Subscribe to Read | $0.00
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Read Anywhere and on Any Device!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Bring it on. I can’t do justice to this story. The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.Above is one of its observations.
****1/2Readers who love a good supernatural story can find a lot to enjoy in Glen Hirshberg's short fiction. His second volume, "American Morons," is filled with the same spooky atmosphere, powerful reveals, and engaging writing as his first, "The Two Sams," one of my favorite macabre collections.In the titular story, two young Americans feel the tightening grip of fear in an unknown place. On vacation in Europe, their car brakes down. Large, soft-spoken men come to their aide, but it takes litt...
Not sure how any of this is "horror." If people having bad days, folks arguing about interpersonal BS, or walks in lonely places TERRIFY you, this is your book. Unbelievably plodding, boring, seemingly pointless. Paints some atmosphere, but not a scary one. If this type of uninteresting, un-scary, non-engaging writing is "horror" then I don't know what isn't. Try reading the New Yorker - that's the same level of horror on display here.
Hirshberg writes generally strong, atmospheric dread. These are pretty consistently strong stories, but none broke out to beat me down as did "The Two Sams" in his last collection. It's kind of unfair, that I now deploy one of the best horror stories I've read in some time to measure his other work as somehow smaller, or less engaging. But for newbies, and horror fans uninterested in the splatter or punk ends of the genre--you really cannot go wrong with Hirshberg.
I actually want to give this 3.5 stars. It started off strong, but none of the stories were as good as the one I heard on Pseudopod: The Nimble Men. There was some great stuff in here and at times I found his writing to be incredibly lucid. I look forward to reading more of his work.
Cemetary Dance bookBeing from SoCal I enjoyed the locations in the stories since South Central & Long Beach aren't usually where stories take place. This is what I call understated, quiet horror.
Non scary horror - until you sit back and think about what he actually said. Subtle, odd, all around good read.
Well I did not give it any stars cause I just could not read it. I tried to read the first two stories but could not get into it I am not a fan of short stories, but I thought I would give it a try because I like his first novel The Snowman's Children. If you like short stories then you might like this book.
Completely mischaracterised as horror, these are in fact deftly-written contemporary short stories with varying degrees of eeriness. The title story, in which a breakdown on the autostrada exposes the fragility of an American couple's relationship, is particularly unsettling. The other stand-outs for me were "Safety Clowns" and "Flowers on their Bridles, Hooves in the Air" with its King-esque journey into a haunted amusement arcade and background love triangle. The last two or three tales didn't...
I gobbled this book up in three days, which says something for me. I wanted to get home from whatever I was doing so I could read more. I found the stories amazing, especially "Safety Clowns." I had to ask myself, “What would I have done?” "Like a Lily in a Flood" made me go “ah-ha!” With the author’s use of one word, the entire meaning of the story was released. The story about the amusement park made me uneasy and when the characters made a decision that surprised me (I don’t want to release a...
Some of these stories may seem innocuous right after you finish them, but the creepiness of them will catch up to you.
Great short stories that slowly and imperceptibly build up an atmosphere of dread. “Devil’s Smile” may be the singularly most unnerving story I have ever read.
Has its moments, but tries too hard, and after the first story I only had to read the first half of every subsequent story.
The most effective moments in these horror stories are not the bursts of shocking violence or grotesque imagery, but the quietly hideous ways people betray and torment one another, and the ways in which we are powerless as time, illness, and other forces beyond our control bear the things we love best in the world away. Hirshberg's warm, moving depictions of friendship, family relationships, and romantic love make those moments all the more wrenching. He's got a real knack for slow-boil tension
4.5 starshttp://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
I've read a few of these stories in other compilations, but all in all, not bad.
American Morons is a very solid collection of horror short stories. Hirshberg's stories take time to draw you in, with a slowly building atmosphere of menace and chill and "wrongness", often capped with a creepy or twist. The titular piece features a bickering young American couple on vacation in Italy who find themselves in a potentially dangerous situation when their car breaks down along the highway. "Flowers on their Bridles, Hooves in the Air" has a vaguely Stephen King-like feel to it, whe...
This collection falls under the horror genre, but I think they expand beyond the borders of horror. To be honest, I've been disappointed by many short-story collections, so I kind of had low expectations for this collection and was happy to have been wrong! But they were well written, and haunting and sometimes creepy, and, most importantly, they felt new, not like there were just copies or rewrites of other stories.
Ghosts - not the Hollywood special effects sort, but the type that humans create in their own minds - are at the core of this award winning collection of short stories. The believable characters’ lives extend beyond the pages, and they are put into situations where the familiar becomes horrific. Hirshberg creates a shadowy mood, not without a dark sense of humor, and masterfully fashions the endings of his tales.
Couple of stories in here were simply terrific - spooky but rarely gory
