John Hornor Jacobs
A Lush and Seething Hell
“Violence leaves its mark, and horror makes siblings of us all.”
Inci says: I am lost for words for this one… This book… is a masterpiece. It is fantastic. It is the Mona Lisa of cosmic horror, a chef d'oeuvre of southern gothic and Hornor Jacobs proves to be in the same ranks with the very best of the subgenre.
Two stories, one better than the other. Both deal with pain - collective and personal. Both explore the origins, the extent, the impact, the horror of such pain in a magnificent way.
The first short story - “The Sea Dreams It is the Sky”:
About two years ago, rumors started to spread on various blogs and forums that this tale was among the best horror of all time. Only catch for a stubborn print reader like me was that it was published digitally only. Yet I was curious, so I made that leap of faith and read it on my computer, (which I hate doing), and I fell so hard for this story that not even its digital format could diminish my joy in reading it.
The tale deals with the meeting and the increasingly intensifying relationship of two expats from the imaginary Latin American country Magera - a country that has been plagued for decades by the junta after a very violent, bloody and torturous coup. One of the protagonists, Isabel, will need to make a journey back to the land of pain and agony to discover the astounding reality behind this coup.
Coming from a country that has been broken by a military coup myself, I was very pleased and touched that mass torture, forced disappearances, police raids, state violence and the trauma they cause are being dealt with in the horror genre, where they belong. And in a literarily very valuable one at that - cosmic horror at its finest!
The second story/novella - “My Heart Struck Sorrow”: Equally gorgeously written as its predecessor, this one deals with a very piercing personal pain - irrevocable remorse. A man employed at the department of folklife at the Library of Congress discovers priceless Depression Era recordings from the Deep South and a diary to go with it. The journal may or may not be the notes of a man descending into madness, but the recordings, that feature not always music, just may prove that he is not. “My Heart Struck Sorrow” is seriously haunting, partly heart-breaking and fully thought-provoking.
I really can’t decide which one of these two I enjoyed most! Truth is, this is a book that I will time and again reread with great pleasure. Please please please read it too, spread it!
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