The Two Sams
by Glen Hirshberg
Carroll & Graf

There's a phrase a lot of book reviewers use. You usually find it about halfway through the review, when you get something like this: "I don't want to give too much away…" That is reviewerspeak for "I'm fairly lazy and don't want to really break down what makes me like this book." I'm guilty of it and probably on more than one occasion. I am determined not to be guilty of it in this one.

Glen Hirshberg has written five short stories that are collected in "The Two Sams." These stories are showstoppers…every one of them. The kind where aspiring writers read them and go, "Shit, why am I bothering? I'm never going to write something like this." And in that epiphany, feel like their writing isn't ever going to have the impact on someone reading it as this book has just had on them.

Glen (and I'm going to call him Glen because I feel like I know him after these stories. Although I've no reason to believe they're autobiographical in any way but they're that good) is a teacher and as Ramsey Campbell points out in the book's introduction, Glen puts a teacher in everyone of these stories. Write what you know works extremely well for Glen. But then that brings up a point to grapple with -- in these stories live such vivid characters and locales that it suggests he must know them to write with this clarity, right? If so, then he knows San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest coastline, Hawaii, the Montana plains, German countryside, and all those that would live there as if they were his next-door neighbors. I don't know how old Glen is (and he looks pretty young in his author photo) but in these five stories it feels like he's lived five lifetimes and written great little excerpts typifying each one…in horrifying fashion mind you.

You've probably noticed I haven't given any synopses yet - I could trot out the line "I don't want to give too much away…" but that's not really true. I do want to give it away, I want to tell you exactly what made these stories so good that I began the review almost unconsciously. I had just finished the book and was planning turning on the computer for only a few minutes and checking my e-mail. I looked up and found I'd launched Word. Why? I have no idea. This guy is good.

Although I'm not going to write up the synopses, as I am still fairly lazy and you can get those from the book flap anyway, I am going to try to break down its strengths a little bit further. These stories unsettle in a way that you only hope for when you buy a new horror book. And this is horror, don't let the classy Carroll & Graf cover fool you. And yet it's still next-door terror…you know, the kind that lulls you in a bit too comfortably and then wham! On your ass.

There's almost a Bradybury-esque thing going on in a couple of these. Mr. Dark's Carnival would be the obvious choice since the title pays homage to Ray Bradbury's first story collection (Dark Carnival - and if any of you are looking for a Christmas present to give ol' Valarie, and have a couple hundred bucks to spare, go crazy!). But that story turns the idea of the eerie carnival coming to town on its head…and then wham! Smacks it with a 2' x 4' onto its ass.

Trying to pigeonhole these stories into a specific genre is too damn hard, wish I could coin a clever phrase that would encapsulate them but it's just not going to happen. They enter a sort of fabulist slipstream arena but that's not quite right either, teensy bit too fancypants - they're classic, they upset your balance, they're horror, they live in your house and they'll be sticking around.

This is the best collection of stories I've read this year, and most probably further back by many years, and I'm looking forward to a lot more of his work.

Valarie Thorpe has written for numerous publications such as Modern Studies in Horror, Beckett Sci-Fi Collectibles, Animated Life, Pop Matters, Sportscene, and her most recent fiction is the story "The Golden Nautilus" in the anthology What Walks Alone: A Creative Tribute to Shirley Jackson's Hill House.