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The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland
I don’t recall if I saw my first gunman in my childhood nightmares or on my childhood streets.
There were plenty in both and they looked very much like each other.
So begins Reggie Chamberlain-King’s introduction to The Black Dreams, a thrilling and compelling collection of specially commissioned stories that explore the emotional geography of growing up and living in Northern Ireland.
The fourteen stories gathered here criss-cross coast, border and city as they map a ‘strange’ territory of in-between states and unstable realities in which understanding is unreliable. Obsessions, death and rebirth, violence, sexuality, retribution and apocalypse are all part of the rich fabric of The Black Dreams.
Bringing together some of Northern Ireland’s finest writers, along with some of the best new talents, The Black Dreams celebrates and extends the rich tradition of the weird, surreal and dream-like in Northern Irish writing. It is also a powerful act of imagining and storytelling – a vibrant, vivid and exhilarating exploration of a world we cannot, or choose not, to see.
Contributors: Jo Baker, Jan Carson, Reggie Chamberlain-King, Aislínn Clarke, Emma Devlin, Moyra Donaldson, Michelle Gallen, Carlo Gébler, John Patrick Higgins, Ian McDonald, Gerard McKeown, Bernie McGill, Ian Sansom,
Sam Thompson
There were plenty in both and they looked very much like each other.
So begins Reggie Chamberlain-King’s introduction to The Black Dreams, a thrilling and compelling collection of specially commissioned stories that explore the emotional geography of growing up and living in Northern Ireland.
The fourteen stories gathered here criss-cross coast, border and city as they map a ‘strange’ territory of in-between states and unstable realities in which understanding is unreliable. Obsessions, death and rebirth, violence, sexuality, retribution and apocalypse are all part of the rich fabric of The Black Dreams.
Bringing together some of Northern Ireland’s finest writers, along with some of the best new talents, The Black Dreams celebrates and extends the rich tradition of the weird, surreal and dream-like in Northern Irish writing. It is also a powerful act of imagining and storytelling – a vibrant, vivid and exhilarating exploration of a world we cannot, or choose not, to see.
Contributors: Jo Baker, Jan Carson, Reggie Chamberlain-King, Aislínn Clarke, Emma Devlin, Moyra Donaldson, Michelle Gallen, Carlo Gébler, John Patrick Higgins, Ian McDonald, Gerard McKeown, Bernie McGill, Ian Sansom,
Sam Thompson
256 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2021
2 people are currently reading
189 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 1, 2022
An absolutely excellent collection of short fiction from Northern Ireland.
I love that the editor of this anthology eschews the labels of magical realism or even horror for these stories, but chooses instead to simply call them "strange".
And they were all strange..and beautiful and disturbing and visceral.
A must read for any fellow appreciates of modern strange fiction.
I love that the editor of this anthology eschews the labels of magical realism or even horror for these stories, but chooses instead to simply call them "strange".
And they were all strange..and beautiful and disturbing and visceral.
A must read for any fellow appreciates of modern strange fiction.
June 23, 2025
An anthology that lives up to the promise of its title; all of these stories are strange, unsettling and eerie. I wouldn't go as far to say that any particularly stood out ('The Black' and 'The Quizmasters' were the most memorable) but nonetheless a collection that flows very well.
'The Black' by Ian Sansom
This was my favourite of the anthology. A great horror story. "For me, it started with my nails. I usually wore red. Then my hair. I can feel it now."
'Original Features' by Jo Baker
I think it would've worked better as a novel.
'The Woman Who Let Go' by Moyra Donaldson
The basis captured my interest, but this didn't deliver for me.
'A Loss' by Bernie McGill
A very Irish tale.
'The Leaving Place' by Jan Carson
Heartbreaking. I liked the supernatural ending.
'Bird. Spirit. Land.' by Ian McDonald
Another good horror story. Good foreshadowing. Thou shall not steal.
'Silent Valley' by Sam Thompson
Sci-fi short stories are difficult to get right, and this wasn't it.
'The Tempering' by Michelle Gallen
A nice surprise to read something by Gallen again. I enjoyed Factory Girls, and her short fiction does not disappoint.
'Now and Then Some Washes Up' by Carlo Gébler
A bit boring and the characters never came alive. The visuals of old naked people weren't too appealing.
'The Missing Girl: Extracts from an Oral History' by Reggie Chamberlain-King
I hated the format, far too confusing and it did nothing for the story (which was admittedly intriguing).
'The Wink and the Gun' by John Patrick Higgins
Definitely the most unsettling of the collection. Pure evil operating on a level beyond sense.
'The Quizmasters' by Gerard McKeown
I really liked this. It was quite funny for a murder mystery story.
'Redland' by Aislínn Clarke
Dragged on.
'The King of Seatown' by Emma Devlin
My least favourite of the collection. I don't like vague, symbolic short stories that I can only describe as artsy and pretentious. Give me Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected (tight plot, good characterisation, clear point to the narrative) any day of the week.
'The Black' by Ian Sansom
This was my favourite of the anthology. A great horror story. "For me, it started with my nails. I usually wore red. Then my hair. I can feel it now."
'Original Features' by Jo Baker
I think it would've worked better as a novel.
'The Woman Who Let Go' by Moyra Donaldson
The basis captured my interest, but this didn't deliver for me.
'A Loss' by Bernie McGill
A very Irish tale.
'The Leaving Place' by Jan Carson
Heartbreaking. I liked the supernatural ending.
'Bird. Spirit. Land.' by Ian McDonald
Another good horror story. Good foreshadowing. Thou shall not steal.
'Silent Valley' by Sam Thompson
Sci-fi short stories are difficult to get right, and this wasn't it.
'The Tempering' by Michelle Gallen
A nice surprise to read something by Gallen again. I enjoyed Factory Girls, and her short fiction does not disappoint.
'Now and Then Some Washes Up' by Carlo Gébler
A bit boring and the characters never came alive. The visuals of old naked people weren't too appealing.
'The Missing Girl: Extracts from an Oral History' by Reggie Chamberlain-King
I hated the format, far too confusing and it did nothing for the story (which was admittedly intriguing).
'The Wink and the Gun' by John Patrick Higgins
Definitely the most unsettling of the collection. Pure evil operating on a level beyond sense.
'The Quizmasters' by Gerard McKeown
I really liked this. It was quite funny for a murder mystery story.
'Redland' by Aislínn Clarke
Dragged on.
'The King of Seatown' by Emma Devlin
My least favourite of the collection. I don't like vague, symbolic short stories that I can only describe as artsy and pretentious. Give me Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected (tight plot, good characterisation, clear point to the narrative) any day of the week.
July 15, 2022
This is not a horror anthology, although some of the stories do have a paranormal (or maybe-paranormal) element. According to editor Reggie Chamberlain-King:
In his book The Weird and the Eerie Mark Fisher defines the former as "the presence of that which does not belong" and the latter as "failure of absence or a failure of presence" that is "fundamentally tied up with questions of agency. What kind of agent is acting here?" He further explains that the eerie is associated with conjecture and suspense and "a sense of alterity" that suggests the enigma is something beyond conventional human knowledge or experience. I think eerie best describes the collective mood of The Black Dreams. Even blatantly fantastical elements, like the mysterious door in Jo Baker's "Original Features" and the unexplained apocalypse in Sam Thompson's "Silent Valley," are left cryptic and vague, with no resolution to ground them in well-known spec-fic tropes, such as a locale found to be haunted by the victim of an unsolved murder or the expected cults and cosmic entities of most Lovecraftian horror. Other stories in the collection, such as "The Leaving Place" by Jan Carson, lack anything overtly paranormal but carry a palpable sense of something in the background, even if it's ultimately tied only to human emotional subjectivity.
Overall a solid anthology, and well worth a read for anyone interested in strange tales off the beaten path.
(To answer your unasked question, only a couple of the stories specifically address the Troubles, although others may be interpreted as inspired by them.)
The landscapes of their tales [is] a familiar one. A feeling of unease permeates the text. An expectation. But the expected thing is absent or an unexpected thing is present. There are forces you choose not to see, or can't, but they are perpetually in motion. There is secret knowledge, a hidden order of men or monsters at work beneath the surface: they are under the rules of fairyland; they are as real as dreams . . . They mapped out the emotional, if not the actual, geography of growing up and living here.He goes on to dismiss easy categorizations of fairy tale (too moral), ghost story (there are rarely any ghosts or related phenomena), or weird fiction. Chamberlain-King finds the traditional "weirdness" of Lovecraft, Machen et al too "weighty" or obvious: "These stories are light - like a mist - they cloud your vision."
In his book The Weird and the Eerie Mark Fisher defines the former as "the presence of that which does not belong" and the latter as "failure of absence or a failure of presence" that is "fundamentally tied up with questions of agency. What kind of agent is acting here?" He further explains that the eerie is associated with conjecture and suspense and "a sense of alterity" that suggests the enigma is something beyond conventional human knowledge or experience. I think eerie best describes the collective mood of The Black Dreams. Even blatantly fantastical elements, like the mysterious door in Jo Baker's "Original Features" and the unexplained apocalypse in Sam Thompson's "Silent Valley," are left cryptic and vague, with no resolution to ground them in well-known spec-fic tropes, such as a locale found to be haunted by the victim of an unsolved murder or the expected cults and cosmic entities of most Lovecraftian horror. Other stories in the collection, such as "The Leaving Place" by Jan Carson, lack anything overtly paranormal but carry a palpable sense of something in the background, even if it's ultimately tied only to human emotional subjectivity.
Overall a solid anthology, and well worth a read for anyone interested in strange tales off the beaten path.
(To answer your unasked question, only a couple of the stories specifically address the Troubles, although others may be interpreted as inspired by them.)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews