Reviews

Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories by Brian Evenson

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gae6ase's review

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5.0

Phenomenal. Review coming soon.

lordenglishssbm's review

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2.0

There are some solid stories here, but the majority are lacking, and while his exploration of paranoia is interesting, the stylistic choices Evenson uses to evoke paranoia are so similar between the stories that they gave away some of the twists. Evenson has a good eye for horror imagery and is good at capturing mental states, but rarely manages to combine both these talents in the same story, and so many of them don't feel meaningful. I think Leaking Out, The Second Door, Shirts and Skins and Line of Sight are standouts, with Trigger Warnings being a fun little experiment that maybe goes on for a bit too long, but does provide a nice change of pace. The rest of them have nice moments, but they either didn't stick with me or felt a bit too similar to the stories I liked (There are three stories in this collection about a film director who becomes obsessed with his work to the point of insanity).

hotmessick's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

2.0

corsaer's review

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3.0

An alright collection. I appreciate how short most of the stories were. The ones I didn't like were over quite quickly, and the ones I did were quite interesting and engaging. I also feel like I don't see it that often which weights it a little higher in my opinion. Too many stories felt like like the same theme in the collection though: a guy somewhere observes something weird; or maybe he didn't; and it slowly drives him crazy. Fin. Also, I particularly liked though that there was a selection of sci-fi in this collection.

gewidder's review

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4.0

This was my first time reading Brian Evenson. I was certainly intrigued by his style, it is no wonder he is hailed as a master of the short form. He knows how to draw the reader in and create tension, horror, and curiosity immediately, as best exemplified by the first sentence of the first story: "No matter which way we turned the girl, she didn't have a face."
I love how he can build worlds so fully with so little, within only a few pages of a short story. I especially liked "The Tower" in that regard, which unfolded in my imagination so easily with just suggestions of what that world was. The atmosphere of it was so tangible, I was completely enveloped in it. For the short time it took to read the story it felt like I had read a novel or watched a feature-length film.
I'm also amazed that these short stories, as much as they range in genre and which he wrote at different times over the years, have so much cohesion. They work really well together in this collection, maybe with the exception of "Trigger Warnings," which I didn't enjoy as much as the rest. Overall, a wonderfully unsettling, curious collection of tales, masterfully written.