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tbr_the_unconquered 's review for:
Horowitz Horror: Stories You'll Wish You Never Read
by Anthony Horowitz
The first horror story I remember reading was Dracula in its English version but truth be told I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Imagine for a moment a ten or eleven year old kid who has not had any exposure to reading other than Enid Blyton and Hardy Boys trying his hand at an unabridged version of Dracula. The conclusion can quite obviously be drawn that the book almost put me to sleep in the first try. It was quite a while later that I read a Malayalam translation of the work which did appear watered down a bit but did not lose even a bit of its brooding and terrifying aura.
This is quite a nasty habit of mine that totally unrelated images from the past pop up as I sit down to write and stitching them into the review is something I love doing. This one however made a weird sort of sense now that I think about it. A short story collection such as this if discovered during my childhood days might have brought me much closer to horror as a genre. Horowitz successfully puts together a collection of shorts aimed at a young audience who might just be getting their introduction into the space of the horror short story.
There are a few themes in this book which interestingly recur across multiple tales. The first is the use of common place items as objects of dread. A safe and serene household undergoes brutal transformations under the spell of such items. They might seem harmless enough – a camera, a computer, a bath tub and so on but the havoc they wreak in the lives of people is rather unimaginable. The second recurring theme is of karma catching up with boys and a lady (that again was an amusing part, all the bullies and baddies are young men and in one odd tale a cantankerous and caustic woman) who have been particularly nasty in their lives through the most supernatural ways possible. While they seem to relish in their ways of being rude and overall bullies, karma does repay them in kind in these tales. The way these stories are written, I did feel that the author does seem to enjoy meting out these retributions on them. The third and last theme I observed was of innocent bystanders getting caught in the backdraft of circumstances and forces that are inexplicable. Here again the bewilderment and helplessness of the people involved are captured well by the author in sometimes horrifying and in a couple of stories, darkly comical tones.
If you are a younger reader starting off on horror, this would be a good point to start. If you are an adult, then sit back and enjoy a quick ride through stories that might have given you a chill if you read this as a kid. Recommended !
This is quite a nasty habit of mine that totally unrelated images from the past pop up as I sit down to write and stitching them into the review is something I love doing. This one however made a weird sort of sense now that I think about it. A short story collection such as this if discovered during my childhood days might have brought me much closer to horror as a genre. Horowitz successfully puts together a collection of shorts aimed at a young audience who might just be getting their introduction into the space of the horror short story.
There are a few themes in this book which interestingly recur across multiple tales. The first is the use of common place items as objects of dread. A safe and serene household undergoes brutal transformations under the spell of such items. They might seem harmless enough – a camera, a computer, a bath tub and so on but the havoc they wreak in the lives of people is rather unimaginable. The second recurring theme is of karma catching up with boys and a lady (that again was an amusing part, all the bullies and baddies are young men and in one odd tale a cantankerous and caustic woman) who have been particularly nasty in their lives through the most supernatural ways possible. While they seem to relish in their ways of being rude and overall bullies, karma does repay them in kind in these tales. The way these stories are written, I did feel that the author does seem to enjoy meting out these retributions on them. The third and last theme I observed was of innocent bystanders getting caught in the backdraft of circumstances and forces that are inexplicable. Here again the bewilderment and helplessness of the people involved are captured well by the author in sometimes horrifying and in a couple of stories, darkly comical tones.
If you are a younger reader starting off on horror, this would be a good point to start. If you are an adult, then sit back and enjoy a quick ride through stories that might have given you a chill if you read this as a kid. Recommended !