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Narrow Houses #1
Narrow Houses: Tales of Superstition, Suspense and Fear
Remove a coffin's nails--runs an old superstition--and the dead soul of that "narrow house" will behold the answers to all questions on judgment day. In these specially commissioned stories, Chet Williamson, Pat Cadigan, Robert Holdstock, Nancy Holder, William F. Nolan, and others explore worlds of superstition, fear, and imagination...unleashing from the narrow house of the unknown more than even they bargained for...
480 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1994
158 people want to read
About the author
Peter Crowther
194 books41 followersPeter Crowther, born in 1949, is a journalist, anthologist, and the author of many short stories and novels. He is the co-founder of PS Publishing and the editor of Postscripts.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 17, 2017
There were some gems but also some costume jewelry.
December 15, 2020
A frustrating anthology, ostensibly themed around superstition, and most of the stories blithely ignore this, or add a seemingly spurious element to qualify, which comes off, ironically, as more annoying. A good range of writers, but not all of them doing their best work; it comes to something when one of the highest rated contributions—at least by my estimation—is the introduction, though Jonathan Carroll and Ian McDonald also come out way ahead of the pack. Special mention to Peter James—an author whose few books I've read, I have not enjoyed—with a neat little short which ends on a zinger I was not expecting, and which made me laugh out loud.
An overall story rating of 87/150 tips this over into Three Star territory.
Introduction, by Douglas E. Winter: 5/5. More than an introduction, delving into the history, meaning, and resonance of superstition through the ages, and its metamorphosis into tale-telling, especially of the supernatural kind.
Beware Those Beasts Who Now and Then Disguise Themselves As Mortal Men, by Ray Bradbury: 2/5. A poem. Not a very good one.
The Sluice, by Stephen Gallagher: 3/5. A man in a care facility loses his parents, one by one. This is well characterised and sympathetically told, though the finale is too clearly telegraphed (not least by the title) and the superstitious element—worry dolls—seems superfluous to the narrative, if not entirely tacked on as an afterthought.
The Needle-Men, by Nancy A. Collins: 3/5. A visitor to New Orleans seeks out some local colour. This starts well and quickly develops into an intriguing tale, but then devolves into a listing of local urban legends—each interesting, but not forming a narrative, and relayed with some rather overdone patois—with an ending that seems forced to the theme.
The Outside Man, by Darrell Schweitzer: 4/5. A tale of sibling rivalry and deals with the devil. A tale within a tale, utilising a strong vernacular voice, quickly to the point, and filled with character and detail, barely a word wasted until the satisfying denouement of the final page.
The Silvering, by Robert Holdstock: 3/5. A man lives alone on an island, with only the sea for company. Extremely well written, but overlong, seeming to become more diffuse as the (often poorly explained) mythology is added to; a shorter story might have brought the plot threads together more satisfyingly.
The Swing of the Knife, by Chet Williamson: 3/5. An arbitrary moment of superstition has long-lasting consequences. A neat and easily relatable circumstance, deftly and briefly narrated, and perhaps underwhelming in its brevity, when a little expansion might have helped, particularly in the final pages, seeming quite summarised in getting to the unsurprising ending.
The Scent of Elder Flowers, by Pauline E. Dungate: 1/5. A death permeates through an entire family. Far too much going on here, from a lesser-known author whose reach exceeds their grasp; much too predictable and even a little stale, badly paced and poorly written—dialogue particularly clunky at times—even managing to fumble the obvious ending.
The Prick of Thorn, by Rex Miller: 1/5. A mother takes her daughters on a homecoming trip. Written in Miller's lazy synopsis-style prose, with female characters who are all male-gaze caricatures (even the eleven-year old...), this adds an irrelevant broken mirror scene to a weirdly ambivalent tale of ghosts or vampires—or maybe just nothing—and then simply slows to a stop.
Glory, by Nicholas Royle: 2/5. A wedding photographer captures something in his lens. Less a superstition, more pinching an idea from The Omen and dressing it up in some quantum observation ambiguity, padded out with flashback reminiscence which obscures more than it illuminates.
Long Time Till Morning Comes, by Ed Gorman: 3/5. A husband follows his cheating wife. Told in a pulp style which is eminently readable, and paced well, this is a solid crime story without a single element of superstition.
The Tale of Peg and the Brain, by Ian Watson: 3/5. Relative newcomers to a small village consider moving away. This is told in a breezy and absorbing gossipy style, full of local colour and rural myth, though the pleasingly bizarre ending arrives and ends quickly, with unsatisfyingly little resolution, as if Watson had a sequel in mind.
Naming Names, by Pat Cadigan: 4/5. An estranged daughter discovers her heritage. Treating superstition (and, to an extent, magic) as an informal science, this is a fast-paced exploration of character; a fairly long story, packed full of narrative and incident, while hinting—despite its satisfactory conclusion—at a much larger narrative to be explored.
Bird in the House, by Rick Hautala: 3/5. A woman's superstitions control her life. This is told in a conversational second-person account, very reminiscent of Robert Bloch, complete with predictable ending, though the main narrative is strong, with a few superstitions and their wards.
Three on a Match, by Kim Newman: 4/5. A fateful moment has myriad repercussions. Spinning out from the WWI trenches, a small kaleidoscope of alternative realities are presented—rich in detail and history—from the smallest of moments to the largest of eventualities; not the most original idea, but strongly thought out and presented.
Bleeding Dry, by Stephen Laws: 3/5. Unscrupulous characters eye a young man's fortune. Almost a classic tale, with a heavily telegraphed ending, and overlong—the paragraphs describing entire sequences of horror films watched by a character add nothing, other than a tenuous element of superstition.
Cemetery Dance, by Richard Chizmar: 0/5. A grieving lover visits a graveyard. An unremarkable and tired recycling of old ideas, uneventful and anticlimactic.
The Dead Must Die, by Ramsey Campbell: 4/5. A devoutly religious man visits his brother. Campbell's particular prose works well in the voice of the protagonist here, his superior and biased interpretative inner monologue narrating events from a particular viewpoint, through a particular lens, to a strong conclusion.
From a Narrow House, by William F. Nolan: 1/5. A murdered husband returns from the grave. Competently, if unremarkably written, but this is just literally a recycling of hoary old EC Comics material, featuring no superstitious elements.
Upon the Gallows-Tree, by Brian Stableford: 4/5. A hanged witch finds herself returned to life. Written in just enough vernacular to give flavour and setting, this inner monologue benefits greatly from both the witch's and villagers' disbelief that the supernatural actually exists—almost a post-modern twist—and a coolly observational narrative.
Breaking the Rules, by Steve Rasnic Tem: 3/5. An overly superstitious man prepares for a date. Veering from superstition into OCD, this presents as a comedy of manners, though always heading for the inevitable ending.
Down to the Sea, by Nancy Holder: 3/5. A couple go amiss travelling by boat to a small island. Less superstition than tradition, a well told, albeit heavily telegraphed, variation on the old folklore sacrifice tale.
Breaking the Chain, by Peter James: 4/5. A husband dismisses the chain letter he receives. This is very short, though just as long as it needs to be, building well to a punchline ending, so divorced from the previous narrative, and the better for it.
Stone Magic, by Andrew Vacchs: 1/5. An estranged father returns when his daughter needs him. Vacchs mentioning in his introduction that he only has one story to tell doesn't change the fact that he's right, barely—albeit illogically, within the narrative—connecting the superstitious element.
Evil Eye, by Christopher Fowler: 3/5. A traveller on a road trip stops at a diner, and has his fortune told. Packed with background and incidental detail, paced for interest, but wasted in service to a simple reinterpretation of an old—and entirely predictable—horror story cliché.
Learning to Leave, by Jonathan Carroll: 5/5. A tale of an innocent prank with wide-ranging repercussions. Told mostly as anecdotal dialogue, a peculiar and amusing shaggy dog story, constructing its own superstition, and seguing abruptly into an existential dread of realisation.
The Landlady's Dog, by James Lovegrove: 3/5. A heartbroken young man turns to magic. A strong sense of character and humour—though the essential personality of the girlfriend remains vague and unsatisfying—only slowly seguing into the fantastic, before petering out with a realist twist at the end which falls a little flat.
The Luncheonette of Lost Dreams, by Ian McDonald: 5/5. In a Martian diner, a waitress finds redemption. A vividly imagined Mars—mixing Bradbury with Burroughs (both of them) and the visuals of Richard Stanley—is the setting for a richly atmospheric and fantastical tale of love and redemption, set in a future Mars with its own invented superstitions, full of invention and lyrical prose.
From the Night Wind Comes, by David B. Silva: 2/5. Counsellors on a night shift receive eerie calls. From a low-key opening this escalates in creepiness and potential, before ending abruptly without any resolution, not even concluding its own story.
The Girl of My Dreams, by J.N. Williamson: 2/5. A teenage boy finds himself drawn to a carnival stripper. This is either magnificently characterised down to the minutiae, or is embarrassingly cringe-worthy writing; in any case, the tale is very old-fashioned—seems set about thirty years before publication—and flounders in a rather roundabout way to a muddled and unsure conclusion.
An overall story rating of 87/150 tips this over into Three Star territory.
Introduction, by Douglas E. Winter: 5/5. More than an introduction, delving into the history, meaning, and resonance of superstition through the ages, and its metamorphosis into tale-telling, especially of the supernatural kind.
Beware Those Beasts Who Now and Then Disguise Themselves As Mortal Men, by Ray Bradbury: 2/5. A poem. Not a very good one.
The Sluice, by Stephen Gallagher: 3/5. A man in a care facility loses his parents, one by one. This is well characterised and sympathetically told, though the finale is too clearly telegraphed (not least by the title) and the superstitious element—worry dolls—seems superfluous to the narrative, if not entirely tacked on as an afterthought.
The Needle-Men, by Nancy A. Collins: 3/5. A visitor to New Orleans seeks out some local colour. This starts well and quickly develops into an intriguing tale, but then devolves into a listing of local urban legends—each interesting, but not forming a narrative, and relayed with some rather overdone patois—with an ending that seems forced to the theme.
The Outside Man, by Darrell Schweitzer: 4/5. A tale of sibling rivalry and deals with the devil. A tale within a tale, utilising a strong vernacular voice, quickly to the point, and filled with character and detail, barely a word wasted until the satisfying denouement of the final page.
The Silvering, by Robert Holdstock: 3/5. A man lives alone on an island, with only the sea for company. Extremely well written, but overlong, seeming to become more diffuse as the (often poorly explained) mythology is added to; a shorter story might have brought the plot threads together more satisfyingly.
The Swing of the Knife, by Chet Williamson: 3/5. An arbitrary moment of superstition has long-lasting consequences. A neat and easily relatable circumstance, deftly and briefly narrated, and perhaps underwhelming in its brevity, when a little expansion might have helped, particularly in the final pages, seeming quite summarised in getting to the unsurprising ending.
The Scent of Elder Flowers, by Pauline E. Dungate: 1/5. A death permeates through an entire family. Far too much going on here, from a lesser-known author whose reach exceeds their grasp; much too predictable and even a little stale, badly paced and poorly written—dialogue particularly clunky at times—even managing to fumble the obvious ending.
The Prick of Thorn, by Rex Miller: 1/5. A mother takes her daughters on a homecoming trip. Written in Miller's lazy synopsis-style prose, with female characters who are all male-gaze caricatures (even the eleven-year old...), this adds an irrelevant broken mirror scene to a weirdly ambivalent tale of ghosts or vampires—or maybe just nothing—and then simply slows to a stop.
Glory, by Nicholas Royle: 2/5. A wedding photographer captures something in his lens. Less a superstition, more pinching an idea from The Omen and dressing it up in some quantum observation ambiguity, padded out with flashback reminiscence which obscures more than it illuminates.
Long Time Till Morning Comes, by Ed Gorman: 3/5. A husband follows his cheating wife. Told in a pulp style which is eminently readable, and paced well, this is a solid crime story without a single element of superstition.
The Tale of Peg and the Brain, by Ian Watson: 3/5. Relative newcomers to a small village consider moving away. This is told in a breezy and absorbing gossipy style, full of local colour and rural myth, though the pleasingly bizarre ending arrives and ends quickly, with unsatisfyingly little resolution, as if Watson had a sequel in mind.
Naming Names, by Pat Cadigan: 4/5. An estranged daughter discovers her heritage. Treating superstition (and, to an extent, magic) as an informal science, this is a fast-paced exploration of character; a fairly long story, packed full of narrative and incident, while hinting—despite its satisfactory conclusion—at a much larger narrative to be explored.
Bird in the House, by Rick Hautala: 3/5. A woman's superstitions control her life. This is told in a conversational second-person account, very reminiscent of Robert Bloch, complete with predictable ending, though the main narrative is strong, with a few superstitions and their wards.
Three on a Match, by Kim Newman: 4/5. A fateful moment has myriad repercussions. Spinning out from the WWI trenches, a small kaleidoscope of alternative realities are presented—rich in detail and history—from the smallest of moments to the largest of eventualities; not the most original idea, but strongly thought out and presented.
Bleeding Dry, by Stephen Laws: 3/5. Unscrupulous characters eye a young man's fortune. Almost a classic tale, with a heavily telegraphed ending, and overlong—the paragraphs describing entire sequences of horror films watched by a character add nothing, other than a tenuous element of superstition.
Cemetery Dance, by Richard Chizmar: 0/5. A grieving lover visits a graveyard. An unremarkable and tired recycling of old ideas, uneventful and anticlimactic.
The Dead Must Die, by Ramsey Campbell: 4/5. A devoutly religious man visits his brother. Campbell's particular prose works well in the voice of the protagonist here, his superior and biased interpretative inner monologue narrating events from a particular viewpoint, through a particular lens, to a strong conclusion.
From a Narrow House, by William F. Nolan: 1/5. A murdered husband returns from the grave. Competently, if unremarkably written, but this is just literally a recycling of hoary old EC Comics material, featuring no superstitious elements.
Upon the Gallows-Tree, by Brian Stableford: 4/5. A hanged witch finds herself returned to life. Written in just enough vernacular to give flavour and setting, this inner monologue benefits greatly from both the witch's and villagers' disbelief that the supernatural actually exists—almost a post-modern twist—and a coolly observational narrative.
Breaking the Rules, by Steve Rasnic Tem: 3/5. An overly superstitious man prepares for a date. Veering from superstition into OCD, this presents as a comedy of manners, though always heading for the inevitable ending.
Down to the Sea, by Nancy Holder: 3/5. A couple go amiss travelling by boat to a small island. Less superstition than tradition, a well told, albeit heavily telegraphed, variation on the old folklore sacrifice tale.
Breaking the Chain, by Peter James: 4/5. A husband dismisses the chain letter he receives. This is very short, though just as long as it needs to be, building well to a punchline ending, so divorced from the previous narrative, and the better for it.
Stone Magic, by Andrew Vacchs: 1/5. An estranged father returns when his daughter needs him. Vacchs mentioning in his introduction that he only has one story to tell doesn't change the fact that he's right, barely—albeit illogically, within the narrative—connecting the superstitious element.
Evil Eye, by Christopher Fowler: 3/5. A traveller on a road trip stops at a diner, and has his fortune told. Packed with background and incidental detail, paced for interest, but wasted in service to a simple reinterpretation of an old—and entirely predictable—horror story cliché.
Learning to Leave, by Jonathan Carroll: 5/5. A tale of an innocent prank with wide-ranging repercussions. Told mostly as anecdotal dialogue, a peculiar and amusing shaggy dog story, constructing its own superstition, and seguing abruptly into an existential dread of realisation.
The Landlady's Dog, by James Lovegrove: 3/5. A heartbroken young man turns to magic. A strong sense of character and humour—though the essential personality of the girlfriend remains vague and unsatisfying—only slowly seguing into the fantastic, before petering out with a realist twist at the end which falls a little flat.
The Luncheonette of Lost Dreams, by Ian McDonald: 5/5. In a Martian diner, a waitress finds redemption. A vividly imagined Mars—mixing Bradbury with Burroughs (both of them) and the visuals of Richard Stanley—is the setting for a richly atmospheric and fantastical tale of love and redemption, set in a future Mars with its own invented superstitions, full of invention and lyrical prose.
From the Night Wind Comes, by David B. Silva: 2/5. Counsellors on a night shift receive eerie calls. From a low-key opening this escalates in creepiness and potential, before ending abruptly without any resolution, not even concluding its own story.
The Girl of My Dreams, by J.N. Williamson: 2/5. A teenage boy finds himself drawn to a carnival stripper. This is either magnificently characterised down to the minutiae, or is embarrassingly cringe-worthy writing; in any case, the tale is very old-fashioned—seems set about thirty years before publication—and flounders in a rather roundabout way to a muddled and unsure conclusion.
September 2, 2018
A PLACEHOLDER REVIEW: I got this through Inter-Library Loan to read the J.N. Williamson story, then discovered that two other pieces were on my "To Read" list, with another having been previously read and liked by me. So here's review's for all four.
Darrell Schweitzer's "The Outside Man," (previously read in 100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment ) is a short piece about wishing for revenge that mixes in some Pennsylvania Dutch/Pow-wow folklore about the Waldganger (Woods Walker), a macabre figure who fulfills wishes for a price. Simple and effective.
J.N. Williamson's "The Girl Of My Dreams" - in which a teenage boy attends a carnival peepshow and becomes entranced by a performer there, who asks for his help - is a well-written story that builds to a weak climax. Williamson does an excellent job of capturing the horny, hormone-soaked thought processes of the boy (the story seems to be set sometime in the late 50s or early 60s) but clumsily only half-delivers on its ultimate point and story.
"Down To The Sea" by Nancy Holder has two lovers travel to a remote, obscure Pacific Northwest island in search of a musical recluse, only to find themselves among a strange cult of island folk with definitive ideas about boating accidents and drowning. The story works better as a character study and suspense scenario than a full-on story but is well-done for all that.
The best of my reads was "Glory" by Nicholas Royle, in which an anxiety prone young man attends the wedding of a friend, ostensibly to fill the role of a non-professional background photographer, but accrued details, his aversion to the a fellow attendee (the school bully) and his fixation on a young girl makes us question our unreliable narrator. This is an ambiguous story that uses its ambiguity well - by the end we can't be sure if something terrible has happened in the past, in the moment, or is yet to happen, but it is still a solid, creepy read.
Darrell Schweitzer's "The Outside Man," (previously read in 100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment ) is a short piece about wishing for revenge that mixes in some Pennsylvania Dutch/Pow-wow folklore about the Waldganger (Woods Walker), a macabre figure who fulfills wishes for a price. Simple and effective.
J.N. Williamson's "The Girl Of My Dreams" - in which a teenage boy attends a carnival peepshow and becomes entranced by a performer there, who asks for his help - is a well-written story that builds to a weak climax. Williamson does an excellent job of capturing the horny, hormone-soaked thought processes of the boy (the story seems to be set sometime in the late 50s or early 60s) but clumsily only half-delivers on its ultimate point and story.
"Down To The Sea" by Nancy Holder has two lovers travel to a remote, obscure Pacific Northwest island in search of a musical recluse, only to find themselves among a strange cult of island folk with definitive ideas about boating accidents and drowning. The story works better as a character study and suspense scenario than a full-on story but is well-done for all that.
The best of my reads was "Glory" by Nicholas Royle, in which an anxiety prone young man attends the wedding of a friend, ostensibly to fill the role of a non-professional background photographer, but accrued details, his aversion to the a fellow attendee (the school bully) and his fixation on a young girl makes us question our unreliable narrator. This is an ambiguous story that uses its ambiguity well - by the end we can't be sure if something terrible has happened in the past, in the moment, or is yet to happen, but it is still a solid, creepy read.
May 16, 2016
A mostly-decent collection of stories written on the theme of superstition. My favorite was Nicholas Royle's "Glory," an unsettling story about an amateur wedding photographer who keeps seeing something strange in his camera's viewfinder. The narrator has a superstition similar to one I confess to entertaining at various times in my life: that certain events exist in a sort of quantum state, and don't become definite until you observe--or choose not to observe--them. Another standout was Robert Holdstock's "The Silvering," in which a man is determined to discover why his favorite selkie lover hasn't returned to him.
June 3, 2021
This anthology is a 3.5 star read for me. There were a few major standouts and a lot of really good stories, leaving a lower than usual number of crappy ones. The main issue here is the marketing of the book. Peter Crowther wanted to put together an anthology based on superstitions. You won’t find that information on the cover though, and that’s probably because the idea failed spectacularly. Most of the authors admit to having no superstitions and a majority of the stories have no ties or merely superficial ones to the subject. If he had dropped the idea this could have been a better collection, as some of the stories felt forced to weave in some kind of superstition instead of focusing on telling a better story. Like I said, this is still a nice collection with fewer than usual clunkers but it’s brought down a bit by the editor’s stubborn refusal to give up on a tenuous idea.
September 20, 2017
A fairly decent horror collection. Stories are generally based on assorted superstitions.
July 12, 2015
A quite average anthology of light horror stories, with two stand-outs and only 1 clunker.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews