William Browning Spencer

Philip Kenan works a tedious job at a print shop, and spends much of the free time his boss grudgingly allows him endlessly fiddling with the bloated horror novel he's been writing for the last twenty years. But he doesn't believe the Lovecraftian horrors he's writing about are merely fiction. He's seen them. Or he thinks he has, at least, even if everyone else in his life thinks he's crazy.

The basic concept here is something like the Cthulhu Mythos meets Office Space, with Lovecraft's show more monstrous Old Ones either representing or in league with the soul-crushing systems of corporate America. Which is an utterly irresistible premise. But, despite the fact that there are some really fun ideas and entertaining moments, this story never quite clicked for me the way I wanted it to. I'm not entirely sure why. I think mostly the balance between the wacky, ridiculous elements and the more serious ones never felt perfectly right, somehow. Or, at least, I was never quite able to calibrate that balance properly in my head. I suppose it also didn't help that that main character's stalkery behavior towards his ex-girlfriend was a bit of a deal-breaker for me when it came to being able to sympathize with him. Or, come to think of it, that the female characters were less believable than the extradimensional abominations.

Still, I can't help thinking that, handled the right way, this story could have served as the basis for a really entertaining offbeat movie. show less

One of my absolute favorite short stories. It nails the very tricky combination of creepy and hilarious through some fantastic characterization as well as deft, concise descriptive passages – such as how the narrator tries to characterize what he hears from the attic toward the end. I'm a fan of Weird Fiction, which this is. Stories that manage to be both thoroughly amusing and genuinely eerie/creepy are few in number. This is one of the best.

Fans of Jonathan Carroll should really do their best to track this one down. Echoes of Carroll’s style abound, but this book is pure Bill Spencer. It came out before Gaiman, Carroll and DeLint got popular and sank without a trace despite nominations for numerous awards. I like all of Spencer’s stuff, but this one really deserves more attention.

This is a book I've been meaning to read for years. Around the time I was twelve, I got my hands on this book, read the first 100 pages or so, and promptly lost the book.The story (what was happening?), the characters (particularly Allan, Helen and Jeanne), and the prose (haunting, thoughtful) clung to my mind. I found the book many months later and started over. I got to roughly the same spot and was swamped with books to read and homework to do for school. I didn't have time to finish it, show more despite a desperate urge to do so. Eventually, that copy of the book disappeared from my home. I am now 18 and bought this book at Powell's Books in Portland, OR after discussing the novel with a friend who had similar issues finishing it. I rarely keep books, and I intend to give the copy I just read to him as a graduation present, but I will have to find a copy of this novel for my long term collection,.

The story has been rehashed here enough that I feel I don't need to summarize. I loved the opening, a marriage of a madman and a catatonic woman in a thunderstorm, which set the perfect mood. I read through the book at breakneck speed, because it's truly a book that keeps you turning pages. The novel is a perfect blend of confusion and explanation. The ending, I was a little dissatisfied with. To be fair, I had been speculating on the ending of the book for several years, but I think it's fair to say that the ending is an anticlimax and a largely unexplained anticlimax at that. I wouldn't say that I like my answers to be spelled out for me, but I do like it when the conclusions I come to about a novel clearly match the author's conclusions.

Speaking of conclusions, it feels good to close the chapter of my life that was spent thinking about this book in quiet moments. The fact that this book kept me thinking for nearly six years should be a sign to you all that it's certainly worth picking up. show less