A mix of sci-fi, slipstream, and literary fiction, all tinged with horror. A lot of these had amazing build-ups with pretty disappointing endings, but Evenson’s prose is beautiful and his stories are strange and tense enough that I enjoyed this collection overall. There were some common motifs here, which I always love to see with short story authors; in this case, Evenson seems fixated on that which is always just outside the field of vision, beings that can slip inside human skin, and the onset of psychosis made concrete. (For example on the last one: a man believes he is always being watched, despite there being no physical evidence of this. In real life, this is the beginning of a psychotic delusion. In Evenson’s world, these events are either the fault of something supernatural, or they live in a liminal space between real and imagined.)

Here’s a list of my favorite stories. I would summarize them, but I think the best way to experience Evenson’s writing is to go into it 100% blind:

Leaking Out

Sisters

The Tower

Smear 

Line of Sight 

Also: “Trigger Warning” makes more sense once you know Evenson’s history at BYU and cut ties with the LDS church. I’m not crazy for this one, since it’s more of a rant than a story, but the context adds a depth that many trigger warning satires lack.