The Séance and Other Stories by IB Singer and Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti are both horror anthologies. Read my review of them here.

https://www.johncadamsreviews.com/single-post/the-seance-and-other-stories-by-ib...

#ThomasLigotti #IBSinger #JohnCAdamsReviews #JohnCAdams #horror #Book #Review #Reviews #BookReview #BookReviews ( )

Kafka on steroids. I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would because, although I love Kafka, I've moved on in how I think fiction should address the nihilistic worldview. I'm in the Harlan Ellison camp where the best stories have flesh and blood characters that we actually care about. The stories were weird and somewhat disturbing but never creepy or scary. The atmosphere is more absurdist than horror. Ligotti is definitely unique in his fictional translation of the ultimate meaningless of life. I suppose some people would find this "horrifying" and I understand and appreciate what he is trying to do but it's just not part of my belief system so it doesn't work as well for me as say Lovecraft, or better yet, Ellison does. I'm also more frightened of the bogeyman in my closet than I am of the vapory supervisor in the corner office. If he spent more time developing his characters and making me care for them then I would probably find their meaningless lives more tragic.

I see Kafka here not Lovecraft. It starts at the same place: an uncaring neutral cosmos, but is developed in a more everyman-type Kafka way, not into horror or science fiction.

Some of the stories are actually quite funny, at least to me.

Worth reading if just for Ligotti's unique vision. ( )

Alright, I keep trying to read reviews on this gosh-dang book, and everyone's gone all namby-pamby poetic on me. I mean, I half-get what they're saying, but, plain English please? I dunno, maybe I'm the only one, maybe I'm just dang-ol' stupid :P, but point being is I'm gonna try to make my review easy-to-read for all y'all, so I hope you get it too!

Teatro Grottesco's tight: it's prose is always professional, and casts these REAL interesting images of decay (if you look at the cover, yeah, the imagery looks like the cover.)

There's also this cool theme that all these reviewers have a right to mention, and it's that, the more you try to understand an object, the difficult it is to understand. You know what I mean? Here, the way they do it in this book is that there'll be this interesting anomaly, and you'll be like "Oh! is this supernatural?" And then Ligotti keeps describing it and your like "Wait, is this symbolic?" And then Ligotti keeps describing it and you're like "Okay, maybe it's both? Like, the supernatural thing has multiple functions and it all elaborates to some complex symbol I can't quite understand?" And then ending comes where everything's gone to hell, or the worst ultimatum possible, or the coldest resignation a human can endure, and you're like "Wait, What?!"

And that's my biggest problem: I'm just too confused! I know that's the point of it - you're never meant to understand what's going on, and that's suppose to be scare you because, if the bad thing starts hurting you worse the more you understand it, then what chance do you get? - but for me, the book just makes it sound irritating. Let me put it this way: it's like when you pick up a hobby, start to learn it, get pretty good at it, feeling proud, got a smile going, and then next thing you know you hit a dip and it feels like the end of the world.

I dunno, the idea's scary enough in-concept, but I just can't help but think it doesn't work for a short-story collection. I've seen it done better (Annihilation? That book was beautiful!), but this ain't for me. All in all, the book sounds pretty with all it's decaying imagery, it's working with a great theme, but I don't vibe with it, and honestly, I'm getting a headache the more I try to wrap my head around it.

Probably gonna read it again next year and give it 5/5 stars knowing me :I ( )

Ligotti hooked me through his philosophical treatise The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. HIs pure pessimistic-nihilism intrigued me: it is better not to exist at all, consciousness is not a gift but pain.

The stories in this collection are an embodiment of this philosophy, often extending it to its highest conclusion.

Of all the stories, the one that captivated me most was the one with the bungalow. Ligotti captures the feeling of loneliness and isolation terrifyingly well, focusing not just on the concept of being truly alone but also at the pure annihilating aspect of it on the psyche.

The final story with Grossvogel is another standout. His thesis: there’s an underlying shadow in the world that must be experienced through the body. This shadow not just permeates through everything, it also destroys any and all meaning that dares to come near it. Ultimately, there’s no light, no hope, no dreams, just pure, black nonexistence. And isn’t that sweet? The joy of not existing at all.

I hope Ligotti produces even more stories, but the next time around, please skip the Lovecraftian language. It feels derivative rather than nostalgic at this point. It’s also a chore to read. ( )

I've heard Ligotti can be an acquired taste, and also that this isn't an ideal first work to read from him; based on this introduction, it's easy to see that being true, but I do plan to try another of his works.

This collection was rather hit-and-miss for me. There were a few stories that I loved, particularly in the first two sections of the work. There were others that felt almost nonsensical, and I'm honestly not sure if that had more to do with the story/writing, my own patience with the stories, or the fact that I was reading this book straight through for a book club even though I suspect it would be much more enjoyable if the stories were spaced out in time. And, admittedly, there was still a third category of story, where Ligotti had me entranced right up till the last few pages, at which point it felt like things would either simply stop, anticlimactic as the ending was, or rush into some form of chaos that felt like it brought the whole story down.

All that said, there were moments where I absolutely fell in love with Ligotti's language and scenarios, dismal as most all of them were. I'm looking forward to trying him again, though I'll take a break first since one of my issues with this collection really was that it felt too one-note, and a bit heavier on atmosphere than story in some spots, which grew wearing after a while. I would certainly recommend horror lovers try him at some point, to see if he's their cup of tea, but I'm not so sure this is the book to start with. ( )