In a neat reversal of the Reynard myth, the students at a school that molds young men into “world-class husbands” for purchase by the wealthiest bidder discover a murderer locked away beneath the campus grounds—a personification of all of the human weaknesses and desires that are forcibly discouraged and suppressed in order to create cookie-cutter Prince Charmings skilled in exemplary masculine arts like “Strong Handshakes, Silence, Rudimentary Car Mechanics, How to Mow the Lawn, Explosive Displays of Authority, Sport and Nutrition Against Impotence.”

This article is filed under Books, Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.

Filled with unsettling images and language, Alois Hotchnig’s newly translated collection is an uncomfortable journey, but one made extremely rewarding by innovative narrative and pace. Each of the nine stories in this slim volume are difficult to retell – characters are nameless and locations generic – yet, their force comes not from the particular.

This article is filed under Books, Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.

Clive Barker has lent his eyes and hands to virtually every medium, from page to the screen to the stage to the canvas to the console. However, film fans know him particularly as a horror master. There is so much undermined material for gifted fantasy filmmakers that perhaps we could dispense with further Candyman sequels and retire the Hellraiser juggernaut with contented hearts, and enjoy a Clive Barker renaissance clad in all new colors.

This article is filed under Best Books, Best Movies, Books, Gay and Lesbian, Graphic Novels, Horror, Literary Themes, Movies, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Sex, Short Stories, The Fourth Wall, Writers.

Borne on the crest of the wind, I hear already the lamentation of women. Women whose dates have dragged them, possibly by the hair, to the late summer picture show. By now many of you know that Lionsgate will soon release a new film entitled Conan The Barbarian. Most of you will recall a cult classic by the same name from 1982, which was the breakout role of a certain Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This article is filed under Best Books, Best Movies, Graphic Novels, Movies, Mythology, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Short Stories, The Fourth Wall.

The pieces in this collection are tight knots or loose koans—sweet little puzzles. Told with the disarming guilelessness of parables, Aiken’s stories slip the apparent structure of their bounds at the last moment. For example, “The Monkey’s Wedding,” while describing the scrabble for the eponymously named painting, also explores the open-ended drama of a fractured family.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.

Sherlock Holmes as a strict Victorian period piece is over and done with, but the character still has potential in a new context. The only rule is not to stray from the unique faculties that make Sherlock such a distinctive and popular hero. If the story’s focus ceases to be the detective’s brilliant deductive logic, then the magic is lost and the character wasted. If, however, due attention and respect are paid to this detail, the rest is free and open to broader interpretation.

This article is filed under Best Books, Best Movies, Classics, Crime Fiction, Espionage, Great Britain, Literary Themes, Movies, Mystery, Short Stories, Television, The Fourth Wall, Theatre, Thrillers, Writers.

Beattie, like in so much of her earlier work, leaves a lot to the imagination. Between the dialogue and the action, certain assumptions, even leaps of faith, are sometimes necessary to get from one paragraph to the next. There are better ways to render suspense—less does not always mean more—but you get the sense from the very first sentence that something important is about to be revealed.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.

The Bigness of the World, Ostlund’s first collection of short stories, was good enough for the judges of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She won the prize in 2008. Deservedly so, for Ostlund has an ear, an appendage often ignored by writers in favor of the flashier eye. Alive to the subtext of the everyday, she uses flat conversations as a front for complicated back-stories…

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.

Things are never fine just they way they are in Annie Proulx’s new collection of Wyoming stories. Women imperil themselves on mountains, animals go tits-up in ditches, young and old end up blighted or dead. Even the Devil can’t quite seem to make things work. Life is tough, Proulx says, and I ain’t peddling corn syrup.

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Rare in our time, the writing in THE CAPE MAY STORIES is superb, even magical in its clear-sighted modesty of style, one that implicitly offers in plenitude, examples of decency. A surprising, and exhilarating, visit to Cape May awaits readers.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.