Nocturnes

It's been a long time since I've read a book of short stories. I used to love the Stephen King short story collections in High School, but haven't read another collection since. After finishing Connolly's The Book of Lost Things, I went and picked up his book of short stories, called Nocturnes. I toyed with the idea of having each short story count as a separate book on my list, but I decided against it. :)

Nocturnes has short stories that are previously unpublished, as well as a novella featuring a character from Connolly's mystery novels (Charlie Parker), and finished with a section titled Nocturnes: Coda that had 5 five stories that had been published elsewhere. The stories are all dark, twisted, and slightly horrific. They become progressively darker and darker as the stories unfold, starting with The Cancer Cowboy Rides. A few of the stories are very short, taking up less than 10 pages of the overall 471 pages, while others take up a lot more. The Charlie Parker Novella, The Reflecting Eye, comes in at over 100 pages.

There is no horror that is left out of Nocturnes. As someone who is both afraid of clowns and spiders, I found myself totally horrified at two stories (Some Children Wander By Mistake and The Wakeford Abyss) and unable to read for a day or two. Other stories are horrifying for different reasons, not having a twinge of the paranormal and instead relying on the horror of human beings themselves and the things they do to each other.

The horror of the book is never cliche, and is always completely believable. That is a fine line when writing dark short stories, you can either make them really cliche and transparent, or you can make them just believable enough that they haunt your thoughts for hours after finishing the story. For Nocturnes, the second half of that is true. I never thought "oh, that's so unbelievable" after any story.

I give this book a 5 out of 5. I will now go to all the used book stores in my area and grab up Connolly's other stories.