Book Review: Uncertainties: Volume V edited by Brian J. Showers - More2Read
 

Uncertainties: Volume V edited by Brian J. Showers

Order From Swan River Press

 

 

About Uncertainties Volume V:

 

“Surely all this is not without meaning.” — Herman Melville

“Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write — least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these twelve writers take up the challenge, each in their own way, with expert awareness of the genre’s limitless possibilities.

Uncertainties is an anthology series — featuring authors from Canada, America, the United Kingdom, and the island of Ireland — each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

Available as a limited edition hardback.

Deirdre Sullivan’s “Little Lives” won the An Post Book Award for Short Story of the Year.

Eoin Murphy’s “Three Sisters Bog” and Carly Holmes’s “Trap” are included in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 14.

Contents:

“Foreword”
    Brian J. Showers

“Three Sisters Bog”
    Eoin Murphy

“First a Bird”
    Ramsey Campbell

“To See the Sea”
    Sean Hogan

“Everything We Say and All the Things We Do”
    Jason E. Rolfe

“Not Even Legend”
    Alan Moore

“Skeleton Day”
    Aislinn Clarke

“Malady of Laughter”
    Inna Effress

“Little Lives”
    Deirdre Sullivan

“So Much Potential”
    Simon Strantzas

“Away”
    Nina Antonia

“Washed in the Blood of the Sun”
    John Langan

“Trap”
    Carly Holmes

“Contributor Notes”

“Acknowledgments”

 

Reviewed by Lou Pendergrast on 05 May 2022