Scan barcode
rowan5215's review
5.0
Robert Shearman is not like any other writer you've read. Everyone's Just So So Special is half short story collection and half novel, with the novel hiding amongst a series of increasingly ridiculous and bizarre historical events, only fully revealing itself as you get towards the end of the book. In between these historical sections is a set of short stories that show why Shearman is the finest horror writer of his age. It's hard to decide whether his disturbing, off-brand black humour or the frustratingly mediocre people who populate his stories are the scarier part, especially when he keeps driving home how special they had the opportunity to be and failed. Ultimately these are stories of emotionally crippled, lost people wandering through a bunch of metaphors made literal, and what physical horror there is is just window dressing for the real horror underneath - the entirely mundane horror of being totally uninteresting and uninterested.
More...