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Fantasy Kit
"Adam McOmber could be describing Fantasy Kit as a whole with these "This is my house. The one I've been telling you about…You I know that house…But I can assure you you're wrong about that. You've never seen my house." In reading Fantasy Kit, I felt like a visitor to a strange theme park constructed of smoke and clay, lust and the uncanny, wickedness and tenderness. Here readers are ushered into mazes and caverns, paradises and pleasure gardens; whisked to Neverland, Mars, ancient Rome, and a cornfield in Ohio. Throughout, McOmber writes with singular imagination and delight. These stories bewitch."--Michelle Ross "Adam McOmber's stories are the work of an architect and master illusionist. He constructs fairy tales that twist into labyrinths, labyrinths that open up gloriously into new myths--and always, as if just under the page, is the thump and flow of blood, the pulsing, hidden desire of the human heart."-- James Tadd Adcox "Evocative, inventive, disquieting, thrilling, sensual--here, to borrow a phrase, is story in all its occult guises. If, after you read the first story in Jackson's The Lottery, Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, or Carter's The Bloody Chamber, you couldn't stop until you'd finished the book, I have good You've found your next page turner. The stories in Fantasy Kit may be short, but their effects are potent. Prepare for exquisite pleasures on every page."--Gabriel Blackwell Fiction.
142 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2022
50 people want to read
About the author
Adam McOmber
14 books96 followersAdam McOmber is the author of three novels, The White Forest (Simon and Schuster), Jesus and John (Lethe), and The Ghost Finders (JournalStone) as well as three collections of stories, This New & Poisonous Air and My House Gathers Desires (BOA Editions) and Fantasy Kit (Black Lawrence). His queer, erotic reimagining of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles was released by Lethe Press in October 2022. His work has appeared recently in Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Salt Hill and Diagram. He teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program and is the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Hunger Mountain.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 18, 2022
Loved it, blurbed it: "Adam McOmber could be describing Fantasy Kit as a whole with these lines: “This is my house. The one I’ve been telling you about…You think: I know that house…But I can assure you you’re wrong about that. You’ve never seen my house.” In reading Fantasy Kit, I felt like a visitor to a strange theme park constructed of smoke and clay, lust and the uncanny, wickedness and tenderness. Here readers are ushered into mazes and caverns, paradises and pleasure gardens; whisked to Neverland, Mars, ancient Rome, and a cornfield in Ohio. Throughout, McOmber writes with singular imagination and delight. These stories bewitch."
April 22, 2022
This collection of flash fiction is full of suspenseful, sometimes spooky, always memorable short short stories. McOmber has given us another extremely accomplished book - his oeuvre keeps growing in depth and breadth.
May 30, 2022
Review in the June 2022 issue of Library Journal and on the blog: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2022/05...
Three Words That Describe This Book: immersive, pervasively creepy, uncanny
Draft Review:
McOmber presents 35 stories, most published previously, in fewer than 200 pages, short but immersive stories that reflect a pervasively creepy tone. Each begins with a strong sense of place, from present reality to biblical times to the frame of a well known fairy tale, a setting the reader will be confident that they understand. That is until McOmbre twists it all, just enough to make the familiar strange, fully displaying a dread that was not there before the reader started the first tale, a feeling that will linger long after they finish the last. For example, in “The Pool Party” a group of teens is joined by an uninvited, ghost guest, one they all know. Or “Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood,” the “true” story of a darkness behind the much beloved AA Milne tales set there. McOmber’s storytelling prowess is accentuated by well developed, sympathetic characters, many of them gay men, whose experience the reader falls into immediately. A strong collection by an important voice in the genre.
Verdict: This short, well paced collection of the uncanny will appeal to fans of the haunted flash fiction collection Ghost Variations by Brockmeier and the breadth of scares in the anthology, TINY NIGHTMARES edited by Michel and Nieto.
Notes:
35 stories but under 200 pages. A collection of McOmber's previously published stories. Almost all previously published but collected here to give readers a larger sense of everything he writes.
While none are very long-- all are immersive. All take the familiar or a solid historical setting that reader think they know [England. biblical times or a well known fictional setting]. As a result, reader is unsettled as things go from a place we think we know-- a teenage pool party, the Hundred Acre Wood, Rome during Christ's life-- to something odd, creepy or every terrifying.
These stories are also proudly framed by a gay point of view. These are not stories where the gay male characters are struggling with being gay or fighting oppression or worried about coming out. In many oft he stories they just are gay. I enjoy that about McOmber's writing in general-- See my glowing review of Jesus and John: http://raforall.blogspot.com/2020/04/...
Each story is very different in frame and plot but the tone is the same. And because they are short, as a reader, you keep saying.... I can do one more. So it is fairly fast paced. The longer stories are also broken up into shorter pieces.
Some of my favorites:
*Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood: a very dark retelling of Winne the Pooh-- it feels like it could be the true story.
*There's Someone At The Door: second story-- great uncanny example of his making a normal night at home for a long married couple turn weird
*The Pool Party: near perfect story of teens and a ghost-- again all of the tone and feels he is trying to get at with every story here in one short piece.
Readalikes: The sustained creepy tone with various frames and length of stories reminded me of GHOST VARIATIONS by Brockmeier while the breadth of scares was similar to TINY NIGHTMARES edited by Michel and Nieto-- but those are all written by someone different. So the readalike falls in between the two.
Three Words That Describe This Book: immersive, pervasively creepy, uncanny
Draft Review:
McOmber presents 35 stories, most published previously, in fewer than 200 pages, short but immersive stories that reflect a pervasively creepy tone. Each begins with a strong sense of place, from present reality to biblical times to the frame of a well known fairy tale, a setting the reader will be confident that they understand. That is until McOmbre twists it all, just enough to make the familiar strange, fully displaying a dread that was not there before the reader started the first tale, a feeling that will linger long after they finish the last. For example, in “The Pool Party” a group of teens is joined by an uninvited, ghost guest, one they all know. Or “Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood,” the “true” story of a darkness behind the much beloved AA Milne tales set there. McOmber’s storytelling prowess is accentuated by well developed, sympathetic characters, many of them gay men, whose experience the reader falls into immediately. A strong collection by an important voice in the genre.
Verdict: This short, well paced collection of the uncanny will appeal to fans of the haunted flash fiction collection Ghost Variations by Brockmeier and the breadth of scares in the anthology, TINY NIGHTMARES edited by Michel and Nieto.
Notes:
35 stories but under 200 pages. A collection of McOmber's previously published stories. Almost all previously published but collected here to give readers a larger sense of everything he writes.
While none are very long-- all are immersive. All take the familiar or a solid historical setting that reader think they know [England. biblical times or a well known fictional setting]. As a result, reader is unsettled as things go from a place we think we know-- a teenage pool party, the Hundred Acre Wood, Rome during Christ's life-- to something odd, creepy or every terrifying.
These stories are also proudly framed by a gay point of view. These are not stories where the gay male characters are struggling with being gay or fighting oppression or worried about coming out. In many oft he stories they just are gay. I enjoy that about McOmber's writing in general-- See my glowing review of Jesus and John: http://raforall.blogspot.com/2020/04/...
Each story is very different in frame and plot but the tone is the same. And because they are short, as a reader, you keep saying.... I can do one more. So it is fairly fast paced. The longer stories are also broken up into shorter pieces.
Some of my favorites:
*Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood: a very dark retelling of Winne the Pooh-- it feels like it could be the true story.
*There's Someone At The Door: second story-- great uncanny example of his making a normal night at home for a long married couple turn weird
*The Pool Party: near perfect story of teens and a ghost-- again all of the tone and feels he is trying to get at with every story here in one short piece.
Readalikes: The sustained creepy tone with various frames and length of stories reminded me of GHOST VARIATIONS by Brockmeier while the breadth of scares was similar to TINY NIGHTMARES edited by Michel and Nieto-- but those are all written by someone different. So the readalike falls in between the two.
August 1, 2024
Aching, haunting. This collection begs to be picked over, like tender roadkill with dark cosmic origins.
The pieces I’ve read over and over:
For Witches
There’s Someone at the Door
A Memory of the Christ by the Apostle John
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood
The Pool Party
Man with Pillow
A Description of My House
The pieces I’ve read over and over:
For Witches
There’s Someone at the Door
A Memory of the Christ by the Apostle John
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood
The Pool Party
Man with Pillow
A Description of My House
April 26, 2022
I feel this is my most adventurous book to date. A series of flash and experimental pieces all exploring modes of fantasy and fantasizing. There's also a good amount of horror in the mix. I'm proud of the pieces presented here, and I hope you enjoy them.
January 7, 2024
A very enjoyable collection of flash written in lush, gothic-adjacent? prose. I wish a 20ish freshly-out me could have had access to these stories. My favorite is Mars, 1887: utterly sexy and apocalyptic. Even though the flash completely illuminated this doomed Martian expedition, I would really enjoy a longer story or novel based upon the story’s premise. In the meantime, I’ve added Hound of the Baskervilles to my to-read list.
August 23, 2024
Why do I always choose to go in blind when the book is full of erotica???
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews