A review by the_original_shelf_monkey
Sarah Court by Craig Davidson

5.0

Through every tale, there are hints of unnamable corruption, usually in the guise of animals or elements of the corporeal body, reminding me of nothing so much as filmmaker David Lynch and his genius at creating unclassifiable dread. Red spider mites teem in a deer’s eyes, “so many as to give the impression it’s weeping blood.” A can of paint has “the hue of diseased organ meat.” Squirrels abound in Sarah Court, somehow playful yet harbingers of some interior evil a la the sinister owls in Lynch’s Twin Peaks. “The owls are not what they seem.” And in several tales there is the presence of a perplexing transparent box holding “a squirming mass the size of a medicine ball.”

While Davidson wreaks some sinister havoc on his characters, there is a grounding in reality that keeps Sarah Court from becoming weird for weird’s sake. There is an outlying supernatural element, but Davidson’s horror is far more the horror of character, of people causing unconscious destruction through their own ill-conceived desires. No resident of Sarah Court gets off unscathed; there are emotional cripplings, physical disfigurements, and mental implosions. There is also good, a desire to rise above the fray, making the climax of each story almost overpowering in each person’s sad realizations of their weaknesses.

Read the rest of the review here.