So, it's only fair to start this review by saying that I love the Dreadnoughts. This book was written the same year I first discovered them, so it doeSo, it's only fair to start this review by saying that I love the Dreadnoughts. This book was written the same year I first discovered them, so it does an amazing job of taking me right back to a cold February night at Foufounes Électriques, where they were opening for local psychobilly act The Brains, totally blew my mind and turned me into a huge and devoted fan. I had read on their MySpace page (yes, that was still a thing back then!) that they sounded like what would have happened if a crew of drunken pirates had taken over the Rancid tour bus - and I still describe them that way to people who have not had the pleasure of experiencing their music. I am still a fan to this day, and I can say confidently that they are one of the best live acts I have ever seen. If they have a show happening in Montreal, you will find me there.
So when I finally managed to secure a copy of this book, I read it immediately, while listening to "Legends Never Die" and "Victory Square" (you can find those records and all their music here: https://thedreadnoughts.bandcamp.com/).
These guys wrote a lot of songs about cider, gin and whiskey, so it was no surprise that a lot of this tour "diary" is about drinking. But mostly, it is about what it's like to be on the road when you are a small musical act with no real label support and have to figure it out as you go. I really enjoy reading about that but having had personal experience with that sort of thing, it might just be a nostalgia wank for me. It helps that I adore this band, of course! And that I was delighted to learn that they are actually pretty nerdy under the punk-pirate veneer - which doesn't surprise me, as a lot of their music is actually much deeper and more sophisticated than one might expect.
This is a serious piece of advice for aspiring musicians: read tour diaries like this one, like Henry Rollins' "Get in the Van", because that is the probable reality you will have to deal with if you get a band together and go on tour independently. It's a massive amount of fun, but an equally massive amount of work, logistics and demands on the body and the mind. Sure, there's a lot of partying that can potentially happen, but there is a lot of very hard work that is required to make that happen.
The photos are amazing! I really wished they had been coloured, but I know that's expensive to pull off on an indie press. What truly matters is that they absolutely capture the mad exuberance that you can expect if you ever decide to go to a Dreadnoughts concert!
If you know the band and love their stuff, you should definitely check it out!...more
It’s always a delight to dig into any work by Gemma Files: she has delightfully twisted and dark ideas that avoid clichés and provide the most wonderfIt’s always a delight to dig into any work by Gemma Files: she has delightfully twisted and dark ideas that avoid clichés and provide the most wonderful shivers of terror! I loved this collection even before I opened the book, just by the look of the cover art. It reminded me of the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot paintings, surreal and filled with strange symbolic meaning my brain can’t ever fully process. These short stories hit the mark with me on many levels: the GTA (that’s Greater Toronto Area for non-Canadians) setting is quite familiar, obviously, but a lot of her stories talk about archaeology, which is one of my great passions, there is plenty of weird occultism going on, and strange creatures unlike any I have read about before. Also, I am total sucker for eerie, atmospheric stories – and when it comes to that, she always delivers.
I wouldn’t know how to pick a favorite from this book. First off, it is quite dense: each story is rich with images and ideas that push the boundaries of the real world, there is a lot of creepy folklore that date from back when the world was savage and dark, and while there is often a decent amount of body horror, nothing in here is gratuitously gory. I’ve seen her writing describe as ‘fever dream-like’ and if you have read “Experimental Film”, you know that it’s true, but that she can nevertheless anchor her readers as she blends their brains. I would also call her stories more unsettling than typical horror, which is what I like about them so much, the vague sense of wrongness her characters wrestle with is so much more interesting to me than jump-scares. While her characters are often women, she tends to stay far away from stereotypes, and all her narrators are very distinct from each other – and quite diverse – so the perspectives and backgrounds always take me by surprise at the beginning of every tale.
The only gripe I had with this book is that one story contains some lines of dialogue in French, and it was clearly not checked by anyone who speaks even a tiny bit of French, and that really annoyed me because those lines are not hard or complicated. In fact, I checked and even Google translate got them right, so I have no idea what happened in the editing process that resulted in those lines not being proof-read adequately, but it was disappointing. I just think that if you are going to include lines in another language in a story to give it a context vibe, the least you can do is make sure you are using said language properly.
If you like weird fiction and literary horror, Ms. Files deserves a serious spot on your radar and bookshelves. Not every story in this collection is perfect, but everyone will leave a wonderful, creepy impression....more
This book caught my eye at the bookstore: with a title and cover art like that, I was intrigued. Obviously, the yogi in me was curious; I also think tThis book caught my eye at the bookstore: with a title and cover art like that, I was intrigued. Obviously, the yogi in me was curious; I also think that it’s really important to demystify and destigmatize sex work, and I was very interested to know what this woman’s journey had been like, so I picked it up.
Short review: this is a lot more about stripping and doing drugs than it is about yoga, and as such, I think the title is a bit mis-leading. Renaud really becomes involved in practicing and teaching yoga late in the second half of this book, and I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t discuss its impact on her life and work in greater depth – which is what I had been hoping for.
What we get instead is the story of woman who has always had an affinity for drugs, who discovered early in life that despite not feeling secure about her appearance, she also had very few inhibitions and could make a fun and profitable living as a stripper. That part of her story is fascinating and very informative: she describes how she got started in that line of work through an agency that would send her to clubs in the more rural regions of Quebec where she could practice her trade until she had reached the caliber expected in the Montreal clubs. She goes through a few romantic relationships and their challenges, her struggle with disordered eating, her drug use and how it eventually got out of control.
One thing that is very interesting is that Renaud is very lucid and unapologetic about her choices and her behaviors, but that is not to say she is defensive: she simply doesn’t think she should apologize for living her life on her own terms, she is well aware that not all her decisions and actions were smart, but she is also not going to feel bad or beat herself up about the past. She owns her actions and their consequences, and I have great respect for that. That is not to say I agree with her 100% of the time, but I get it. Constantly feeling like you should explain or justify your lifestyle is an exhausting waste of time; I would not have done the same thing if I had been in her shows but if she finds joy in her work and figured out how to enjoy getting baked without it becoming a problem in her life, who am I to judge?
As mentioned before, I wish she had dug a little deeper on the effects that yoga had in her life. I found the passages about starting a teacher-training program and shedding some of her own prejudices in the process really great, and her stories about the “guru” who kept all of his students under his thumbs a horrible and all too-common tale. But that was as far as we really went into her yoga journey. I was curious to know how it changed her relationship with her work and her body and her substances consumption, and those aspects felt a little glossed over.
I also felt like the prose was a tad uneven, and could have used a slightly more rigorous editor, just to make it flow more smoothly.
But don’t let that stop you from checking out this book. It is a very interesting story, told in a real down-to-earth way. Flawed but definitely notable....more
I had a cold when I picked up "Rouge"; I read most of it curled up on the couch, tripping on sinus and cold medication and listening to Lana Del Rey, I had a cold when I picked up "Rouge"; I read most of it curled up on the couch, tripping on sinus and cold medication and listening to Lana Del Rey, and seriously, that's a great way to experience a Mona Awad book. They have a fever-dream quality to them, so why not steer into that skid with a few NyQuil gel caps? Also, I kept seeing these Sephora ads constantly as I was reading this, and it kinda freaked me out, if I'm honest.
Following the unexpected death of her estranged mother Noelle, Mirabelle travels from Montreal to California to attend the funeral and settle her mother’s affairs. Belle, as she is most commonly called, is a lonely and unhappy young woman obsessed with her elaborate skincare routine and haunted by the idea that she will never be as beautiful as her mother was. As she tries to figure out what to do with her mother’s apartment and huge, inexplicable debts, Belle is invited/lured to a strange, highly exclusive spa set on a cliff by the ocean, called La Maison de la Méduse. The people who run the establishment apparently take a shine to her, as the daughter of a former client, and invite her back for a free treatment. But Belle is in for much more than a simple algae mask.
I read two other books by Awad, and I was a bit ambivalent about both: her writing is remarkable, and she always takes her readers into unchartered territory, and the same can be said about “Rouge”. In a world where the current trend is endless retellings, this unicity is really remarkable, and I love it. She is also an absolute master of creating weird and ominous atmospheres, which is something I loved in every one of her work. But I also flip the final page wondering what the hell did I just read.
She obviously has strong ideas about the cosmetic industry and the way it preys on our insecurities, and how deeply ingrained those are to our generational trauma – which is what “Rouge” is all about. But it also feels like a really baroque and surreal way to approach the subject. Not that it is a bad thing, per se, it’s just (typically for Awad) odd.
I never know who is the good type of reader for Mona Awad, but you need to be adventurous and not afraid to be deeply weirded out before you pick up one of her books. But if you are curious to go on a strange journey, this book is definitely worth checking out! ...more
Steve Stred managed something only a short list of other horror writers have accomplished: he gave me the creeps. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit blaSteve Stred managed something only a short list of other horror writers have accomplished: he gave me the creeps. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit blasé about horror: I have lost count of how many times I was promised a novel would freak me out only to read it and go ‘meh’ at the end. But “Churn the Soil” was a remarkable piece of folk horror, and I was very impressed by it, so of course, I went looking for more works by the man who managed to give me such delightful shivers of terror. The numerous warnings on the back of my copy were kind of ominous and I’d like to add some nuance to them: yes, there is very violent and sexual content, but it’s not described in excessive details, a lot is left to the reader’s imagination, which I appreciated. Stred writes about brutal stuff but doesn’t make a point of being gratuitously gross.
This book is a collection of three connected novellas, with an additional fourth story to wrap things up, and I would have probably been interested in reading it even if I hadn’t read “Churn the Soil”, because I am the kind of person who gets excited when a book is about demons and/or cults (I blame the Catholic upbringing and subsequent lapsing). Now novels about cults are not exactly rare, but Stred apparently spent some time in an actual cult as research for this, and I find this dedication to research positively chilling.
“Ritual” is about a lonely and disturbed man who is preparing himself for a life-defining ritual. “Communion” is about the investigation that follows the climatic events of the first story. “Sacrament” is about someone who has lost everything that matters to Father and is determined to stop him. Giving more details would spoil the fun, as the way Stred shifts perspective from one novella to another is challenging at times but also deepens his exploration of each topic. The back and forth between the current timeline, and related events that took place in 1929 are weaved skilfully to draw a picture of a horrific plan long in the making so well that I devoured this book in a single day.
Rounding up this collection with an essay by Stred on his research and on why he wanted to write this book was a great idea. Nick Cutter did something similar for his novel “The Acolyte” (a personal favorite, if you like your horror religious and dystopian), and I really appreciated getting into his head about why he wanted to write such a twisted book, and Stred’s thoughts on this one are fascinating and his experience researching this is truly creepy.
A haunting collection, not for weak stomachs but very rewarding for the kind of readers who see the warnings on the cover and don’t let them cancel out their curiosity....more
I don’t scare easy with horror movies or novels – I have watched and read too many, and a few of them way too early, and now I am not exactly blasé, bI don’t scare easy with horror movies or novels – I have watched and read too many, and a few of them way too early, and now I am not exactly blasé, because I still enjoy them, but rarely will I think to myself “hmmm… better not get into this too close to bed time”. But I did make a point to read “Churn the Soil” when it was bright outside. This may be a city-slicker thing, but I find the woods both beautiful AND creepy as fuck, so folk horror that involves creatures that Lovecraft would have written about freak... me... out... This book made me want to never go visit the Yukon. Good job, Mr. Stred.
“Churn the Soil” is a short but fast-paced and utterly brutal mashup of creature feature and police procedural, set on the border between Yukon and Alaska, far from what most people would think of as civilization. A small off-the grid settlement known to the locals as The Border sits on the edge of a clearing the residents maintain, in order to respect a long standing truce with the creatures who live in the woods beyond that clearing. But one day, a young girl is brutally killed, the police is alerted and Graham Brown, who was born in the settlement and eventually moved to the city, is forced to go back to investigate what is going on in that strange place. Soon, his past and present will collide, when it becomes apparent that the truce has been broken and that the creatures are coming for them.
Let’s get this out of the way: Bruiser the K9 officer was my favorite character, and the one I really rooted for. The human characters are interesting, if slightly underdeveloped due to the book’s low page count, but that dog had my whole entire heart the whole time. I wasn’t familiar with the Cane Corso breed before reading this book and now I kinda want one because they are so big and awesome.
But back to the book! This is not for weak stomachs: Stred is known for his splatterpunk, and there is a lot of evisceration, dismemberment, beheading and just general gore, descriptions of sights and smells that are quite disgusting… You’ve been warned! And if you like creepy creatures, you are in for a treat with this one, as they are remarkably scary and gross.
I only docked a star because I think I would have like both setting and characters to be fleshed out a bit more, and because the ultimate “villain” and his motivation felt a little weak… I really enjoyed this book, and will be looking for more Steve Stred, as I am quite impressed with how much he creeped me out!...more
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