Suicide Woods: Stories by Benjamin Percy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ben Percy’s defining stylistic claim to fame is a refusal to separate literary fiction and genre fiction. For him, they are one and the same, and that comes through prominently in this dark collection. All the narrative tug of a well-creased pulp paperback, all the art of prize-winning literary prose (which, by the way, much of it is). My favorite stories in this collection were “The Cold Boy,” “Writs of Possesion,” “Mud Man,” and the shattering final novella “The Uncharted.”
Each of these channels a gruesome or supernatural element to reflect the mundane-but-pressing anxieties of life that we’ve all confronted. That’s the fuel Percy uses to make his stories truly scary.
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