Short Story Reviews

The calendar reads "busy busy busy" and so I'll post reviews of short stories here. I have several Christmas stories lined up for my reading in the weeks ahead, and I'll ask your indulgence now in anticipating many holiday reviews  here. For today, I have one short story by Andrew Kaufman, and then a book of two Christmas stories by L.K. Campbell.

Desolation Road   Andrew Kaufman

This short story by Andrew Kaufman moves as swiftly as the errant vehicle approaching the other on the deteriorating, twisting road. In just a moment the driver's life is changed; spared injury himself, he is horrified to see the other car spin out of control and over an embankment, landing far below.  Can he help the occupants? Is it too late? Or will he leave the scene, untouched, but scarred in memory?  

Kaufman does not disappoint: his on-the-edge story telling has an echo of Hitchcock's style in Desolation Road.

Christmas Wishes (Lead Me Home and In the Nick of Time)   L.K. Campbell

Lead Me Home:

A young wife whose husband was killed in Iraq returned to her home to help her parents run their publishing house. But when she encounters her high school sweetheart, she is surprised by the flood of emotion she experiences after their decade apart. The first love begun as teenagers quickly rekindles, but is at risk of being snuffed out by a guilt carried in secrecy and wrongly attributed.  This short story introduces four major characters who come alive through the dialogue written by L.K. Campbell, and has the potential of becoming a full-fledged novel.

In the Nick of Time:

L.K. Campbell’s second short story involves a pair of consenting adults who have a comfortable relationship until doubts begin to surface. She loves him, but is not sure that he loves her. The broken engagement in his past hovers like a cloud over their relationship, and when his former fiancé reappears, it seems that the relationship might end. But no, not before Christmas! This is a sweet romance that invites an audience's reading just before bedtime. I found it had just the right touch of sentiment and holiday. 

And just a note here: LK Campbell authors her own books, but also helps other self-publishing authors find their way through the Smashwords grinder and turns  digital books into the multiple formats available on Smashwords. You will find her name on the page called "Mark's List" of writers amenable to this task, available by email through Smashwords' help page. Campbell has helped me with both of my books now listed there for Kindle, Nook, Sony and more. I highly recommend her skills, and appreciate her assistance.

 

Related articles

• Open thread: recommend your favourite short stories and poetry collections (guardian.co.uk)
• Happy endings: How the short story genre is taking over the Costa Awards (metro.co.uk)

Well Written Horror Mystery: Andrew Kaufman

There are horror stories filled with blood and gore, fantastical creatures, dismal endings, and inevitable "risen from the dead" sequels. And then there are mysteries with an element of horrific behavior best left to the reader's imagination. This is the sort of psychological mystery that Andrew Kaufman offers  in The Lion The Lamb The Hunted.

Subtle in the telling of emotional abuse, the nuances of which are difficult to describe and more difficult to rationalize, Kaufman skillfully builds a quiet understanding with the reader: there are horrible things happening to the character, frightening events that defy description, and yet the reader comes to realize these as the story unfolds.

Kaufman's main character is a journalist/investigator who writes for a national weekly. With his mother's funeral opening the story, the tone is set for a retrospective look back at a mother/son relationship. It is one that is made more clear in a series of flashbacks carefully written as haunting dreams. Patrick has a medical issue that is disclosed through one of these dream sequences ... two conditions that are unrelated but equally life threatening. One is genetic, and unavoidable. The other is behavioral, and cruel in its origin.

The settings of the story range between the states of Georgia and Texas, well-described without needless description, a careful balancing act that Kaufman has done well. Subordinate characters are sometimes main characters in the dreams, and the reader comes to know them through their actions rather than through lengthy details. All of this adds to the quick pace of the story, which closes with a scene that would satisfy both the enthusiastic horror reader and the more skittish mystery reader who might close eyes during a movie's horror scenes.

There were portions of the story that made me wipe tears away, and others that made me sit up in indignation at what people can do to each other. This story invites the reader into the mind of a grown man who is struggling with untold childhood events, invoking this reader's empathy for the character and appreciation of the author's storytelling skill.

Within the genre of horror and mystery, famed author Stephen King's books have a following  due to name recognition more than to continued quality. I enjoyed King's early work.  But I would not put King and Kaufman in the same genre. Kaufman's books, too, will gather momentum and more respect in time, due to his subtle style and his avoidance of gratuitous, graphic gore.

The best horror writers allow a role to the reader in creating the scenes implied ... Edgar Allen Poe, long considered one of the greatest horror writers, never had to resort to exposing the beating heart buried deep in the floor ... the reader knew it existed in the character's mind. Kaufman has the same skill.   Definitely, a Five Star read!