The Unreachable Star

[ghostly1]

20th Century Ghosts is a collection of short stories by Joe Hill. As is often the case with short story collections, the title is taken from the title of one of the stories - most of the stories do not involve ghosts. Some aren't even horror or involve the supernatural in any way, although most are one or the other if not both.

I always find that short story collections a bit of a mixed bag quality-wise. There's usually one or good stories that make the collection worthwhile, a bunch of okay stories, and a few that don't do anything for me at all. The proportions vary... usually collections with multiple authors have more hits but also more misses, but I often find myself mildly disappointed with collections of a single author's work. I often judge collections based on the number and relative quality of the good stories.

So on that scale, how does 20th Century Ghosts do? Pretty good, actually. Hill manages to quickly engage the reader and carry them along on his plot, even where they might seem a little ridiculous on the surface. Some stories get very quickly to the punch, and others are a slow burn, but they always flowed well without a sense of time wasted. Though a number of the stories touch on or are outright homages to familiar horror tales (included in the book is a story of Van Helsing and his family in America, and a homage to Kafka's metamorphosis), Hill still often manages to throw in twists that play on the familiarities and make the story memorable. I'd say there were roughly three stories I really enjoyed, and another six I thought were pretty good. There weren't any stories I'd call bad in the bunch, the rest just fell in the 'okay' zone.

I do have to say that the stories with no supernatural content didn't resonate with me at all, falling almost completely flat. Such stories often do, so this may be a personal failing. I don't call them bad, I can sense that there's ability here, but I also know that I will barely remember them in a few weeks time.

It also might have been nice to see him get a little more experimental with content. "Pop Art" was probably the best work in the book, and although "My Father's Mask" wasn't in my list of favorites, I did appreciate that it didn't feel like a riff on any familiar horror genre (at least, not on one I recognized).

So on the whole I'd recommend the book if you enjoy short stories with a slight touch of the fantastic and horrific.

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(Disclaimer: Although it did not affect the review, I received the book for free)
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Peter Dimitriadis
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