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sarahsd's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
callymac's review against another edition
4.0
Neil Gaiman said that "You know his stories, even if you think you don't." I, for one, realised I knew his stories from The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror episodes and "The Scary Door" in Futurama.
In these stories one of the characters is always paranoid about some sort of supernatural phenomena dogging their steps, sabotaging their lives, haunting them in every way -- and then by the end it transpires these things are ridiculous and entirely real. Totally genius.
My favourite stories were "Blood Son", "Death Ship", "Button, Button", "The Funeral", "Long Distance Call", "The Holiday Man" and "The Duel."
In these stories one of the characters is always paranoid about some sort of supernatural phenomena dogging their steps, sabotaging their lives, haunting them in every way -- and then by the end it transpires these things are ridiculous and entirely real. Totally genius.
My favourite stories were "Blood Son", "Death Ship", "Button, Button", "The Funeral", "Long Distance Call", "The Holiday Man" and "The Duel."
jdhacker's review
3.0
Full disclosure, I received a free copy of this for review purposes.
For starters, I while I will not claim to have read/watched everything Richard Matheson has written, I have read the vast majority of it. I’m not sure that was an advantage going into this new ‘best of’ collection.
Honestly, I’m a little unclear what Penguin was going for with this collection, something which is made no more clear from the introduction (did that writer also select/organize the collection? Was he just an author/fan selected to write the intro?). Having read the majority of his work, I wouldn’t necessarily call this a best of even his short fiction. While there are some real gems in this collection, there are also startling omissions if that was the point, and there are some real snoozers included. Nor is it necessarily a collection of his most well known works...because again there are some obvious stars (several twilight zone episodes, for example), there are a lot of obscure ephemera as well. It’s certainly not selected and organized to show developments or authorial trends over time, as publication dates are not included (and the various stories are in fact not arranged in chronological order). They don’t seem to be selected based on genre (sf, horror, film, tv), or even have the most representative example of each chosen. So mostly I did a lot of head scratching while recovering literary territory some of which I enjoy a great deal and some of which I don’t particularly care for. I think Penguin needed to put a little more thought into this overall, and if you want a good completionist set of Matheson short fiction i’d Instead recommend this three volume set (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219539.Collected_Stories_Vol_1).
The intro isn’t particularly illuminating as to overarching point, but does make an interesting observation. The author of the intro states this collection gave him something Matheson has always given him, this sense of sudden intrusion of the strange/bizarre/unreal into the otherwise ordinary. He then goes on to relate a personal experience reflective of this experience and draws parallels between that experience and the stories. After digesting so much Matheson, that was never my take-away, instead I always saw these dysfunctional relationships (romantic or otherwise) between men and women at the heart of his writing (perhaps reflective of the views of women and their role in society during much of his prime writing years). But perhaps that is the real genius of Matheson’s concise, easily accessible, uncomplicated writing: like the cave on Dagobah, we can each get from it what we bring to it. It’s very directness and lack of ornamentation allows us to read into it what we are predisposed to find there.
For starters, I while I will not claim to have read/watched everything Richard Matheson has written, I have read the vast majority of it. I’m not sure that was an advantage going into this new ‘best of’ collection.
Honestly, I’m a little unclear what Penguin was going for with this collection, something which is made no more clear from the introduction (did that writer also select/organize the collection? Was he just an author/fan selected to write the intro?). Having read the majority of his work, I wouldn’t necessarily call this a best of even his short fiction. While there are some real gems in this collection, there are also startling omissions if that was the point, and there are some real snoozers included. Nor is it necessarily a collection of his most well known works...because again there are some obvious stars (several twilight zone episodes, for example), there are a lot of obscure ephemera as well. It’s certainly not selected and organized to show developments or authorial trends over time, as publication dates are not included (and the various stories are in fact not arranged in chronological order). They don’t seem to be selected based on genre (sf, horror, film, tv), or even have the most representative example of each chosen. So mostly I did a lot of head scratching while recovering literary territory some of which I enjoy a great deal and some of which I don’t particularly care for. I think Penguin needed to put a little more thought into this overall, and if you want a good completionist set of Matheson short fiction i’d Instead recommend this three volume set (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219539.Collected_Stories_Vol_1).
The intro isn’t particularly illuminating as to overarching point, but does make an interesting observation. The author of the intro states this collection gave him something Matheson has always given him, this sense of sudden intrusion of the strange/bizarre/unreal into the otherwise ordinary. He then goes on to relate a personal experience reflective of this experience and draws parallels between that experience and the stories. After digesting so much Matheson, that was never my take-away, instead I always saw these dysfunctional relationships (romantic or otherwise) between men and women at the heart of his writing (perhaps reflective of the views of women and their role in society during much of his prime writing years). But perhaps that is the real genius of Matheson’s concise, easily accessible, uncomplicated writing: like the cave on Dagobah, we can each get from it what we bring to it. It’s very directness and lack of ornamentation allows us to read into it what we are predisposed to find there.
cliff's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
3.5
joebathelt's review against another edition
4.0
This is an anthology of short stories by Richard Matheson selected by Victor Lavalle. I came across the author in an article about the origin of horror tropes in popular culture and, indeed, gained some insight by reading this collection. Despite their age, many of the stories seem instantly familiar. In fact, reading this book feels a bit like reading the plot of B-movies from the 60s. Richard Matheson clearly had a knack for creating an atmosphere of suspense and dread. Even seemingly mundane activities like driving on a motorway, buying a statue from a flea market, or going Christmas shopping can be transformed into utterly horrifying experiences. His writing style is very sparse, one might even say simplistic, and feels a bit like reading a story from a pulp magazine. The anthology provides a broad selection of quite different stories. Some of the stories are certainly more compelling than others, and some have aged better than others. This is a great book to read for any horror fan. Especially avid readers of Stephen King will probably see the influence of Matheson. For other readers, the book will open a fresh appreciation of the cultural root of the horror and suspense genre in American pulp fiction from the middle of the last century. Even for readers without any of these interests, the book should be enjoyable to read for the pure pleasure of well-crafted suspense in bite-sized stories.