it feels to encounter him now. Out of Bounds was a more conventional tale of 2 schoolboys and their unwanted companion who, left alone in their old fashioned school, decide to go exploring in the cellar. It’s very dark and they find names burned onto the walls together with a strange symbol and one of them doesn’t return…..The Coue was another good one in which a curio dealer, Charlie Thoroughgood, is offered a coue which is a mummified girl child by a man who is desperate to get rid of it.. Charlie buys it and later the vendor is discovered dead. Charlie is disturbed by the coue’s presence in his house and decides to palm it off to a local charity shop…..he will live to regret it as the coue didn’t come alone…
Bound South had a killer ending although the intricacies of St Anselm’s argument escaped me and Michael was another more conventional chiller which isn’t meant as a criticism.
However I didn’t enjoy Come April as much as it felt unrealised, not really going anywhere. The Challenge Club was entertaining but it didn’t hold my attention as much as the Coue did.
How horror has changed over the years – from the gorefests of the 1970’s to 1980’s body horror and now the living dead walk the earth on primetime TV seemingly unstoppable.
But there is a new strand of horror in which there’s an unsettling atmosphere, a strong sense of the world having gone slightly askew and that the reader is seeing it as in a shattered mirror with different images are shaped by the jagged edges of its shards.
I really enjoyed The Haunted Book which was Jeremy Dyson’s more recent collection of short stories. The Crane that Build the Cranes is its predecessor and in reading the 9 stories that make up this collection I had a strong and real sense of a writer beginning to find his feet and his inspirations.
Like most collections there are some stories that I preferred to others. This is because there were a couple that felt more like sketches for stories and so didn’t feel fully realized and there was one that I would have liked to have been longer. This was the first one, The Isle of The Wolf, in which a very wealthy property developer called David Spotpal (laptops spelled backwards) has an obsessional fear of becoming the victim of violent crime. Eventually he’s able to buy his own private island and employ a rising and expensive architect, Franz Fenster, to build him a crime proof home. All goes well and Spotpal feels that his safety is now assured until Fenster, who had boasted to his client that he was as discreet as a ‘Royal gynaecologist’ has blabbed to a Sunday supplement about his latest commission. Someone reads it and decides to pay Spotpal a visit and it’s not to say hello. I wanted it to be longer so that the tension could really be ratcheted up.
This is followed by Yani’s Day in which a bookshop worker becomes Death and walks the length and depth killing random strangers with a gesture. There’s no back story, it just begins with Yani’s long walk and the narrator remembering him from when they worked together and how it feels to encounter him now. Out of Bounds was a more conventional tale of 2 schoolboys and their unwanted companion who, left alone in their old fashioned school, decide to go exploring in the cellar. It’s very dark and they find names burned onto the walls together with a strange symbol and one of them doesn’t return…..The Coue was another good one in which a curio dealer, Charlie Thoroughgood, is offered a coue which is a mummified girl child by a man who is desperate to get rid of it.. Charlie buys it and later the vendor is discovered dead. Charlie is disturbed by the coue’s presence in his house and decides to palm it off to a local charity shop…..he will live to regret it as the coue didn’t come alone…
Bound South had a killer ending although the intricacies of St Anselm’s argument escaped me and Michael was another more conventional chiller which isn’t meant as a criticism.
However I didn’t enjoy Come April as much as it felt unrealised, not really going anywhere. The Challenge Club was entertaining but it didn’t hold my attention as much as the Coue did.
July 30, 2024
A mixed bag of short stories. Some were great, some middling and one absolutely awful!
There was a nice variation in styles, I think on the whole I preferred the more spooky ones. Maybe the endings need a bit more work but the writing and plots made up for this weakness. I will definitely try more of his work.
There was a nice variation in styles, I think on the whole I preferred the more spooky ones. Maybe the endings need a bit more work but the writing and plots made up for this weakness. I will definitely try more of his work.
June 26, 2019
Ik lees graag korte verhalen maar deze bundel viel tegen. In verhalen als ‘Island of the Wolf’ en ‘Yani’s Day’ slaagt Dyson er bijna in om een goed, haast gothic, verhaal te schrijven maar de rest blijft binnen de gebaande paden; alle plotwendingen zijn vanaf blz. 1 te voorspellen.
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July 14, 2022Exceptional and entirely gripping short stories. Tales that feature real life demons as well as our own inner ones, these fables will keep you guessing - and likely reading from cover to cover in a single sitting.
December 28, 2024
Cool book of short stories, all a little spooky and sinister. However, like all anthology style books it can feel very hit and miss, some stories are great and others feel a little more like they are droning on.
August 20, 2020
A mixed bag. A couple of the stories left lasting haunting imagery in my mind.
November 4, 2020
Classic Jeremy Dyson. Some gripping tales with his trademark twisted endings.
December 29, 2021
A bunch of bizarre short stories, a variety of genres, locations, eras. Some interesting ones! Say 3.5 stars.
April 6, 2012
This book from the 'silent partner' from Britain's The League of Gentlemen gives prospective writers hope: all you have to do to get your books published is...help create a popular television show! Now, that's not meant as a bash on Dyson's talents or this book at all. The stories herein are competently written, interesting and thoroughly readable. But they're not anything terribly special, and I have almost no doubt they wouldn't have been given a second look by publishers (book or magazine) without the name attached to them.
Given that, one does not have to be a fan of Dyson or The League to enjoy this book, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. These stories are infused with the same darkness, humour and twisted sensibilities that made The League what they are/were. My only real beef with his tales are that, though they're high on atmosphere and concept, they tend to fall a bit flat by the end.
So, if you like your short fiction on the dark, occasionally funny and usually twisted side, this is an enjoyable (though, it must be said, largely forgettable) little collection. If you want it done really well, go read Roald Dahl.
Given that, one does not have to be a fan of Dyson or The League to enjoy this book, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. These stories are infused with the same darkness, humour and twisted sensibilities that made The League what they are/were. My only real beef with his tales are that, though they're high on atmosphere and concept, they tend to fall a bit flat by the end.
So, if you like your short fiction on the dark, occasionally funny and usually twisted side, this is an enjoyable (though, it must be said, largely forgettable) little collection. If you want it done really well, go read Roald Dahl.
Read
August 4, 2011I don't normally read collections of short stories and this reminded me why. A couple of the stories are very good indeed and a couple are really very poor. The rest are somewhere in the middle. Comparisons with Roald Dahl are made on the cover which I can understand for one or two of the stories but unfortunately there is no consistency of quality. I think I'll carry on avoiding them.
December 25, 2013
This was amazing. Apart from a couple of stories I felt didn't really unravel as fully as they could (which keeps me from giving it top score), there are some brilliant moments I'll surely remember vividly. Also, Dyson is a boss at character development. I'll be reading him again some time.
January 18, 2011
I was a bit disappointed since it had great Amazon reviews. However, some of the stories stand out even if they sound like something from Tales of the Bleeding Obvious.
January 15, 2012
In the same vein as "Never Trust A Rabbit" with some interesting nods to Saki. One or two stories had rather unsatisfactory endings but mostly engaging stuff
July 28, 2012
Modern day tales of the unexpected, all quite good but remember how I dislike short stokers as there is no chance to warm to the characters
August 2, 2016
Modern horror/suspense short fiction from one of the minds behind "The League of Gentlemen". Artfully written, literary without being pretentious.
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