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mikekaz's review
3.0
Peter Straub definitely knows how to hook a reader and seduce that person with his writing. Straub's style is poetic and lyrical. He is a master at crafting a scene and pulling the imagery through to the reader. This remains true for his characters too which evolve into fully dimensional characters. With all the images being created, his stories generally take a little while to build up; when they do get that time, they are awesome. This book is a collection of five short stories and unfortunately, none of the stories really have the length that they need to become gripping.
"Little Red's Tango" is a great character visualization; the short pulls multiple scenes together to illustrate a guy named Little Red. However, there is no story; it could have continued and revealed more of the characters or stopped earlier to reveal less.
"Lapland, or Film Noir" and "The Geezers" both had more story but not enough to pull me along.
"Donald, Duck" was the most interesting of the five. It revealed the life of Donald Duck and the rest of the Duck clan as they are beseeched by a Black Widow. A Black Widow that Donald is too love-blind to see.
And the final story "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle" fell into the same problem of not having enough story to actively engage me. The writing is gorgeous and very beautiful to picture but I was hoping for a bit more action to occur.
"Little Red's Tango" is a great character visualization; the short pulls multiple scenes together to illustrate a guy named Little Red. However, there is no story; it could have continued and revealed more of the characters or stopped earlier to reveal less.
"Lapland, or Film Noir" and "The Geezers" both had more story but not enough to pull me along.
"Donald, Duck" was the most interesting of the five. It revealed the life of Donald Duck and the rest of the Duck clan as they are beseeched by a Black Widow. A Black Widow that Donald is too love-blind to see.
And the final story "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle" fell into the same problem of not having enough story to actively engage me. The writing is gorgeous and very beautiful to picture but I was hoping for a bit more action to occur.
rsurban's review
5.0
What comes across when reading Peter Straub's fiction, and especially his short fiction, is his incredible wit and fierce intelligence, as well as his willingness to experiment with the tenets of both the short story and various genres. In his 2007 collection, 5 Stories, all of these qualities are in abundant display, whether he is examining the tropes of the "horror" story in "Little Red's Tango", the noir of "Lapland", the surreal Hollywood landscape of "Donald, Duck!", the mystery of "The Geezers" or the stylistic trappings of Robert Aickman's "strange fictions" in "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle" (which has much in common, tonally, with another of Straub's short classic, "Mrs. God"). While it may at times be difficult to puzzle out exactly what Straub's characters are doing, his bracing and daring constructions always leave the reader satisfied and enriched, and his sly humor can evoke belly laughs from even the most dire of circumstances. This is another fine addition to the masterful short work of Mr. Straub, and one waits with anticipation for his next collection of tales of the weird, unfathomably dark and delightfully diabolical.
nigellicus's review
5.0
Five great stories by Straub. A jazz guru, a noir nightmare, cartoon family skullduggery, a mysterious murder and a weird clinic - brilliantly written, witty, intelligent, strange and haunting. Straub's stories are often like puzzles, some of which reveal themselves by the end, others of which leave you wondering for days, and some of which are just downright ineffable.
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