Huh?

This book is an art book. Not a book about art, but art in the form of the written word and placed in a book. It is truly my idea of great literature-full of metaphor, pain, joy, reality and dreamscape. It is a memoir weaved with daydream and night dream weaved with universal truths. It Is haunting and beautiful. It is the work of a husband and wife team bravely revealing their deepest fears, hopes and experiences-the contents of their souls. There are many sentences in this book that I know wil...

This is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, part fiction, part biography, moving, disturbing, vibrant and unforgettable. It wipes the floor with many Booker nominees and other "literary" works.

Wow, I'm speechless. Is this really supposed to be a horror book? The only horror here is that I paid 15 bucks for this book and spent time that I'll never get back reading it. Thats the true horror!!I really am at a loss for words. I'm scratching my head, not understanding the world anymore. What just happened? Was I just hit by a bus and am now in a coma, playing out my own version of hell- making me read things so bad I want to pull the plug?The opening of the book states: Everything we're a...

It's not really memoir or fantasy or horror, yet somehow it is a bit of all three. At it's core, this book is simply the tale of Steve and Melanie, their lives, their life together, their children, and in the midst of it the heartbreak of loss and need to understand.I would place this along the lines of literary fiction more than anything, and that's ok, because a story is just story; but this story is well written and engaging. It is really a collection of little stories that let the reader pee...

“Sometimes not getting there is half the fun.”Like Zeno’s Paradox? Or a tontine of one’s children reversed? Until I reach beyond the ceiling towards the God and Goddess, both as one. The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

Co-written by husband and wife horror writers, this is among the most beautiful melding of fiction and autobiographical non-fiction that I've encountered. What's real and fact is ever-moving...but, as they say, "everything we're about to tell you is true." I recommend this intensely, however hard it is to read in its pain.The authors adopt children from haunted pasts, and... I'm not going to say what happens, this horrific, incomprehensible thing. Their book is the writers' way of coping, of hea...

This book is hard to describe. It is hard to pin down what the actual meaning of the book is and I think every reader reading it could take something different from this book. I wouldn't label this books as horror, unless horror is realizing that all families live, die and have skeletons that float around them.It's the perfect book to read when I need to get a flare of artistic brilliant. It is so beautifully written that endless ideas flow and it's the perfect solutions to artist's block.

This was written by Steve Tem and his wife Melanie Tem - I was impressed at how they wove their two styles and voices together - the organization of the book left me slightly unsatisfied - but Steve said it himself at one point late in the book - that he hadn't expected to say so much and yet he hadn't said much at all - that's how it always is with my own writing - I recommend this book to anyone who likes surrealism and poetic fiction (nonfiction)

I didn't particularly like this book. I was looking for a regular novel with a continuous story line. This book isn't bad, though. It brings up interesting ideas about memories and fears which are presented with poetic and abstract writing as well as straight narrative. It talks A LOT about parenthood which I just don't relate to, therefore I got bored and took it back to the library before finishing.

I finished this book today and I am still not quite sure what it is about. I am leaning towards thinking that it is about absolutely nothing at all. Apparently, this novel stems from a novella that won many awards. If that is the case, lengthening the novella to novel size and sucked dry any meaning or feeling the authors originally intended. I would give this 1 star, but as I actually managed to finish it, the book gets 2 from me.

The emperor has no clothes.

So just like what I've said before, I only bought this book because of the awesome cover. Then I just realized that the book also won three major awards namely Bram Stoker, and the two awards I forgot. So I was assuming that it must be a REALLY, REALLY GREAT book. Well, my expectations didn't really satisfy nor failed me. For me the book was caught up between good and okay. I like the story of the creepy man on the ceiling that torments the Terms, although that story didn't develop and bloom at

I wanted to like this book. From the description on the back cover, I thought I would. After all, it won the Bram Stoker Award, International Horror Guild Award, and World Fantasy Award. But I didn't care for it. It wasn't horribly written. In fact, the writing style of both Melanie and Steve are easily readable. However, toward the end there's a passage about floating. I marked the page because that's how I felt reading the book. I felt like I had floated through all 300+ pages, buoyed by the s...

"She wanted to go there with him. She didn't ever want to go there." Yep, that kind of sums is up. Never quite sure what the Hell this book was or what it was trying to accomplish -- whether it was fantasy, horror, memoire or even some unclassifiable combination of any or none of the above -- The Tems gave a go of spinning a tale of family, marriage, loss and life, only to succeed in making our (the readers') heads spin. The book comes off more like a dream than anything, and as with most halluc...

Unlike anything I’ve ever read. I’m not sure I can even say I enjoyed ALL of it, but the sheer creativity of it is undeniably admirable and transfixing, and, as a writer (as much as I can call myself one), I found myself very inspired by it. If nothing else, reading this sure counts as one heck of an experience.

Steve Rasnic is a familiar name if u read horror anthologies. His surreal stories never fail to leave an impression.But this book, co-written with wife Melanie, is an expansion of a novella that won 3 major awards - World Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award and The International Horror Guild Award. Does it mean it's that good? Not quite. It just means that this books is hard to categorise into any one genre.Written as a memoir of themselves, Steve and Melanie take turns writing the narrative from t...

The cover says "A Novel {maybe}" and the two narrators are named Steve and Melanie Tem, and they talk about family life in intimate ways, so maybe it is autobiography, but with certain fantasy elements. (It's in the fantasy section of my library.) The book was based on a novella of the same name which won several prizes in the horror/fantasy world. The gist: The narrators talk about storytelling (both are writers) and their relationship with each other, and their relationships with their 5 adopt...

If you're looking for 'traditional' horror, you will HATE this book. There aren't any vampires, werewolves or Lovecraftian creatures lurking about; instead the horrors here are a bit more hidden and much more common.If you don't want enlarge, expand, or transcend what your definition of 'horror' is, then don't even bother with this... there are plenty of other books out there that'll make your reading experience happier.

It says something when the best thing about a book is it's cover art. I did sorta like it, but after the awesome title chapter, it really went downhill. The book becomes overlong and extremely repetitive. The book did not live up to the potential of the novella which forms the title chapter. The novella is awesome and most definitely worth reading. It's a shame that the rest of the book isn't better. So much of it feels cobbled together, and unnecessary. Why did they include that here? And why d...