20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (Gollancz, 2007, 389pp, ISBN 9780 575 08192 5), is the first short story collection by the winner of multiple Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, International Horror Guild and World Fantasy awards. He won the Locus Award and the Stoker for Best First Novel for Heart-Shaped Box. Joe Hill is also Stephen King's son, although he is now desevedly making a name in his own right.
The stories in 20th Century Ghosts first appeared in a number of genre magazines such as Crimewave, Postscripts and The Third Alternative (the precursor magazine to Black Static) and 20th Century Ghosts is classified as horror, but despite this four of the stories are not horror at all, and five are tangentially so – but the very classification influences the reader's preconceptions, so every hint, every allusion takes on added significance. In addition, Hill uses imagery borrowed from 50s B-Movies, Franz Kafka and Jack Finney, among others.
Best New Horror
In the opening story ‘Best New Horror,’ editor Eddie Carroll is the jaded editor of the America’s Best New Horror series. Hill starts by invoking a deadline to inspire tension, while the second paragraph uses very strong words to inspire a sense of internal conflict – ‘loathe’ and ‘hate the magazines’ and in the third Carroll ‘felt some important part of him going numb inside.’ Carroll reads a story in the magazine whose arrival begins the narrative, described by its editor as ‘remarkable, if genuinely distressing,’ and is enthralled. The story describes in graphic detail the kidnap, sexual assault and mutilation of a shy seventeen-year-old. When she escapes –her tongue cut out- she finds herself ‘the object of pity and horror’ among her peers, adding to her alienation. Carroll embarks on an odyssey to obtain the rights to reprint the story from its transient author, and ends the story running for his life from the author’s family...
In ‘The Black Phone’ young John Finney is kidnapped and while held captive has a series of conversations with dead people...but Hill introduces an entirely unexpected narrative twist. In ‘You Will Hear the Locust Sing,’ Francis Kay awakes as a giant cockroach who decapitates his neighbours in a 1950s Nevada-set gore-fest. By contrast, ‘Last Breath’ is more Poe than Barker, the story of an undertaker who bottles the last breath of dying people. ‘Dead Wood’ is short but beautiful, while ‘Abraham’s Boys’ shines a different light on van Helsing’s relationship with vampires and closes with a moment of ambiguity and very black humour.
20th Century Ghost
The title story is one of the five that are more marginally horror than the conventional sort. ‘20th Century Ghost’ features a run-down cinema occupied by a ghost for over sixty-five years; it’s impressively and unexpectedly poignant. ‘In The Rundown’ uses a series of events that individually are perfectly understandable to the protagonist, but clearly imply to the reader that he will appear a psychopath to law officers – it’s a much more subtle form of horror than the opening story.
‘The Widow’s Breakfast’ isn’t horror at all, at least until the chilling final scene – up to that point it’s a purely historical Depression-era story about a hobo and the kindly widow who takes pity on him. ‘My Father’s Mask’ is completely different again; superficially ordinary, if metaphor is taken literally the narrative becomes ever more skewed – the mother’s inappropriate behaviour, the father who may not be the narrator’s father at all, the dreams that become real. Both are Highly Recommended.
In ‘The Cape,’ Hill writes of a boy who discovers that he can fly. He is otherwise dysfunctional, and when he visits his ex-girlfriend he exacts a terrible –apparently surprising-- revenge; in fact, it’s foreshadowed throughout the narrative but only comes clear with:
Whenever my brother and I played superheroes, he always made me be the bad guy.
Someone has to be. (p.243)
Joe Hill
Four of the stories, including the longest and three of the best are not horror at all; in ‘Better Than Home’ a young boy with what would now be diagnosed as special needs becomes ever more stressed at his father’s poor run of form. The narrator of ‘Pop Art’ gains a new best friend –who is inflatable. Funny and poignant, with finely drawn characterization, it’s an absolutely outstanding story.
As is ‘Voluntary Committal,’ the World Fantasy Award winning novella that rounds out the collection. This time the special needs child is the narrator’s younger brother, Morris, who disappears three weeks before the story’s start. Morris is autistic and has disappeared, just as his friend Eddie Morris disappeared when they were all teenagers. The back story explains the circumstances surrounding those disappearances. It’s almost the pick of the stories.
But even better is ‘Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead,’ a bittersweet love story set on the film set of George Romero’s zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. Bobby Conroy returns to his home town and while working on the set as an extra meets his old High School sweetheart. What sets the story apart is the warmth of the characters.
There are enough outstanding stories in the collection to rank it as one of the best debut collections of recent years – in fact, one of the best collections, full stop. It bodes well for Joe Hill becoming an even better writer than his writer.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
