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aoutramafalda's review
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
zukythebookbum's review
4.0
This is a really strong short story collection of weird, speculative horror. This feels criminally underrated in the horror community! Really loved a lot of these stories but 'The Turn' was favourite. It's been such a long time since I felt as spooked as I did reading that story.
raforall's review
4.0
Review in the April 2021 issue of Library Journal: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?reviewDetail=i-would-haunt-you-if-i-could-2110205
And on the bloig [link live 4/5/21]: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2021/04/what-im-reading-april-horror-reviews.html
Three Words That Describe This Book: terrifyingly mundane, character driven, disorienting.
Draft Review:
Birnie, Sean Padraic. I Would Haunt You If I Could [debut collection]
A solid debut story collection by British author Birnie containing 14 stories, 8 of which are original to this volume, presents Padaric as a promising new voice in the genre. The fear in these stories is character, not action, driven, tending to focus on familial relationships, with an intense sense of setting a visual stage, expertly informed by the author’s background in photography. However, the most striking thing about these tales is how mundanely the terror begins. This is horror that has every day beginnings, making the reading experience so much more enjoyably haunting and disorienting than readers will expect upon first entering this volume. “Out of the Blue, “Hand Me Down” and “Other Houses” are stellar examples of how the author contemplates normal family situations that begin weird and unsettling, moving into a terror readers will intimately feel before the story’s conclusion.
Verdict: Filled with thought provoking, character driven, psychologically horrific tales that veer slightly and satisfyingly into the weird, this is a collection that is reminiscent of the deeply unsettling and disorienting worlds of Samanta Schweblin and Dan Chaon or the backlist gem,Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris.
A solid debut story collection. Some were amazing, others fine, none bad. Promising voice that I would like to see more from.
More than half of the stories are original to the collection. These are thought provoking, character centered psychological horror stories that veer into the weird. Many focus on familial relationships. I was struck by how the horror begins so mundanely. It is a word I wrote multiple times as I took notes. And the fact that the horror has such normal, every day beginnings makes it all so much more haunting and disorienting. Everything is just tipped over the dark edge of "normal."
The story and the fear are all character driven.
Fav stories: "Out of the Blue" near beginning hooked me into the collection. dad comes back from the dead and just stays. Not menacing, not smelly. Just stays. "Hand Me Down" was a terrifying new mother story involving a haunted baby monitor, but again, it is a mundane and subtle haunting. "I Told You Not to Go" is short but is also the perfect example of the feel of these stories. A longer one, "Other Houses" at the end was originally and very creepy-- a family. barely held together through a house, where multiple realities exists at the same time.
Readalikes: Samanta Schweblin for sure. Also Dan Chaon. The collection as a whole remind my of the novel Travelers Rest, a backlist favorite of mine. Same feel. mundane situation causing terror, with just the right touch of the weird.
And on the bloig [link live 4/5/21]: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2021/04/what-im-reading-april-horror-reviews.html
Three Words That Describe This Book: terrifyingly mundane, character driven, disorienting.
Draft Review:
Birnie, Sean Padraic. I Would Haunt You If I Could [debut collection]
A solid debut story collection by British author Birnie containing 14 stories, 8 of which are original to this volume, presents Padaric as a promising new voice in the genre. The fear in these stories is character, not action, driven, tending to focus on familial relationships, with an intense sense of setting a visual stage, expertly informed by the author’s background in photography. However, the most striking thing about these tales is how mundanely the terror begins. This is horror that has every day beginnings, making the reading experience so much more enjoyably haunting and disorienting than readers will expect upon first entering this volume. “Out of the Blue, “Hand Me Down” and “Other Houses” are stellar examples of how the author contemplates normal family situations that begin weird and unsettling, moving into a terror readers will intimately feel before the story’s conclusion.
Verdict: Filled with thought provoking, character driven, psychologically horrific tales that veer slightly and satisfyingly into the weird, this is a collection that is reminiscent of the deeply unsettling and disorienting worlds of Samanta Schweblin and Dan Chaon or the backlist gem,Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris.
A solid debut story collection. Some were amazing, others fine, none bad. Promising voice that I would like to see more from.
More than half of the stories are original to the collection. These are thought provoking, character centered psychological horror stories that veer into the weird. Many focus on familial relationships. I was struck by how the horror begins so mundanely. It is a word I wrote multiple times as I took notes. And the fact that the horror has such normal, every day beginnings makes it all so much more haunting and disorienting. Everything is just tipped over the dark edge of "normal."
The story and the fear are all character driven.
Fav stories: "Out of the Blue" near beginning hooked me into the collection. dad comes back from the dead and just stays. Not menacing, not smelly. Just stays. "Hand Me Down" was a terrifying new mother story involving a haunted baby monitor, but again, it is a mundane and subtle haunting. "I Told You Not to Go" is short but is also the perfect example of the feel of these stories. A longer one, "Other Houses" at the end was originally and very creepy-- a family. barely held together through a house, where multiple realities exists at the same time.
Readalikes: Samanta Schweblin for sure. Also Dan Chaon. The collection as a whole remind my of the novel Travelers Rest, a backlist favorite of mine. Same feel. mundane situation causing terror, with just the right touch of the weird.
spooky_librarian's review
4.0
3.5/5 stars rounded up to 4 for Goodreads!
“Death is scandalous, absurd, obscene. We manage it carefully, so as to ensure that its taint will not transfer on to us, the still-living and the not-yet-dead, even though it is always within us already, like an incubating virus, like planned obsolescence."
Like any short story collection, this one had its hits and misses. But all in all, I really enjoyed it (especially the stories that included body horror. Gotta love that cringe inducing body horror). Many of the stories seemed to have the theme of being haunted by grief and guilt, which was portrayed beautifully through Birnie's writing.
My favorites in this collection were:
"New to It All"
"Out of the Blue"
"Like a Zip"
"Holes"
"I Told You Not to Go"
"Dollface"
While not perfect, this is still a short story collection I'd want to add to my home library.
“Death is scandalous, absurd, obscene. We manage it carefully, so as to ensure that its taint will not transfer on to us, the still-living and the not-yet-dead, even though it is always within us already, like an incubating virus, like planned obsolescence."
Like any short story collection, this one had its hits and misses. But all in all, I really enjoyed it (especially the stories that included body horror. Gotta love that cringe inducing body horror). Many of the stories seemed to have the theme of being haunted by grief and guilt, which was portrayed beautifully through Birnie's writing.
My favorites in this collection were:
"New to It All"
"Out of the Blue"
"Like a Zip"
"Holes"
"I Told You Not to Go"
"Dollface"
While not perfect, this is still a short story collection I'd want to add to my home library.
kyleoverkill's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
carrionkid's review
2.5
Truly a collection of short horror stories that's barely horror and manages to be repetitive and tepid at best.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death of parent, and Grief
lisadeale's review
Dnf'd @ page 95.
1⭐ for the cover
I don't see what everyone else is seeing I guess.
1⭐ for the cover
I don't see what everyone else is seeing I guess.
joecam79's review
5.0
I first came across the work of Seán Padraic Birnie in the eighth instalment of Michael Kelly’s anthology of weird fiction Shadows and Tall Trees. Dollface, his contribution to that volume, features an apparently evil or cursed doll, a clear nod to a common trope of contemporary horror fiction. Yet, Birnie is less interested in the scares, than in the web of relationships between the narrator and his neighbour and their respective families. There is, throughout the story, a feeling of a rather drab normality going askew, a sense that something is disturbingly “off”, a flavour of ambiguity which invites readers to draw their own conclusions.
Dollface returns in I would Haunt You if I Could, Birnie’s debut collection of short stories issued this month by Canadian independent press Undertow Publications. Although the volume includes stories which have previously been in print, most of the tales are new to this collection. And they’re brilliant.
Birnie’s are unsettling stories which, as in Dollface, sometimes refer to or make use of established horror tropes, only to subvert them and create something new and more peculiar. Some examples… Out of the Blue features a father who comes back from the dead. But he’s neither a ghost nor a vampire, but just an ever-present, unspeaking presence – like a metaphor taking a solid shape. Other Houses is a “slipstream” story with elements of the haunted house and timeslip genres – but, again, the emphasis seems to be more on toxic familial relationships than on the supernatural/weird aspects of the tale. The horror element in Hand Me Down is a cursed baby monitor – but are we to take this literally or is the story a literary representation of post-natal depression?
This sense of ambiguity, as well as the “familial” context, runs like a thread through all the collection, including the longish title piece I Would Haunt You if I Could, whose narrator is coming to terms with grief caused by the death of a father and the ending of a relationship… and with a rediscovered telekinetic or telepathic gift.
Some of the stories are more conceptual – I’m thinking, for instance of Sisters, in which the protagonist creates – and gives life to – a copy of a dead sister. Or Holes and New to It All both of which use body horror in fresh, original – and very disturbing – ways.
What most strikes me about this collection of fourteen stories is the beauty and mastery of language found therein, worthy of the best fiction irrespective of style or genre.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/03/I-Would-Haunt-You-If-I-Could-Sean-Padraic-Birnie.html
Dollface returns in I would Haunt You if I Could, Birnie’s debut collection of short stories issued this month by Canadian independent press Undertow Publications. Although the volume includes stories which have previously been in print, most of the tales are new to this collection. And they’re brilliant.
Birnie’s are unsettling stories which, as in Dollface, sometimes refer to or make use of established horror tropes, only to subvert them and create something new and more peculiar. Some examples… Out of the Blue features a father who comes back from the dead. But he’s neither a ghost nor a vampire, but just an ever-present, unspeaking presence – like a metaphor taking a solid shape. Other Houses is a “slipstream” story with elements of the haunted house and timeslip genres – but, again, the emphasis seems to be more on toxic familial relationships than on the supernatural/weird aspects of the tale. The horror element in Hand Me Down is a cursed baby monitor – but are we to take this literally or is the story a literary representation of post-natal depression?
This sense of ambiguity, as well as the “familial” context, runs like a thread through all the collection, including the longish title piece I Would Haunt You if I Could, whose narrator is coming to terms with grief caused by the death of a father and the ending of a relationship… and with a rediscovered telekinetic or telepathic gift.
Some of the stories are more conceptual – I’m thinking, for instance of Sisters, in which the protagonist creates – and gives life to – a copy of a dead sister. Or Holes and New to It All both of which use body horror in fresh, original – and very disturbing – ways.
What most strikes me about this collection of fourteen stories is the beauty and mastery of language found therein, worthy of the best fiction irrespective of style or genre.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/03/I-Would-Haunt-You-If-I-Could-Sean-Padraic-Birnie.html