The Tangled Woods

Dark Corners Collection #5

by Emily Raboteau

He went on the road expecting the worst of America, but what if the worst of America was also in him? This is the unsettling story of a man in a midlife crisis and his unexpected awakening, by award-winning writer Emily Raboteau.

Poison-tongued film critic Reginald Wright is known for his creative insults and intolerance for the garbage culture, insufferable rudeness, and thoughtless racism of predictably common people. Now, against his better judgment, and with a marriage in crisis, he’s attempting a getaway in the Poconos that quickly fulfills his every low expectation. In fact, it’s becoming a nightmare. And that’s just what Reginald needs to wake up.

Emily Raboteau’s The Tangled Woods is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Thriller, Mystery, Novella

37 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 27, 2018

About the author

Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s writing has recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. Her distinctions include an inaugural Climate Narratives Prize from Arizona State University, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists’ New York chapter, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Yaddo. She serves as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.” She lives in the Bronx.

Reviews

[Michael David (on hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t know this story involved politics (that’s ok).

I didn’t know this story would resonate with what is going on now (BLM...That’s fantastic, actually).

All I knew going into it was that it was about a middle-aged film critic, taking his family for a getaway in the Poconos...and coming to terms with the ugly world we currently live in.

The problem is that the main character is a douchebag.

The problem is that there is no explanation for his son being strapped into a car seat when he is 7 years old.

The problem is that the story makes no sense.

The problem is that I have no clue what the conclusion means, or what the author is trying to convey.

This is from Amazon’s Dark Corners Collection.

[Krystin | TheF*ckingTwist · Rating 1 out of 5]

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Dark Corners is a collection of seven creepy short stories by some dope authors like Lisa Unger, Jennifer MacMahon, and this one by Emily Raboteau.

So, this little story is a bust. It's not entertaining. And it's not horror. You could get the same effect from this by watching the news for 45 minutes. But maybe that is exactly what the collection was supposed to be. I don't know. I wasn't at the meetings.

I get what the author was trying to do, but when I pick up a horror story I actually want to be entertained by horror, not confronted with the same hideous human cesspool shit I hear about every hour of the goddamn day until my head hurts and my husband turns the news off because he’s concerned for my mental well-being.

That’s not entertaining. That’s not an escape.



Film critic Reginald Wright is in the throes of a mid-life crisis. He hates his wife. He can’t stand his child. He’s having an affair and spends all of his time lamenting everything he hates. So who the fuck knows why, but Reginald decides to go on a family getaway to a novelty hotel.

Along the way, the Wright family encounters all the “horrors” that the United States has become. From being pulled over while driving black, to the uneducated/selfish rednecks at the hotel, to the fear of a mass shooter ruining a day at the pool.

I understand that the theme was that everyday life for many people is horrific enough, but this little story was so heavy-handed with it, and where it wasn’t, it was smothered by the absolute awfulness of the main character. I seriously wanted to throat-punch Reginald from the very first page.

Plus that random Harry Potter theme? Like why?

I was expecting this to be a spooky season story that would take me away from real life, and instead what I got was the same shit I can get any day just by turning on cable news.

I have reached my fucking LIMIT.

1 star | ⭐

[Constantine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: ⭐⭐
Genre: Horror

The Tangled Woods is a part of Amazon’s Dark Corners series. A series about horror, haunting, and scary stories. The story follows a small African American couple with their children on a road trip to have a family vacation. I thought that with such a plot there will be some thrilling events, horror, and highly anticipating twists but nope! Noting happens. I just had to read the main character complaining and whining from start to end! The publisher should’ve told the author to pay attention to the theme of the story to make it compatible with the other books in the series and focus less on the excessive political statements that felt a lot more than the actual story! I am being generous with the two stars here.

[Zain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another short story from the Dark Corners collection.

This one is about a snobby critic who gets his comeuppance.

Kind of predictable.

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This made little to no sense to me.
Oh and more politics which added nothing.

[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am deleting this dreadful thing from my Audible library. It was terrible from beginning to end. The main character is a whiny, miserable man so unhappy with the life he has made for himself that he takes it out on everyone around him - especially his family. Not recommended. Just turn on the news if you feel like killing more of your soul.

Oh, and for those who will say on the socials that "you should always say something nice because times are tough" here you go:

The wife and son deserved better than that sad sack, mess of a man and I hope he gets eaten by a bear leaving them both to live out their days in peace and happiness because he's no longer in their lives!

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story 3 stars**
Audio 4 stars**
Narrator JD Jackson

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

An odious man takes his family on holiday to an equally odious novelty hotel. Our protagonist is busy keeping secrets from his wife, while his son is obsessed with completing a treasure trail by finding the 'sleeping wizard'. Irritated by everything and plagued by nightmares, it isn't long before Reginald is drawn into a confrontation with someone even more unlikeable than he is.

This is one of those horrible visions of modern America in which every adult is a bottomless well of grasping selfishness and every child is a whiny, snotty terror and everyone spends 95% of the time staring at their phone. It's the only one of the Dark Corners stories lacking a supernatural element. Funnily enough, it's also by far the most unpleasant.

I struggled to take this seriously for several reasons, most notably because Reginald's wife is named Ladette. (I'm sure this doesn't have the same resonance in the US but 'ladette' was a very common term in the UK circa the late 90s, used to describe women who supposedly behaved like men, i.e. female 'lads'.) Also, what is it with the weaker entries in this series and the pointless Harry Potter references?!

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[Carolyn Walsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reginald Wright is a black middle-aged film critic. He hates much of modern culture and society. He is rude and insulting, especially when he perceives a racial slight, even when none was intended. His marriage is in crisis. He has just learned a girlfriend is pregnant with his child and intends to have an abortion. This does not seem to trouble him.

Reginald would prefer a wilderness vacation, but his wife insists on going to a fancy resort for spa and beauty treatments. Their young son hs no desire for an outdoor holiday. When they arrive at the resort their son is obsessed with what seems to be virtual reality game rooms. Reginald is in a sour mood, impatient and exhausted by accompanying his son while the boy tries to win a top prize in the games. His wife is spending time lounging at the pool. Reginald meets a man he considers a "redneck" and who tries to be friends. Reginald feels superior, and the encounter ends badly. This was not a pleasant story and lacked resolution.

This was one of the Dark Corner collection of short stories from Amazon.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An American middle-aged man discovers the horrors within himself while on a resort vacation with his family in this short story by Emily Raboteau. The Tangled Woods is the fifth story in the Dark Corners Collection, an Amazon/Audible original series of horror stories by bestselling authors. Each story in this collection is creative and different. These ain't your mama's Halloween tales. While some of the horror elements in each might seem a bit over-used at first, each writer put their own spin on it and made it their own. In the end the stories aren't really scary, but horrifying in other ways. Sometimes reality is far more frightening than made up monsters.

Reginald Wright, a film critic, is the main character in this story. He expects to experience everything that is wrong with America on this trip to an over-priced resort with his kids and wife....and he does. But he also discovers that he just might be part of the problem. I loved how his self revelation was wound around a backdrop of very dark imagery. Some of us only see the bad in others....but never in ourselves. Raboteau rips off Reginald Wright's blinders and shows him......himself. Wouldn't that be truly horrifying for every one of us? Imagine if we suddenly saw ourselves as we really are.....not how we imagine that we are. Eek!

Great story. Not really scary or horrifying, but very thought provoking. I identified with the characters as they spent time at the resort doing all those tourist trap things. That really pulled me into the story because my own family has spent time at similar resorts and looked at other kids and parents behaving badly. And, as we all do, we ignored our own faults, choosing to raise an eyebrow at the bad behavior of others. Again.... eeeek!

There are a total of seven stories in the Dark Corners Collection. I'm reviewing them all separately because they are by different authors, most new to me. Emily Raboteau is the author of several other books and short stories, most dealing with race issues. After enjoying this story, I'm definitely going to read more by this author. Her themes are hard-hitting -- this story really struck home with me. I see that this story has some low ratings on Goodreads -- perhaps the topic really hit home with others as well, in an uncomfortably raw and truthful way?? Or perhaps we are all getting tired of racial, political and social commentary because we feel powerless to scrape the shit off ourselves and fix things? Yes, the main character is detestable, immoral and a complete narcissist. But -- in today's world, aren't we all at least a bit that way ourselves? Aren't we all part of the problem? Just some thoughts.....

The audio book, narrated by JD Jackson, is just over an hour long. Jackson has a nice, easily understandable voice and read at an even pace. All in all, an emotional story rather than a scary one. The audio provided a nice listening experience, even though the truth behind the story was disturbing.

[Nicole CeBallos · Rating 1 out of 5]

This wasn't horror at all. Nor was it any good.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slightly depressing book. The world has turned to crap: commercialism, infidelity/lust, everything is fake/broken, and life is wasted. I don’t mean some dystopian future, this is just like we have right now and I can relate to this.

The premise of the story is a middle aged man and his family (none of which seem nice but maybe they are a fairly typical family) go on holiday to some awful themed hotel, it seems tacky and a rip-off and… and well then things get worse, before arguably they can get better.

An interesting story, odd sure but it made me think. I liked this weird tale… don’t lose all hope and people are strange (and often not very nice, yes even ourselves), but they are trying to get through the same as we all are. That’s what I took away from this story.

4.5*/5 rounded down because it wasn’t perfect but not bad at all.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe my least favorite of the collection so far, but it certainly had its moments. What is supposed to be a nice family vacation with his wife and two children is anything but relaxing. However, I did like the dark ending.


Goodreads review published 13/08/20

[S.R. Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brief and beautifully told tale of strange modern mysticism, The Tangled Woods is, at once, a glimpse at casual violence and masculine toxicity, a true story about magic, and a thoughtful contemplation on human connection, family, love.

As a forewarning: I did not realize this story was part of a larger collection, I caught it on its lonesome on recommendation. My review is not written within the context of the Dark Corners collection entire.

I will also say that I've read some reviews citing political bent or didacticism but found little merit to the charge, myself. The story deals with understandable fears from understandable perspectives, and though many of those fears have political attachments, the exploration of these fears through perspective isn't wildly political, nor is the text didactic.

Now, the review proper.

Perspective is everything. Pause on that.

Reginald Wright is a cynical, rotted-out man, and every page, every paragraph of this story serves as partial dissection of his husk. His perspective, and the reader's, infects every moment. And as we are met so quickly, and frequently, with the foibles and casual bitterness of the narrator, we are brought to question him, and, when we see as he sees, ourselves. Time visits cruelty upon everyone, and roughs us into scar tissue and callus. The world's cruelty isn't at all evenly distributed, but everyone is familiar with it. Reginald crackles with the many-asked question, "What have we become in our scarification?"

Reginald is a disappointed, unsatisfied, hungry man in the midst of a tragically typical mid-life crisis. There but for the grace of God go I...

The backdrop to the plot is the Poconos, and a near-stereotypical lodging thereat. At the Big Bear Lodge there's a spa, and a campus-wide immersive kiddie-LARP called Wizard World, and everyone there is the same as everyone else there and it is terrifying. Raboteau excellently captures the real horror of such environs, the grotesque deformity of the animatronic, the noise of so many other families, the crushing blandness of it all. And yet, and yet...this place is magickal. (WITH A K!)

Reginald finds a foil in the character of Sean, a different, more deranged breed of toxic masculinity and scarification. Their differences are stark, yes, of course, but their similarities set up one of the key scenes of the story. They twine together in a bond of poison, brokenness; their interaction becomes totemic, a parable of venomous masculinity, of violence lurking just beneath barely-there civility. It unfolds the only way it could be expected to unfold, really. With unexpected consequence. Their meeting is a moment of division, but also strange synchronicity. Perhaps Jungian synchronicity. Mystic synchronicity.

Speaking of mysticism, of course, Wizard World is the main Big Bear Lodge activity. It's a sprawling game of Potter-esque wizardry, except, predictably, significant parts of it are malfunctioning or broken. Reginald is predictably embittered by these further developments, but the magician of the family, young Thurgood, continues relentlessly on his quest. Thurgood wants to reach the end of this ritual so that he might acquire the healing rune and, well...repair some of his father's bitterness and trauma. These kinds of grand quests are often the heroic fantasies of children, but, alas, this one seems unlikely to succeed. So much of the game doesn't work that it looks as if finding even the cheap plastic version of the 'healing rune' may be impossible.

Except...

Well. You would have to read it, I suppose.

Because, again...perspective is everything. And though the story is rooted in Reginald's perspective by prose, Raboteau simultaneously suggests the perspective of every character. And sometimes, what we see is just what we see, but sometimes what we see becomes real. I'd like to write more, but I'd hate to spoil anything.

All of this happens in the States, with fears that correspond to many people's fears, and realities that are difficult to confess to. This story could easily have driven into some heavy truths, and driven deeply, but these U.S. realities largely remain background noise, setting. They inform the story but they do not define it. This story may be 'political' in that politics constantly necessarily exerts its will over its citizenship at all times, quite unevenly, and therefore the events and realities of the book reflect that...but otherwise I would not label it so.

This is a fascinating read, at times quite funny, at times tragic, and crackling with a special sort of magic. And you can finish it in a day!

[Obsidian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh man. No. I don't even know what to say here. This after the last story in the collection had me pulling my hair. There was too much going on and I loathed the main character, Reginald. I think Raboteau was dunking on hoteps with this short story, but it just didn't grip me at all. Also if you want to know about hoteps, please go Google that. I am not energetic enough today to talk about the never ending messiness in the African American community. Let's just say that Raboteau did a great job with it and Reginald sucked.

"The Tangled Woods" follows college professor Reginald Wright (eyeballs last name) who is angry at his life, his wife, and young son. Apparently he was attracted to his wife when she was "woke" but now questions who she is, what they are doing together, etc. on their way to a family vacation to the Poconos. We are quickly given insights into the real Reginald and then the ending comes along with a thunk that did not work at all.

So there's not much there I have to say with this. Raboteau starts to pull the layers away from Reginald and you realize he's crap. And you wonder how much his wife knows/gets. And there are some hints there even with his son. But then things swerve into some thing about Make America Great Again or something (I started to roll my eyes so hard I couldn't focus) and it just didn't land where I think she wanted this to. And though I gave the one story a pass on not really being horror (since it's told via a young boy and how his and his friends imaginations work) I can't on this one. It's not really horror. It's just Reginald doing dumb things repeatedly and I don't think catching a clue about them and someone someone gets beaten up. I don't know. I was glad to move on after completing this one.

[Mozi Rozi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was expecting something more thrilling, haunted, exhilarating. Something to keep me on the edge, anticipating the next event. I was unfortunately disappointed by the lack of what had followed.

The only exciting part of the entire short-story was the scene of Reginald and his twisted dream in the pool area, but that was it. Everything else was dull and boring. A typical dad that's experiencing a mid-life crisis that develops a complex that makes just him a huge, educated twat. The narrator, JD Jackson I believe, did a decent job with what he was given, which was extremely anticlimactic.

[Elisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

A political preachy mess where all the characters - Black and White - are awful.

[paula ♡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

0,5 ⭐

What the hell did I just read? It felt like the author had so many ideas that she didn't know how to put them together and make any sense 💀

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Movies

Reginald and his wife argued about where to go on vacation. He wanted something exciting and wild and she just wanted to “chillax”. Their seven year old son Thurgood was the reason they chose the place finally agreed on. It had a magic theme that wasn’t Harry Potter, but was close enough.

Reginald has been unhappy with his life, and as a film critic he has the unfortunate tendency to compare life to the movies. Sometimes that has consequences. Four star short story.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Trying to get too political for me.

[STEPH · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know what to make of this. I didn't quite understand what the book was trying to convey.

The main character is a film critic and a major jerk—an especially snobby, cheating jerk. I hated him. He finds fault in everything and constantly bickers and complains. What a drag.

Politics and racism were central themes. I wanted horror and entertainment, and I clearly did not get either.

[Amanda NEVER MANDY · Rating 2 out of 5]

Making the worst of it.

It lacked flow and the characters were cliché terrible.

[Kieran Cassidy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Excessive political insertions overpowered the story.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible book. Way too political for my liking.

[isabelle]

I appreciate the idea behind this book, especially grounding horror in real-world inequities. it’s a contrast to the supernatural approach a lot of horror takes, and an important, unsettling reminder. even so, The Tangled Woods didn’t quite land for me.

[Debra Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

What??

What did I just read? If this tale made sense to anyone please share.
What caused the 2 star review? I kept waiting for a punch line that never revealed itself. I guess that the story was meant to be comically received. As a Black woman and mother I pretty much take offence to the whole thing. So many open ended actions and an ending that was flat.
It is rare to read a book with no climax, but here you have one.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very relevant to the current state of affairs in the country but should also come with some trigger warnings, mainly suicide. It covers racism, mass shootings, police brutality, PTSD and is slightly political from the point of view of the MC. I enjoyed this one more than the last two in the Dark Corners collection but I still believe the first two in the collection are the best so far.

[Lallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

What I liked? The spot on description of the “Resort”. Reginald is a totally unlikeable man, but who hasn’t had a few of his thoughts and feelings? Fortunately most aren’t consumed by them. This wasn’t a scary story, but it was dark.

[Glasgowgal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure why this story was in the Dark Corners collection. Not scary at all. Well, actually the scary part was what a douche Reginald was to his family and anyone he came in contact with.

[Nyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what I expected...but it wasn't that.
Intense. Heartbreaking. Touching.