Reviews

Black Bark by Brian Evenson, Ramón de Ocampo

ambience's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.5

magicmarc's review

1.0

1/5 estrellas.

Tres veces lo escuché para darle otra oportunidad. TRES. Y no, no vale la pena.

quirkycatsfatstacks's review

3.0

Black Bark is a story within a story, and it might just be the first of that style I've read within the horror genre (more because I've only recently started delving into it). It was interesting, with intentional obfuscation to be found, though it feels like it started and stopped in the middle.

connoras's review

2.0

Was this really 28 minutes long? To get nowhere? Ok then.
I'd give it 1 star, except I want to know what the story of

Spoiler

"not Black Bark"

is. (Lol at hiding that "spoiler"... what does it spoil?!)

pranavroh's review

2.0

I gave the first Evenson story in this collection a high rating but lengthen the story and you start seeing the problems with Evenson's writing. Black Bark is a story of two cowboys on the run. It uses the story within story technique but the second story means nothing. It is imaginative and disquieting and works on the same level as the short story (by Evenson) that opens this anthology but married to this larger story with cowboys and a chase it begs context and seems thrown in to confuse more than unsettle. The ending makes this tactic even more obvious. I strongly believe that most short fiction should attempt to mean something, even if the meaning isn't apparent. Evenson seems to try and confuse and makes use of the universal confusion to pass his stories off as high art.