To quote Pete Crowther, from the PS newsletter:
Let’s talk about Thana Niveau . . .
And, at the very same time, let’s you and me spare a word or two for the late great Ray Bradbury.
Yes, for as I sit typing this out on Thursday evening, with a drenching autumn storm battering both my office window and the gargoyle-festooned roof of the church opposite as it pools in the greensward, my mind has indeed turned albeit briefly to Bradbury. inspired to do so by Thana Niveau’s remarkable collection, OCTOBERLAND and yet I make it sound as though Bradbury is but a single entity when, in fact, he is several.
Yes, for sure, there are many Ray Bradburys. Multitudes even.
F’rinstance, there’s the Ray Bradbury who conceived the knife-wielding toddler in ‘The Small Assassin,’ for example; the one who wrote about the jangling-nerved murderer frantically trying to remove any evidence that he was ever in the death room (including polishing away the possibility of his fingerprints on ‘The fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl’); the one who penned the fable about two time-travelling Knights fresh from the Crusades facing up to a steam train; and, of course, the one who recounts the escapades of the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy trying to move a piano down some steps during one strange and foggy Los Angeles night.
All are wonderful, each is totally different.
And that single line right there says pretty much everything there is to say about Thana Niveau and the stories in OCTOBERLAND.
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Thana Niveau's stories feature people on the edge - the edge of death, the edge of sanity, the edge of reality. In this diverse collection, two sisters leave a trail of bodies behind them as they go on the run, desperate to outrun the dark secrets of their past. A film fan is haunted by the actress whose brutal horror films he can't stop watching. A child hears a ghostly voice through the radio reciting only numbers. And a young woman revisits the place she and her brother loved above all else - Octoberland - the strange amusement park that tore their world apart. Horror wears many faces here, from creeping dread to apocalyptic devastation, and no one escapes its dark touch.
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION by ALISON LITTLEWOOD
Going to the Sun Mountain
The Face
Xibalba
The Things That Aren’t There
Worm Casts
The Language of the City
The Call of the Dreaming Moon
Guinea Pig Girl
The Queen
Caerdroia
Tentacular Spectacular
First and Last and Always
No History of Violence
Little Devils
Bad Faith
Made in Hong Kong
Wasps
Behind the Wall
Vile Earth, to Earth Resign
And May All Your Christmases...
Two Five Seven
Sweeter Than to Wake
Death Walks en Pointe
The Calling of Night’s Ocean