Reality, and Other Stories

by John Lanchester

Household gizmos with a mind of their own.

Constant cold calls from unknown numbers.

And the creeping suspicion that none of this is real.

Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments - stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the ghastly schlock, uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Audiobook, Science Fiction, Adult, Contemporary

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2020

About the author

John Lanchester is the author of four novels and three books of non-fiction. He was born in Germany and moved to Hong Kong. He studied in UK. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was awarded the 2008 E.M. Forster Award. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Emily B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in this book as i've read other novels by John Lanchester and wanted to also read his first collection of short stories. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced copy.

This wasn’t a bad collection of short stories but I have to say I didn’t fall in love with them either. If anything they all felt sort of similar. Yes they all were concerned about the impact of technology on modern life but they also felt on the same level, apart from one or two.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reality, and Other Stories collects eight horror-themed short stories by John Lanchester, most of which are kinda meh.

Cold Call was my favourite. It’s about a lawyer/wife/mother of two who hates her dreary father-in-law for calling her at all hours to ask her dumb questions like where his remote is while she’s busy with her life. Like all the stories here, it’s got that cliched horror twist ending except this ending is actually a bit chilling. More than that though, even if it didn’t lean towards horror at the end, it’d still be a great story in itself - Lanchester is able to brilliantly engross you into the life of this person and I would’ve enjoyed the story if it had just been about that, without the horror twist.

While none of the other seven stories are as good, there’s things to like about several. I liked the snarky conversation of the academics in the coffee shop in We Happy Few, sneering at everyday phrases, their students, and popular current ideas like simulation theory.

Charity is about a retired English teacher working part-time at a local charity shop and plays a bit on the Needful Things-type shop when he inadvertently sells a cursed selfie stick to a former pupil and discovers its terrifying past. It’s such a strange idea to focus on this object (anachronistic too, it turns out) but it’s kinda fun as well.

Signal is a fairly traditional haunted house story where a man takes his family to his rich friend’s mansion in the country for the holidays but gets annoyed at a tall man who seems to follow his kids everywhere but isn’t seen by any of the adults. You can guess the twist ending a mile off but it’s pretty engaging for the most part.

Then we’re into the dregs - these stories haven’t got much going for them at all. The Kit is about a farm family waiting to order a replacement machine for one that recently broke down - but wait til you find out what that machine is with that twist ending! Reality is about a Big Brother-type reality show full of vapid characters and a trite, almost comically absurd, ending.

Coffin Liquor is about an academic who goes to a conference in Romania and goes mad listening to... haunted audiobooks?! This one’s almost like a parody of horror stories. There’s the setting, with shades of Vlad the Impaler (the inspiration for Dracula), the old lady at the entrance of a graveyard muttering warnings, and the Lovecraftian format of the story - diary entries - to show the narrator going slowly mad. It’s just - audiobooks, really??

Which of These Would You Like? was the only story I straight up hated all the way through. It’s a Kafka-esque tale involving a prisoner who’s locked up for no reason, guards, brochures, and the titular question being asked over and over. No idea what that one was about. “Consumerism = bad”?

Lanchester’s not a horror writer, which you can see in the stories that are mostly about ordinary middle-class people going about their everyday lives, though that’s partly what interested me in checking out this collection - to see what a literary writer could do with the genre. And, while the stories were by and large ok, they felt a little formulaic, a little repetitive in their structure, with Lanchester relying too heavily on the twist ending each time, giving them all a contrived and predictable air.

Despite the hackneyed twist ending trope (which was really only effective once in Cold Call), John Lanchester’s Reality, and Other Stories is a decent, if unmemorable, collection that fans of Twilight Zone-esque stories might enjoy.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was one extremely good story, one very good story, a good story and then the rest were mediocre to IMHO no good (mean=2.8 stars). This comes from an author I truly respect. His first novel was in 1996, The Debt to Pleasure (won the 1996 Whitbread Book Award in the First Novel category and the 1997 Hawthornden Prize). Next year, I am going o read at least 10 and maybe 20 or more novels I read in the late 1990s, early 2000s, and that will be one of the books I will re-read. I liked very much these other books by him, as well as pieces in the New Yorker and London Review of Books. Lanchester is one intelligent dude and he knows how to write. That’s why this was overall a disappointment — I was expecting better. I should have been forewarned in that there are no plaudits from literary sources or other authors on front or back or inner covers.

The inner front cover does introduce the stories to the reader as this:
• ‘Reality and Other Stories’ is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments — stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

Stories in their order of appearance:
• Signal — involves a ghost in a mansion wandering the house looking for a good wi-fi signal. 2.5 stars [published in the New Yorker, March 27, 2017]

• Coffin Liquor — coffin liquor is “the liquefication of improperly preserved corpses”. Yuck. A pompous academic at a conference plays hooky and wanders into the center of the old town in which there is a graveyard, and while wandering around amongst the graves, downloads “Great Expectations” and an old, wizened lady tells him to stop what he is doing but he calls her a ‘silly, silly woman’ and tells her to go away and finishes with his download. He later on pays the price for his lack of respect. 2.5 stars [published in the London Review of Books, January 4, 2018]

• Which of These Would You Like? A man behind bars is visited by his jailers at periodic intervals and has to choose between various items in preparation for an impending event, and I won’t say anything more about this. 🤐 — 5+ stars, superb

• We Happy Few — Four academics talking (that’s bad enough...jjjjjjjust kidding) about Twitter/social media and Socrates and the Rapture. In my notes I wrote down a bad word when reviewing this so 10 years from now when perusing my reviews I’ll be reminded of how much I disliked reading this story. ☹️ 1 star [published in the Esquire, might be May 29, 2019]

• Reality — Iona and five other people are on the set of a reality TV show, and the first episode has yet to start but that doesn’t stop Iona from obsessively second-guessing herself and becoming increasing paranoiac about what the other five are thinking about her. Hell, I think like this every day…I don’t need a reality TV show to worry about what people are thinking about me. 😑 2 stars [said to be published in the London Review of Books, but I cannot find it]

• Cold Call — Daughter-in-law really dislikes husband’s father. He calls her at all hours of the day asking for this, that and the other thing and never mind she has a high-stress job. She goofs up once and misses one phone call by him on purpose…and well…she shouldn’t have missed that phone call. Just sayin… 2.5 stars

• The Kit — a personal assistant story… 3 stars

• Charity — a story about selfies (a la smart phone cameras) 4 stars

Notes:
• There was one very good “creepy” quote in one of the beginning pages that preceded the stories by David Foster Wallace:
o Ghosts talking to us all the time — but we think their voices are our own thoughts (manuscript annotation to ‘Good Old Neon’.
• Noticed a nice word, “patinated” as in “Now that was a good tool, battered and patinated with time”. Patinate: to furnish with a patina
• I always forget what the word ‘simulacrum’ means. Simulacrum: a representation or imitation of a person or thing. You know…tomorrow I will forget what this means. 😟
• I thought Lanchester committed a typo with 'utile': “A nicely made piece, to my eye, though not an especially convenient size, slightly too large to be carried in this manner as a briefcase but not big enough to be utile for, say, an artistically inclined student. Utile: useful. Utile | Definition of Utile by Merriam-Webster (merriam-webster.com)

Reviews (these reviewers seem to like the collection more than I):
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
• https://www.sublimehorror.com/books/r...
• https://theartsdesk.com/books/john-la...
• https://www.ft.com/content/c602f33b-c...
• https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/1123/...
• https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/bo...

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reviewed this for Sublime Horror. Read the full review here: Reality and Other Stories by John Lanchester review – An intriguing, if familiar, step into the supernatural

The eight tales in this collection are billed as ‘very modern ghost stories’, but they are often (and usually best when) very cosy and traditional, with a few references to contemporary tech thrown in. The first two are among the best: in ‘Signal’ a family spend a weekend in the luxurious home of their rich friend, and the parents fail to notice a creepy phone-wielding figure hanging around their kids; in ‘Coffin Liquor’ a pompous professor tries to avoid participating in a conference by listening to audiobooks on the sly, but finds he can’t escape intimations of the supernatural. I liked the daft-yet-effective premise of ‘Charity’ (three words: haunted selfie stick) despite the bore of a narrator. Didn’t care for the pretentious friends in ‘We Happy Few’, or dystopia-by-numbers ‘Which of These Would You Like?’; was underwhelmed by ‘Cold Call’, with its predictable and unscary ending, and the sub-Aickman ‘The Kit’. The big surprise is ‘Reality’: not only is it a unexpectedly accurate depiction of young, beautiful, image-conscious people living their lives on permanent display, it’s also by far the most unnerving of the lot, and feels like it’s been pulled from a different book entirely. Altogether, a mixed bag – worth borrowing from the library rather than buying.

I received an advance review copy of Reality and Other Stories from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Krista · Rating 2 out of 5]

All philosophers are trolls. No offense, Jefferson. But that’s really the whole project, isn’t it? Trolling common sense, trolling reality. What if you aren’t real, what if we don’t know what we actually know, what if all this stuff we take for granted can’t be taken for granted, and what if we ignore all the realities we act on in everyday life and instead push our thinking way past all norms and givens of observed behaviour, into this inhuman domain of pure logic, and see what messed-up and counterintuitive conclusions we can draw? I mean, that’s basically an entire discipline based on a fancy form of intellectual trolling. It’s right there at the dawn of the subject. Socrates was the first and worst. Massive, obscene troll. What if good isn’t good, what if justice isn’t justice, what if the virtues are really vices, what if nothing is real? Apart from everything else, he’s constantly contradicting himself. The dialogues are really just him trolling his mates and them being polite about it. Socrates, the original and greatest troll. He would have loved the comments section.

I read Reality and Other Stories thinking that this collection of eight short tales of “horror” would be appropriate leading up to Halloween; recognising John Lanchester as a Man Booker-nominated author further upped my interest and expectations. In the end, however, this collection is pretty weak tea: Each story focuses on some element of modern life — as the blurb promises, you can expect haunted cell phones and a demonic selfie stick — and although I did like Lanchester’s character work while setting up each unique situation, every story builds to an expectedly twisty conclusion that would make second-grade Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episodes. This passes the time, but not delightfully. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

I’m not interested in dissecting each of the eight stories but will quote chunks — and it would seem that in “chunks” is how Lanchester writes; I appreciate how long these passages are — to give a sense of the themes in Reality. There’s quite a bit of ironic humour throughout:

He hugged like a natural non-hugger who had taken professional instruction in how to overcome his instincts and hug, and then found, greatly to his own surprise, that he liked it. Which, in fact, was what he was, and the reason I know is that I gave him the course, “I Hate Hugging: Overcoming Your Fear of Intimacy Through Touch”, as a fortieth-birthday present.

And there are several stories that are from the perspective of professors (and a retired schoolteacher) that seem intended to lampoon their aura of intellectual superiority:

The first chair is an Italian macroeconomist of about my age. He spoke some sense about econometrics but then veered off into some whiffle about dialogue and conversation and paradigms. Overall, poor. He was succeeded by a female Eastern European literature professor in early middle age who had hair with a blue streak in it and purple glasses. Also bangles. There ensued a series of platitudes, falsehoods, mischaracterisations, illiteracies — an entire thesaurus of modern nonsense. The ostensible subject of her speech was the continuing contemporary importance of myth, but from the point of view of a properly trained mind — i.e. mine — there was no content at all.

And nearly every story builds to a mildly creepy scene as in the following:

I may have fallen asleep. I’m not sure. What happened next was in the margin between dreams and full consciousness. I knew where I was and what I was doing, but my volition seemed to have been dialled down so that I could not move or speak. I saw the handle of the door, directly across from where I was sitting, start to move. It was easy to tell, because it was an irregular wooden handle and the pattern of light shifted on it as it turned. The door began, very gradually, to open. The figure in the doorway was backlit from the light in the hall, and I couldn’t see its face, but I could see that it was a man. A tall man. Slowly and in complete silence, he came into the middle of the room. He was holding a phone in his right hand, and when he got to the middle of the room he lifted it up to his face. For the first time, I could see his eyes. In the reflected light of the phone, they were completely white. There was no pupil and no iris. I ordered myself to stand, but couldn’t. I felt as if there were nothing left of me but a compound of fear and helplessness.

And then come the twists — none of which jolted me from my seat. What a TV show like Black Mirror does really well is to draw a line between today’s technology and some horrifyingly plausible future use, but that’s not Lanchester’s method: half of these stories give today’s tech (cellphones, audiobooks, that stupid selfie stick) supernatural agency and the other half — more like the Twilight Zone — are set in a slightly different world (with androids, a Kafkaesque prison cell, a reality show that literally spells out its twist ending) and none of them have enough creep factor, social commentary, or genuine surprise ending to make a satisfying tale of “horror”. Again, this was a fine read, but I'd give it two and a half stars and am rounding down to two.

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just in time for Halloween, here's a collection of short stories that bend towards the horrific and the uncanny.

Most of the stories start with a detailed introduction of the story's main character, after which a 'strange' element is introduced, a lot of the times almost to the end of the story.

The stories are wellwritten, with a great sense of humour. What the stories aren't is frightening, uncomfortably uncanny or surprising. A lot of the times it feels like punches are being pulled - an element of horror is introduced and then barely explored. In case of most stories you can see the twist (if there is one) coming a mile away.

The one story I did really like, Which of These Would You Like?, works because it's quite insular, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere, where a mystery slowly unravels. The character study is interwoven with the weird.

Good characterisation is important for short fiction, but seems wasted when little time is given for the uncanny to have its effect on those characters.

(Kindly received an ARC from Faber and Faber through NetGalley)

Signal - 3 stars
Coffin Liquor - 3 stars
Which Of These Would You Like? - 4 stars
We Happy Few - 3 stars
Reality - 3 stars
Cold Call - 3 stars
The Kit - 2 stars
Charity - 2 stars

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
A collection of short stories (eight to be exact) which are meant to be chilling and unsettling as the nights draw in here in the UK. They have modern settings and often involve technology and things we are all aware of, like reality TV. The author clearly had fun dreaming up this set of scenarios. There are some clever twists: many of them pretty predictable.
The Signal is set of a New Year weekend where a couple and their two technology go to stay at a rich friend’s houseparty for the celebrations. The house has many gadgets and a tall helpful gentleman with a mobile phone shows the children how to use the gadgets and access the wi-fi.
Coffin Liqour is narrated by a witty and cynical academic at a conference in Romania, where he is bored. Following a bit of sightseeing. He downloads the e-book of Great Expectations to listen to instead of the conference, but the description of Pip on the marshes seems ghastlier than he remembers as something horrific follows Pip off the marshes. He then downloads another book and the same description of something following is still there. He tries Richard Dawkins on atheism and yes there is the description of something horrific following.
Which of these would you like is a short story about a prisoner whose guards show him a catalogue every day consisting of various articles for the cell and various ways to be executed. He has to choose.
We Happy Few is about a group of rather pretentious academics having coffee together and is about the nature of reality: how alone are we? Very forgettable.
Reality takes place on the set of a reality TV show with six contestants and is as shallow as you would expect. But is it reality? Is it hell? Will it ever end?
Cold Call is a tale about a father-in-law and daughter-in-law who don’t get on. He is always calling for random assistance at very awkward times and is never ever thankful. Will the calls ever end?
The Kit concerns a piece of kitchen equipment that breaks down and needs replacing. A father and his four sons debate how soon the replacement needs to be purchased. This one is pretty predictable, but makes a rather salient point.
Charity is about a selfie stick that arrives at a charity shop and is sold. As you would guess there is more to it than meets the eye. Actually unexpectedly this one makes quite a powerful point about colonialism.
Couple of these are much stronger than the rest and a couple are pretty weak. Also much depends whether you like your chilling tales in the James tradition or if you like them modern and up to date

[Johnny Lynas · Rating 1 out of 5]

John Lanchester proves, once again, that he has no business writing genre fiction.
After the unceremonious dump that was 2019’s ‘The Wall’ - a soulless dystopia with absolutely nothing to say - he now tries his hand at horror.
These stories are predictable, droning, and lazy. From the lofty title and the tone of the book, it’s clear that Lanchester believes he has written a scathing indictment of our relationship to technology. What he has actually written is ‘what if phones, but bad?’ Not a single story in this collection ever says anything more than that most basic, juvenile point.
A ghost who is looking for phone signal, an audiobook which becomes ‘eViL’ because it was downloaded in a graveyard, a person calling on the phone from ‘BEYOND THE GRAVE’, an actual haunted selfie stick - these are all genuine plot points, and are never representative of any theme or meaning beyond ‘technology is bad, and I don’t like it’
What’s more, they are not scary. The only way Lanchester seems to know how to portray fear is to say something along the lines of ‘I didn’t know why, but I knew something was wrong’ or ‘I knew that I was being haunted, I just knew it’, which any editor should have flagged as a lazy and ham-fisted way of avoiding the actual work of being frightening.
He also tries to his own version of ‘Love Island’, writing in the voice of a young influencer - you can imagine how amazingly that goes.
I’ve read worse books than this, but it’s the arrogance of his writing which makes me give this book such a low rating. A traditional literary author who thinks he can do horror, or dystopia, or sci-fi, because they’re ‘easy’. Like ‘the Wall’, I’m sure reviewers with fawn over it, telling us this is how it’s ‘really done’, because he’s a traditional literary author. In reality, not a one of these stories is worthy of merit.
Okay, now I can breathe - God, this book really cheesed my onions.

[Ross Jeffery · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. - review updated as now on STORGY Magazine


Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments – stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the ghastly schlock, uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

The above is the blurb that accompanied John Lanchester’s latest offering, a short story collection that has a brilliantly haunting cover and apparently eight chilling entertainments within. Unfortunately this book may have delivered on the cover but it didn’t on the scares, or the uncanny or anything chill worthy… I could have read this book sopping wet and in a draft, and still not have got any chills, just a case of mild annoyance.

I completely understand that John Lanchester is a fabulous raconteur, he’s a Booker nominated author and multi-award winner, whilst also being a regular contributor to the New Yorker; but for me, Lanchester’s home, where he does his best work is in literary fiction. Some writers are born to write horror, John Lanchester in my opinion was born to write great literary works – and on this offering I hope he returns to the latter.

I did enjoy his writing in this collection, his skill and deft touch is evident in every story and is present on every page. Lanchester’s prose is beautiful and what we expect, and he does at times pull the reader into the story; but it’s the execution of the scares, of the chills and the uncanny (where this collection has been promoted highly as having) is where these stories fall down.

Unfortunately Lanchester resorts to the same techniques in the majority of these stories. He pulls the reader in (tight and engaging prose), then, more often than not drops the twist or inserts the horror right at the end. Due to his constant use of this tool, you know somethings coming, and so the whole story loses its impact and power, in a number of these stories you would half expect Lanchester to say BOO at the end.

Signal – This was a story that brings obvious comparisons to Shirley Jackson (tell me what creepy house story doesn’t – she’s pretty much cornered the market there). Our protagonist his wife and two children head away for a New Years celebration at a friends house, it’s your typical haunted house trope that doesn’t really add anything new. When they arrive our protagonist soon becomes unsettled by a tall man’s growing obsession with his children. There are some dark undertones in this one which drive our protagonist through the story, but where it could venture down this disturbing route, Lanchester pulls back the reigns and chokes the story and the possible horrors. The story was enjoyable, like sitting back and watching a favourite show or film, finding comfort in something familiar. But the ending was almost laughable and it lost all the tension that Lanchester had created, as mentioned above I thought he was about to say BOO!

Coffin Liquor – This is told in a diary format of a man at a conference. The device of the diary helps to add additional tension as we know he is here for a week so as we get further into the piece we know things are going to get worse (Chekhov’s Gun – Dramatic Principle). The main protagonist in this story is a bit of a bastard, so I found it hard to engage with him, I wasn’t invested in his plight and that’s where the story lost it’s impact for me. It deals with the supernatural and a haunted audio book. Yes a haunted audio book. I’m not kidding you.

Which of These Would You Like? Now this story I really enjoyed, which focuses on a man behind bars who has no idea (or that’s what we are lead to believe) why he is there or what he has done to be imprisoned. It’s a delicately woven piece that builds to a fabulous conclusion. I found the voice of the protagonist in this story beguiling whilst at times pained, and this deft touch by Lanchester aids in pulling the reader into the drama. The tension Lanchester evokes here with a mundane task adds to our protagonists ongoing physical and mental torture, it’s a horrid idea which is put across well. This is probably the only protagonist that I connected to in all of the stories in this collection, many of the stories have a middle class protagonist and I found them quite alienating if I’m honest. But this one, this was great!

We Happy Few – a very intellectual piece which I have to say I had a grip on but not totally. A group of lecturers sit in a coffee shop and complain about the way society is heading, if it’s all some part of a grander plan, they talk of various intellectuals and their thoughts on how the world works, what makes it the way it is, and if there is some other reality going on. I couldn’t connect with this story for some reason, it seemed more of a one sided social commentary, it just wasn’t for me.

Reality – I’ve read this before in Salt Publishing’s Best British Short Stories 2019. Lanchester focuses the reader on something that has become the norm in our society, reality television. We follow our protagonist as she wakes in a deserted house and moves around making sure she’s acting as she wants to be perceived by the watching public. As the day / days progress other housemates arrive to cause some dramatic dynamic shifts within the group. Again the author leaves it to the end to throw in the twist of the story and knowing that it’s coming again in my opinion does the story a disservice.

Cold Call – this follows a female protagonist, a mother with two children and an absent husband (he’s a film producer – spends a lot of time away) so she is in essence a single mother, with a very stressful job. Then throw into the mix an ageing father-in-law who she’s having to care for and we’ve got a situation that is close to breaking point. I won’t ruin anything, but you could read the ending of this one a mile off.

The Kit – a family are waiting for replacement parts for a machine (or that’s what we are lead to believe) that’s broken down, when they get what they need, life returns to the new normal for them – again the twist comes at the end and I also found this story quite forgettable.

Charity – a charity shop akin to Stephen King’s ‘Needful Things‘ takes centre stage. An old selfie stick is donated by a woman who is clearing out her late husbands possessions, this one focuses on body image and is pretty creepy, I’d possibly say it’s the best story in the collection, because it’s the only one with a tiny bit of unease and dread in it.

So, as a long time horror reader, Reality, and Other Stories is in my opinion not a horror collection. ‘Chilling’ it is not. if you went into this thinking it was weird fiction (think Sarah Hall) then maybe it might have stood up better to review, but when you come out of the blocks with a blurb saying it’s chilling, I at least want to feel like I’ve opened the freezer. Unfortunately I had high hopes for this collection having read some of Lanchester’s other works, his skill as a writer is undeniable, but I feel that Reality, and Other Stories falls way short of the mark

[Jaksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bravo! I loved them! He needs to write more like this!

Horror, and a touch of sci-fi, and suspense with a touch of the gothic, for the modern age. You don't always need a brooding antagonist or a house with turrets, or a wooden cabin in northern Maine (or England or Ireland or some broody locale) to have a good horror story. These are among some of the best I've ever read.

A short precis on each, without spoilers:

'Signal,' the best of the bunch. A 'Turn of the Screw' - type tale for the 21st century. Complete with all the modern technology many of us have come to accept as so normal as to be banal. Loved it!

'Coffin Liquor' Seriously, I didn't know what coffin liquor is/was? Total creep-out. Deliciously awful. A man attends a conference intending to speak on (boring) economics, is treated instead to a series of talks on...other subjects. Done all within the framework of those long and often tedious (boring) conferences I've heard about, (and the few I've gone to), this was great! (Tony the Tiger shouting GREAT!)

'Which One of These Would You Like?' A different take on what it's like to be held captive. With choices, like a menu?

'We Happy Few' A group of friends discuss philosophy and that age-old chestnut: are we real, how do we know we are? Or are we all just living in a dream, in hell, in heaven, in a video game? Ahah! The eternal conundrum. Interesting...

'Reality' Close second favorite in the book. A group of young people, on a reality TV show - one of those all living in a closed-space type - are careful to watch their every word, move, action, including how they dress and interact and so on. Why? Because - ya know? - they are being viewed by some unseen audience. How it ends - or not - I shall not tell!

'Cold Call' Very relatable. A young, intense, busy-with-kids, and husband-overseas-at-work woman is constantly pestered by an in-law for seemingly minor things. Her phone is always buzzing, interrupting work (she's a lawyer), or when she's bringing the kids to school or picking them up. OMG! She's barely got a moment to breathe, and then one day she turns her phone off...
(Stephen King would have had a good time with this one.)

'The Kit' The only one I 'saw coming.' (Maybe because I read too much sci-fi in my younger days.) A farm family, man and four sons, have far too much to do, so when a key piece of equipment breaks down, they sort of fall apart. Well, figuratively, not literally.

'Charity' OMG! The selfie-stick becomes a bad-luck charm, or witch's totem, or something worse. Tied for second place, or maybe first. Excellent!

If you like horror or short stories, or the two combined, read this.

I dare ya! Five stars.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Lanchester is a journalist and author of five novels, of which The Debt to Pleasure won the 1996 Whitbread Book Award in the First Novel category and his most recent – The Wall – was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

Lanchester’s short story Signal opens Lanchester’s forthcoming collection on Faber & Faber, Reality and Other Stories. The story was originally published in The New Yorker in March 2017. In an interview he gave for the same issue, Lanchester described it as his first piece of short fiction, as well as the first ghost story he had ever attempted. Much as I enjoy the works of authors dedicated to the supernatural, I am always intrigued when a writer not typically associated with the genre has a go at it. In this case, Lanchester comes up with a tale where the ghostly element is not immediately apparent. A couple and their two children are invited to spend New Year’s Eve at a luxurious mansion in the English countryside. Their enjoyment of the festivities is marred by the presence of a tall man, always intent on his mobile phone, who also appears to take an unnatural interest in the children. When the truth about him is revealed, it is at once more benign and more chilling than what we are led to believe at the start.

The collection includes three other stories which transpose conventional tropes of supernatural fiction into contemporary contexts. In Coffin Liquor, the narrator is an academic invited to an Eastern European country to address a conference dealing with the unlikely intersection between economics and folklore. An incorrigible sceptic, he soon tires of the subject, and decides to skip the talks and do some solo sightseeing. His walk around the town leads him to a graveyard housing the remains of a much-hated feudal overlord, whose particularly cruel practices are the stuff of local legend. An old woman warns the narrator not to take these tales lightly – advice which he stupidly ignores. Any reader of the stories of M.R. James will know what comes next… but the inevitable haunting has a particularly unusual aspect to it. Similar playful riffs on the horror tradition can be found in Charity, about – of all things – a cursed selfie-stick and Cold Call, about a spooky contact from beyond the grave.

The remaining stories in the collection are not exactly works of supernatural fiction. Although difficult to classify, they are closer to “weird tales” in the mould of, say, J.B. Priestley. We Happy Few, a piece first published in Esquire, and The Kit, both have a playfully mordant twist at the end. In the title piece, Reality, the participants in a reality show wait in vain for the games to start. Initially, there are only subtle indications that something is not quite right, but by the end of the story, Lanchester manages to evoke a sense of claustrophobia and dread. Which of These Would You Like is, in my view, the most disturbing work of the lot, even more than the overtly “horror” stories. In its depiction of a prisoner placed on death-row for reasons of which he is not aware, it reflects the same themes as Reality, but is much darker in the despair it conveys.

Lanchester might claim to be a “novice” where short fiction is concerned, but this collection is a strong one which delivers thrills, twists and food for thought.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reality and Other Stories feature Ghost stories for the digital age by the Booker Prize–longlisted author of The Wall. Selfie-sticks with demonic powers. Cold calls from the dead. And that creeping suspicion, as you sit there with your flat white, that none of this is real. In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. “Signal” was a sensation among readers and was featured on public radio―and it was the first short story of any kind Lanchester had ever written. Since then he’s written several more eerie stories of contemporary life and the perils of technology that plunk the reader down in the uncanny world of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror, and Reality and Other Stories gathers the best of them.

A mysterious tall man haunts a country house in search of a cell signal; a translator at an academic conference starts hearing things over his headset that nobody should hear; a family discovers their dependence on the latest technological gadget goes to the very foundations of human relations and the merry contestants in a reality TV show may actually be... somewhere very hellish indeed. Reality and Other Stories is a book of disquiet that captures the severe disconnection and distraction of our time. John Lanchester has become renowned for his highly perceptive and scalpel-sharp chronicling of contemporary life. These stories get under your skin and into with your psyche and most have a surreal, speculative or creepy vibe to them.

The theme that ties all of these stories together is the observations Lanchester makes about the impact of technology and its effects on our human connections with one another and the distraction it undoubtedly causes in everyday life. Highly recommend. Many thanks to Faber for an ARC.

[Indieflower · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent collection of eight short stories, all with a connection to some kind of modern technology or construct. Some of the tales had a Black Mirror feel to them which I really liked, and one story - brace yourself now - featured a haunted selfie stick, which sounds absolutely ridiculous but was actually kinda fun. Of the eight, there were only two that I didn't enjoy, all in all not bad for 99p.

[Bandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reality, subjective and increasingly surreal as is, gets a literary going over by a first rate talent with a dangerously dark imagination.
Oh how I loved this book, lemme count the ways…
1. Originality.
2. Terrific writing.
3. Atmosphere.
4. Clever plotting.
5. The social commentary.
I can go on, really, but it’s more fun to just write about it. Didn’t know what to expect with this one, never read the author, but the Black Mirroresque scenarios with horrific tinges were too intriguing to resist. And sure enough, this collection had me from the get go.
The main thing here, me thinks, is that Lanchester is a literary author, so he approaches these stories from that angle and they end up as these very well written thinking man’s nightmares about the modern world’s increasing reliance of technology and gadgetry the development of which is steadily outpacing social progress. In fact, an argument might be made that socially people are regressing, in some way potentially proportionately to the rates at which the technology is evolving. The phones get smarter and the people get dumber. That’s a scary thing in and of itself, but Lanchester takes it further, with Matrix like scenarios and haunted selfie sticks, ghosts attached to their mobile phones and families who assemble their own…well, let’s not give away too much, because the surprises in this collection are just too good to even hint at. You just have to read it.
Black Mirror, especially at its earlier best, set the bar really high for socially relevant speculative scenarios. Now all sorts of things get compared to it to grab at audiences and very few actually live up to it, but this one actually did, all the way. It went darker too, all the way to the classic scary tales of the bygone era, it has the language and the formality that would delight the fans of M.R. James and the like without the ponderous slowness that’s typically associated with those. The stories in this collection are very modern thematically and timeless stylistically. There is an undeniable elegance to the writing. And it’s so excellently clever too.
In fact, We Happy Few might very well be the best short story I’ve read all year and one of all time greats in general. It’s just…awesome.
There’s something weird about the way my brain processes short fiction and my reviews of short story collections and anthologies usually reflect it…the individual stories tend to get deleted, usually there are just general impressions of the overall quality. But not with this book, this one was way too memorable for that. Which is as high of a praise as I can provide for it, really, on top of the awesome and excellent and clever.
So yeah, a great read. I enjoyed it tremendously. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 rounded down

A collection of 8 short stories centred around a "technology gone wrong" theme, each with a (supposed) horror twist.

I'm sad to report that hardly any of these stories landed for me: the twists were incredibly obvious and not at all creepy. There's no depth to these stories, little nuance, and all the protagonists have the same voice. I felt no suspense or particular urge to read on, other than in the first story - Signal. I'll reserve comment on the final twist of this story, but it followed the theme of the rest of the book. Incidentally this story is available online, so perhaps give it a read if you want to see if this collection is for you.

The stories read very quickly, but I'm afraid that's about the only thing that worked in their favour. Disappointing stuff, as I really enjoyed Fragrant Harbour. I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to, as those who enjoy creepy stories will likely find these tales pretty tepid.

Thank you Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very quick read, a collection of spooky short stories.

Not all of them hit the mark, my favourites had to be the very first one, Signal, which featured a family staying at a rich friends over the New Year and their children keep mentioning a tall man who helps them who nobody else sees.

I also really like the last story, Charity, which was randomly about a haunted selfie stick of all things but it was really good.

The stories in between where ok, they include a man listening to a haunted audio book and a menacing father in law annoying his daughter in law.

I expected it be scarier, but all in all its the type of book you could curl up with on a dark night for some gentle scares.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was going for 5 stars near the end of this short story collection, but unfortunately there was one story I hated and so that has dropped my rating down to a 4. But still!! What a great selection overall; eerie, strange, sharp and engaging with a tinge of black humour running through. John Lanchester is great at writing short stories, and he has such a weird and twisted imagination which is just up my street!

[Geertje · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved these. Classic ghost stories for the modern era.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most compilations there are some good stories and some not so good. On the whole though this was an enjoyable read.

[rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

when i tell you i have simply forgotten about all these stories already...

[Tina (Sips & Scares) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book by John Lanchester, author of "The Wall", expecting creepy or at least unsettling short stories. But even for a scaredy cat like me, they were neither. Nevertheless, these eight stories were interesting enough to keep me going. The first one, "Signal", is a classic haunted-house tale, nestled into a depiction of our neediness regarding technology, especially our mobile phones. I really enjoyed that one; it set the tone for the following stories and really put me in the mood. I didn't enjoy some of the following stories ("Which of these would you like?" -- I simply didn't get it, "We happy few", and "Reality"). My favorites, "Cold call" and "Charity" are tackling the difficult topic of dealing with the current loss of a loved one and the grief coming with that. I could empathize with the characters in these two stories the most.

But to take a break from recapping the stories--I enjoyed John Lanchester's writing style; how he grabs hold of your attention was really unique for me. Ironically, I did not check my phone once while reading these stories. Coming to which, the topics are well chosen and highly relevant in our everyday life: mobile phones, selfie sticks, androids--in general, human's dependency on technology.

Since I liked five out of eight stories, I would definitely recommend this book to readers who enjoy a good short story!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like any collection of short stories, it's a mixed bag. What I liked about each story is that the characters are all people you like enough or are at least interested in enough to want to know what happens to them. That's a great trick to pull off, particularly in horror where it's easy to detach.

And many of these stories remind me of the Golden Age sci-fi that I grew up reading. Most of them seem to wear their literary references on their sleeves:
"Which of These Would You Like" - Kafka, "In the Penal Colony"
"Coffin Liquor" - Bram Stoker/Lovecraft, even though the snooty main character is reading Dickens
"Reality" - Sartre, No Exit
"Signal" - Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
"The Kit" - the weakest story, reads like third-rate Asimov. The ending is obvious from the first paragraph.
"Cold Call" is a pretty great example of classic horror short-stories with some technology thrown in.

Overall, I really enjoyed this collection and it reminds me of how much I like science fiction and horror delivered in short story format. I should start reading those again.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tricky one to review, because for what it is (a collection of traditional-style creepy stories loosely based around technology), it works well. It just doesn't do anything particularly new or surprising. I also found that too many of the stories featured a pretentious, middle-class man complaining about 'millennial things', 'kids these days' etc. – not my cup of tea!

Still, it's very readable, and even though it was pretty clear where each story was going, it was an enjoyable enough journey to get there.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A chill collection of Black Mirror-esque, MR James-influenced short stories. The title one was my favourite. There are at least two haunted cellphones, and one haunted selfie stick. Didn't blow me away but it was a nice, untaxing evening read.

Thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Tayla · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through netgalley.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy any of these stories (only giving one story two stars and the rest one or one and a half stars). The writing itself is fine but I just found the stories to drag and not really have much plot (in my opinion). However, while I didn't enjoy this collection, I would be interested in reading more from this author to see if it is his writing style that I don't get along with or if it was just this particular collection. I am thankful to have received a free e-copy of this book even if I didn't enjoy it in the end.

I’ve included my story summaries below that I wrote after each story along with brief thoughts. It may be that I missed something and just didn’t quite understand ‘the point’ of the stories but I just generally didn't enjoy them and they felt like a chore to read.

*SPOILERS FOR WHAT EACH SHORT STORY CONTAINS BELOW*


Signal - ⭐️ family go to visit dads friend in his new house. Children keep talking about the tall man who shows them how to do things/takes them to do things eg films but never talks and is always waving his phone around. Surprise surprise the tall man is the ghost of the previous owner. Typical ‘horror or creepy’ story completed with the truth being told and seeing a figure in a window.

Coffin liquor - ⭐️ conference trip - not what was expected topic/hotel wise. goes sight seeing and ends up in a graveyard where a count used to torture people and bury them alive. Instead of using the translating device, the main character connects their earpiece to their phone to listen to the audiobook of great expectations (which they download in a graveyard, ignoring a woman shouting at them that it’s bad) but instead of the book the MC remembers, it’s a supernatural story referring t being followed by a figure. // bored - don’t like the MC and I feel like this is going down the line of the count haunting the MC. - skimmed to the end and found it ends with a psychiatric assessment of the MC having hallucinations.

Which of these would you like? ⭐️ - in jail/a cell - briefly captures the daily routine including a brochure that the guards make the MC go through and make choices of: mask, gown, cuffs, route outside, scaffolds, hood for the scaffold, guns and finally ‘grave cuffs’. MC doesn’t know why they are there and guards won’t tell them. The whole story is the guards going through this brochure and the MC making different choices on purpose and not having their questions answered. What was the point?

We happy few - ⭐️ opens with a rant about people saying ‘no worries’ after being thanked. One of the group is a lecturer and has a student who questions everything going on in the lecture. Turns into a philosophical discussion and mentions social media/looking up students social media - personally not a discussion that engages me. Don’t really understand the point of this story either other than the irony of them using ‘no worries’ themselves at the end.

Reality - ⭐️ & 1/2 - girl wakes up in an unfamiliar yet familiar room. Trying to plan her day before the ‘others’ turn up. Reality show? Iona believes she’s alone but one by one more people appear: 6 of them in total, 3 girls including Iona and 3 boys. Internally she’s batting trying to appear cool and not trying to overanalyse what the audience wants to see. They expect tasks and evictions but that doesn’t seem to happen and will it at all? Iona thinks she’s doing well to fit in & appear the friendly girl but that’s backfired and she’s actually the joke of the place. (I-N-H-E-L-L) This could have been good but it dragged and then just ended really oddly. I clearly missed something with everyone suddenly laughing at the MC and what I-N-H-E-L-L was for.

Cold call - ⭐️& 1/2 - her father in law is the worst (but not worst in the world because she hasn’t met every one in the world). Attorney/mother whose husband is rarely around and father in law is bugging her. She forgot to call him back and discovers he had a fall. Her husband has to come home to care for his father. Father in law given an alarm system to alert for help and MC dreads it/wishing he would realise he needs to go into a home/live in help. Trying to fix her marriage with Tom (who surprises her by coming home). Then her father in law passes away and she ignored the call initially. Phones keep ringing and tormenting the MC. When she finally answers she hears her father in laws laugh. Basically just a story about caring for loved ones no matter how annoying they can be and how guilt can affect you? Maybe?

The kit - ⭐️ Jarlath is a techie & something has broken - seems like it does a lot around the house eg food prep. But he’s trying to hold off ordering a new one straight away. His boys hate work so that’s another reason to not reorder straight away. Caves and orders the new machine and let’s his youngest son build it. After a minor mistake he’s completed it and the machine is ready ‘mom’. Basically trying to teach his sons to work and help around the house instead of being spoilt with a robot helper?

Charity - ⭐️⭐️ charity shop worker. Gets a donation from an older lady who it’s assumed her husband has passed. Discusses how many children as a past teacher the MC would have influenced and how those students still recognise them. In the box is a strange selfie stick which a former student buys. She comes back and seems different and the stick is doing well for her but is strange. One of the friends comes back and tells the MC that Alice (the girl) is sick and needs help. MC goes to the house of the donor of the picture/box and discovers deceased partner became fascinated with their ancestors - picture is of a ancestor. Went to Democratic Republic of Congo and came back different. Reveals he had discovered dark truths of ancestors. Selfie stick was brought on the trip & made him self obsessed with appearance in pictures but not have self care when eating. Died with selfie stick in his hand. MC goes to take selfie stick back from Alice. MC tries selfie stick and discovers the image is their skeleton, eyeballs hanging out and maggots moving all over the skull in the picture. I actually liked this story but I felt like it dragged and could have been shorter (show the donation, Alice buying the selfie stick then skip to her coming back a few weeks later and something being wrong).

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars. I am usually not into short stories, but I couldn't resist picking this up at the library because everything I've read of John Lanchester's has been brilliant. This is very good, as story collections go, and I love his writing in any format; I just find short stories fundamentally unsatisfying because I want more and often the quality varies quite a bit amongst the collection. This is a very fast read and fun/chilling so if you're in the mood for small bites, this is a good choice.

[Vanya Prodanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Кратки истории с елементи на паранормално и страшно, въртящи се около темата за технологиите. Не бяха нищо особено и някак бързо забравящи се, особено тези, които бяха не повече от 15-20 минути като дължина.

Харесвам обаче стила на писане на Ланчестър и чувството му за хумор, така че не беше неприятно преживяване като цяло, просто беше meh в случая. :)

[K Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of somewhat creepy, off putting stories with a focus on our technology dependant world. Not every story was great but I didn't hate any of them - I particularly enjoyed "We Happy Few," "Reality," and "Which of These Would You Like," which was easily the creepiest of the bunch.

3/5 I'm happy to have read and would conditionally recommend to the discerning reader.

[Haley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly not scary enough for me

[Léa · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5