The Beckoning Fair One

by Dan Chaon

All teenagers come of age. But in this spellbinding story by the bestselling author of Ill Will, one girl’s awakening requires something special. Something strange. Then it can all work like a charm.

Ever since they were orphaned, Tyler has kept close tabs on his sister, Shannon. He has to, considering her weird and risky obsessions. Now she has a new an inexplicable crush on an odd-looking stranger. And what Shannon wants from her unwitting “honey boy,” Tyler can’t begin to fathom. Not until he follows his sister into the darkest corners of her desires.

The Beckoning Fair One is part of Disorder, a collection of six short stories of living nightmares, chilling visions, and uncanny imagination that explore a world losing its balance in terrifying ways. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single disorienting sitting.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Audiobook, Fantasy, Contemporary, Novella

38 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 27, 2019

About the author

Dan Chaon is the author of Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and You Remind Me of Me, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing. His new novel, Await Your Reply, will be published in late August 2009.

Reviews

[Sandra]

Thirteen-year-old Tyler and sixteen-year-old Shannon live alone in their late Grandmother’s house. (Grandmother is buried in the back yard.) Shannon gets an obsessive crush on a guy (Walker Ransom) and begins to stalk him and do peculiar things. Her brother doesn’t approve…

This short story started out okay but it got too strange, weird, and confusing. By the end, I didn’t know what the heck was going on.

[Melany]

This was a strange story. It started out okay and then took a weird turn. By the end I honestly had no clue what was going on and it was weird. Still left confused and at lost for words.

[Monica]

Very weird and interesting. I thought it was a good one, though very creepy.

4 Stars

Listened to the audiobook. Narration was very good.

[TL *Humaning the Best She Can*]

That was just...weird.

[Gerhard]

'I wished I could talk to Grandmother and ask her what to do. We had buried her in the backyard, in a flower bed underneath the apple tree, and asters and salvia and toad lilies were still blooming there. I knelt down, and for the first time I realized it was the same garden as in that painting in the drawing room, The Beckoning Fair One. But no ghost came toward me with arms outstretched, out of the drear mist.'

Dark little nugget of a story that, er, climaxes in a creepy-as-fuck ending. My first time reading Dan Chaon; certainly won't be my last.

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder]

Twisted Sister
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (June 27, 2019)

I noticed it most clearly when she began to show interest in boys. She didn’t act like the girls you read about in books, with their romantic diaries, worrying about clothes and hairdos and so forth. Instead there was a kind of wolfishness that I’d never seen in her before, something fierce and relentless and without logic, or at least not any logic that I could grasp.

I've read some good reviews recently about the Disorder series and realized that I hadn't finished reading all 6 stories myself, although there had been a few good ones and only one dud. So I circled back to catch The Beckoning Fair One. This was quite a good creepy story which builds a considerable amount of tension throughout as we read one young teenage boy's observations about the increasingly erratic behaviour of his older teenage sister.

You begin to anticipate that some sort of witchcraft or voodoo process is underway, but the final reveal is more alien than that. The finale is vague though and you don't completely understand what happens, so that kept it out of 5 territory for me. But the suspense buildup otherwise was well done.

The Beckoning Fair One is the 5th of 6 short stories/novellas in the Amazon Original Disorder Series. “Stories that get inside your head. From small-town witch hunts to mass incarceration to exploitations of the flesh, this chilling collection of twisted short stories imagines the horrors of a modern world not unlike our own.”

Trivia and Links
This short story title was quite unique and its reference to a painting was intriguing:

I used to pretend that the painting in the drawing room was our mother’s likeness—it was a portrait of a woman in a white nightgown, with long curling brown hair, and she stood in a foggy garden with her arm held out and her index finger extended. It was called The Beckoning Fair One, and Grandmother said it was painted in the 1800s by an artist named Sophronia Comfort Vale.

After some googling, it seems that no such painting or artist exist. There is however another short story titled The Beckoning Fair One (1911) by Oliver Onions (1873-1961). That is a ghost story which may have provided some inspiration for Dan Chaon.
The cover for one edition of the 1911 ghost story does feature a painting of a possible "beckoning fair one."

[Blair]

'The Beckoning Fair One' is a strange story about two orphaned siblings, 16-year-old Shannon and 13-year-old Tyler. They're an eccentric pair who live alone in 'the Gingerbread House', their late grandmother's home, and seem to exist in their own little world. But Tyler grows concerned when Shannon develops an obsessive crush on, and begins stalking, a man named Walker Ransom. This weird yarn has something of the fairytale about it, though the ending veers into outright horror. It's bizarre, but I appreciated its unusual approach and the sheer oddness of the characters. If it has any links to the Oliver Onions story of the same title, I wasn't able to figure them out.

Read as part of the Amazon Original Stories Disorder collection.

TinyLetter

[Alya]

A 38 paged book just put "creepy" on a whole new level 😳 wtf was this? I don't even know how to rate it, I'm gonna look twisted af🤣🙆🏼‍♀️if give it a 4 but if I go low I'll be doing wrong by the author for having the ability to come up with something so messed up in under 50 pages😳 that ending was bloody wild and weird IT TOOK A TURN.. I'll leave it at that

On to the plot ( if I sound vague ~ t's on purpose )

Two siblings Shannon (16) Tyler ( 13 ) who are orphans living alone in a gingerbread house, their late grandmother's home (she's buried there) Tyler becomes concerned for Shannon as she develops an obsession over an odd looking stranger Walker Ransom... The question how dark can someone's dark desires get...
I swear this book is in the wrong collection🤣

[Cassie Daley]

Okay, this was definitely my favorite in Amazon's Disorder collection, and I feel like it should've been part of their horror collection instead. It was weird and creepy and good, and I enjoyed it a lot!

[Mandy]

2.5* My first read by Dan Chaon and while I thought it was disturbing and eerie the ending was rather abrupt and a little odd, now I like odd but......I needed more resolution.

[Kayla]

I'm a little disappointed to see that a lot of readers didn't catch the meaning behind this story. My take away from it was that the sister and grandmother were both witches and the brother was his sisters familiar. When his time to serve her was up, she released him and found a new one. I thought it was a creepy and interesting read. Not my favorite, but I definitely enjoyed it and thought it contained a lot of imagination.

[Kathleen]

I don’t understand what I just read...

[Sarah]

The Beckoning Fair One is really disturbing, and both fits the theme of Disorder and doesn't, depending on how you look at it. Really think I'd rather not have read it in the end.

[Yanique Gillana]

Perfectly weird and perfectly interesting!

[Karly]

My rating 4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ what the actual ffff is this!!!

I have no idea how to describe this, I don’t know what the message is and I don’t know why I liked it but… I did. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is the 5th book in the short story Disorder Collection

[STEPH]

Whoa. This was dark, creepy, and totally freaking confusing, but I enjoyed it. It piqued my interest, and I would’ve loved a full-length novel with this premise.

Did Tyler have a past life? I feel like they were siblings who were kidnapped by the grandmother. Or maybe Tyler had an old life, a family? Ugh, this is too intriguing.

That ending, though. Just plain sad and cruel. I hope Tyler and Gnome get their happy ending.

[Heather R]

Shudder! This was truly a horrifying story and it did have me rapt with attention. While I enjoyed it, I knocked off a star for what I felt was a very slow buildup and then a *WHAM!* — sudden, shocking ending that didn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me. Fans of “Let The Right One In” fiending for something weird and dark, take note.

[Bandit]

So I’ve been listening to this Kindle singles on Amazon. Firstly, because I resolutely effuse to read on my phone and Kindle Unlimited must be put to use somehow, secondly because they are actually kind of neat, possibly one of the best KU features. Basically, Amazon puts out collections of them, by theme, usually from well known or hot, up and coming authors. And these stories can be easily read or listened to in one sitting. Fun, right? Who doesn’t like being told a story. And I’m a fan of Dan Chaon, I’ve liked all I’ve read by him, he does the slice of life story right. But usually there are just that, slices of life. This one started off as one, but veered into supernatural, interestingly enough and I really enjoyed it. The basic tale of a witch and two young kids, but told in a proper literary manner. A coming of age story with dark magic. A fairly straight forward story of two teenagers getting by after the death of their grandmother left them on their own takes a decisively dark turn in the end, with a viscerally disturbing final act. Listen to it in the dark, if possible. In fact, it maybe the best way to listen to these tales. Although don’t’ fall asleep to it, this fairy tale is about as dark as the ones straight out of the old countries before being Disneyfied. The narrator did a very good job reading it, voices and all. Very enjoyable listening experience. And a good story. Dan Chaon’s specialty may be slices of life, but he slices up this supernatural nightmare like a pro. Recommended.

[Nyssa]

Odd. Just odd. Well, interesting too, but odd. Not sure what to make of it. Not sure of its point. *Shrug*

[Nandakishore Mridula]

I love Dan Chaon. But this one was weirder than his usual fare. Totally surrealistic. I loved it!

It starts out as a sixteen-year-old girl's obsession with a diminutive man; an unusual tale, but nothing out of the normal. But it slowly descends into a Lovecraftian tale as written by, say, Daphne du Maurier. It's very much in the creepy territory, but never crosses over into outright horror.

Warning: do not attempt this if you are put off by weirdness.

[Megha]

3.5*

The premise was intriguing in an extremely creepy way, but I wish it were executed better.

[Patty]

3.5*

[Mira]

What the bloody hell was that?!

Many readers said it was weird, but tbh I didn't imagine it'll be so damn incomprehensible to me...

I've no clue what the hell was that, especially the ending. I basically thought Shannon was a psychopath, was almost sure she did something to the volleyball coach, but I didn't imagine this weird, cult-ish whatever was happening at the basement. And I share our narrator's confusion; what does releasing him mean? What the hell his sister and grandmother used to do in that basement? And what has the Beckoning Fair One, the painting, to do with anything? There's a connection, but I can't even begin to see it...

I mean, I love weird fiction, but this isn't that, it's incomprehensible fiction.

One might think that after ranting I'd give the story a low rating, but honestly it's quite morbid and confusing that it caught my attention more than any in the series. That's not to say that I'm not pissed off at it or anything XD

[BL]

This is my first book by this author Dan Chaon. This story is a little out there for my taste but it is not so far that I cannot enjoy it. I was reading this as part of the Disorder Collection, and not sure I would have read it otherwise.

I was surprised by the ending of this book, seemed to just stop. It was very disturbing, but I wanted to know more about what happened and how he made it in life. I was caught off guard and a little disappointed.

[Deepu Singh]

Ok so the thing is i want more of this story, it was just awesome and creepy, it should be a full length novel.
I'll re read it soon to look into it more.
Read it, this story will stay with you forever.

[Susan]

Bizarre...very dark!

[April]

What in the

I don't even know if I have words to describe what I just read. The writing really was interesting and intriguing but I am still at a loss. I think I do like the author's writing style and I can see myself reading something else that he's written but this one leaves me speechless.

[Alice4170 🌙]

3/5 ⭐️

[Ginger]

Wow. That was super weird and pretty good twist. You saw it coming (foreshadowing) but it was still good.

[Chrissie]

If you enjoy weird, this offering from the Disorder series is for you!