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vondav's review
5.0
What attracted me to this book was the title. Like everyone else I had heard of the Heimlich manoeuvre but not the unheimlich manoeuvre and thanks to an informative introduction by Cate Gardner, I now know that it is a German word meaning uncanny or weird and these 14 short stories were spot on with this definition.
The stories that stood out for me were:
Coming Back is a story about a girl coming out of a coma and the after effects of her recovery. With the help of a mysterious visitor, she makes some life changes. Reading this you wonder how many people had gone through what she did and the changes they made.
The Woman Next Door is a story about a new mom. Whilst I was reading this I was thinking back to when I had my children and the tiredness I felt trying to run a household and looking after a new baby, but the ending is every mom’s nightmare and was unexpected, a great twist.
Sealed is the story of a young girl with agoraphobia. I read this story thinking that she also had OCD, but as the story developed, my heart went out to her when I read the reason for her condition. I cheered at the end and I do hope that she did escape her surroundings.
Finding out that this was Tracy’s first published book was a surprise and I hope that I get to read more of her work. All the stories are full of tension and I got immersed in each story to the point that when I finished it left me thinking what would I do in that situation? Or What would I have done different? I enjoyed reading every story and I hope that Tracy will publish more of her short stories.
The stories that stood out for me were:
Coming Back is a story about a girl coming out of a coma and the after effects of her recovery. With the help of a mysterious visitor, she makes some life changes. Reading this you wonder how many people had gone through what she did and the changes they made.
The Woman Next Door is a story about a new mom. Whilst I was reading this I was thinking back to when I had my children and the tiredness I felt trying to run a household and looking after a new baby, but the ending is every mom’s nightmare and was unexpected, a great twist.
Sealed is the story of a young girl with agoraphobia. I read this story thinking that she also had OCD, but as the story developed, my heart went out to her when I read the reason for her condition. I cheered at the end and I do hope that she did escape her surroundings.
Finding out that this was Tracy’s first published book was a surprise and I hope that I get to read more of her work. All the stories are full of tension and I got immersed in each story to the point that when I finished it left me thinking what would I do in that situation? Or What would I have done different? I enjoyed reading every story and I hope that Tracy will publish more of her short stories.
thomaswjoyce's review against another edition
5.0
Fahey clearly has a style all of her own. It feels very gothic, but the stories mostly have modern settings. Perhaps this is not new, but it felt very fresh to this reader. Stories set in present day housing estates and family situations, but with a classic sense of dread. Brilliant characters, captivating writing and plenty of dread. I'm so glad I picked up this book!
whatmeworry's review
4.0
This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com. I received a free copy of the book to review.
‘The Unheimlich Manoeuvre’ is a beguiling, unsettling collection of short stories that’s well worth your time if you have a taste for subtle, creepy horror. The 13 tales it contains are well written and varied enough to keep things interesting. Despite that variety, there are common themes running throughout the book that makes this feel like a well thought out, deliberate collection rather than the random hodgepodge that anthologies can sometimes be.
The stories are a mix of the out and out supernatural and what you might call tales of everyday madness, where apparently normal people do unspeakable things. There are ghostly doppelgangers, psychotic spouses, haunted houses and many, many things seen out of the corner of characters' eyes.
This is the horror of suspicion and doubt, where you don’t know if you can trust those around you or your own senses. At times it almost feels Lovecraftian, there is that same feeling of ever present threats lurking unseen in the shadows. Whilst there aren’t any direct ties between them, the stories all feel like they take place in the same universe. This creates a cumulative effect through the book, the terror of each story layering on that of the tales that precede it. It’s as if Fahey is painting different parts of a bigger picture with each story, and whilst that picture isn’t necessarily complete by the end of the book, the parts that are visible are terrifying.
The stories are also tied together by a sense of domesticity. The lives and environments that they revolve around are familiar and consistent. The women Fahey writes about (and the main characters are all women) are convincing and sympathetic. They feel like people you might know, and that makes the stories all the more chilling. It’s as if the events might be taking place in the house next door to you without you knowing.
Short stories can be hard to get right, but Fahey writes such brilliant openings that the reader is immediately pulled you into the narrative. Take these examples:
I’m writing the story of me and Charles Anderson. It’s a story from the year I turned twenty and went travelling. It’s a story of where we went and what came back.
On the third day she finds it on the attic wall. She’s in the middle of the slow but satisfying ritual of stripping wallpaper; first soaking, and then unpeeling back the thick flaps of flock wallpaper from the green-painted plaster beneath.
Ten days after. Everything in my life falls neatly into two divisions: before and after I saw something nasty in the woodshed.
Horror shorts can feel gimmicky, like elaborate shaggy dog stories that revolve around the final punchline, but Fahey’s never do. They leap off the page fully formed and the combination of enticingly creepy scenarios and believable characters is a winning one.
I’ve quite deliberately not gone into detail about any of the individual stories here, because I liked them so much I don’t want to risk spoiling them for you. Suffice it to say that this was the best collection of horror shorts I’ve read this year - it’s convincing, gripping, chilling and filled with a wonderfully macabre imagination.
‘The Unheimlich Manoeuvre’ is a beguiling, unsettling collection of short stories that’s well worth your time if you have a taste for subtle, creepy horror. The 13 tales it contains are well written and varied enough to keep things interesting. Despite that variety, there are common themes running throughout the book that makes this feel like a well thought out, deliberate collection rather than the random hodgepodge that anthologies can sometimes be.
The stories are a mix of the out and out supernatural and what you might call tales of everyday madness, where apparently normal people do unspeakable things. There are ghostly doppelgangers, psychotic spouses, haunted houses and many, many things seen out of the corner of characters' eyes.
This is the horror of suspicion and doubt, where you don’t know if you can trust those around you or your own senses. At times it almost feels Lovecraftian, there is that same feeling of ever present threats lurking unseen in the shadows. Whilst there aren’t any direct ties between them, the stories all feel like they take place in the same universe. This creates a cumulative effect through the book, the terror of each story layering on that of the tales that precede it. It’s as if Fahey is painting different parts of a bigger picture with each story, and whilst that picture isn’t necessarily complete by the end of the book, the parts that are visible are terrifying.
The stories are also tied together by a sense of domesticity. The lives and environments that they revolve around are familiar and consistent. The women Fahey writes about (and the main characters are all women) are convincing and sympathetic. They feel like people you might know, and that makes the stories all the more chilling. It’s as if the events might be taking place in the house next door to you without you knowing.
Short stories can be hard to get right, but Fahey writes such brilliant openings that the reader is immediately pulled you into the narrative. Take these examples:
I’m writing the story of me and Charles Anderson. It’s a story from the year I turned twenty and went travelling. It’s a story of where we went and what came back.
On the third day she finds it on the attic wall. She’s in the middle of the slow but satisfying ritual of stripping wallpaper; first soaking, and then unpeeling back the thick flaps of flock wallpaper from the green-painted plaster beneath.
Ten days after. Everything in my life falls neatly into two divisions: before and after I saw something nasty in the woodshed.
Horror shorts can feel gimmicky, like elaborate shaggy dog stories that revolve around the final punchline, but Fahey’s never do. They leap off the page fully formed and the combination of enticingly creepy scenarios and believable characters is a winning one.
I’ve quite deliberately not gone into detail about any of the individual stories here, because I liked them so much I don’t want to risk spoiling them for you. Suffice it to say that this was the best collection of horror shorts I’ve read this year - it’s convincing, gripping, chilling and filled with a wonderfully macabre imagination.
stranger_sights's review against another edition
4.0
You can see my full review (and all of my other complete reviews) at https://wordpress.com/posts/mediadrome.wordpress.com
Rounded up from 3.5-4 stars for GoodReads.
Overall, this was a great collection of stories. I wish I could rate it higher, because what I liked (which was most of it), I liked a lot, but Two Faced really tanked it for me. If you have some insight into that one, I’d really love to hear it because it really just missed for me in a big way.
That being said, I still think that everyone should go out and buy the new edition (out today) from Sinister Horror Company because I promise, it’s worth a read.
Rounded up from 3.5-4 stars for GoodReads.
Overall, this was a great collection of stories. I wish I could rate it higher, because what I liked (which was most of it), I liked a lot, but Two Faced really tanked it for me. If you have some insight into that one, I’d really love to hear it because it really just missed for me in a big way.
That being said, I still think that everyone should go out and buy the new edition (out today) from Sinister Horror Company because I promise, it’s worth a read.
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