A review by literarycrushes
The Black Phone: Stories by Joe Hill

4.0

When I was a kid, I read all the scary stories I could. Some were of the child-friendly R.L. Stein/Alvin Schwartz variety, while others were books the librarian probably shouldn’t have allowed a ten-year-old to check out. As I’ve gotten older, my reading tastes have leaned away from the outright horror genre and more towards literary fiction (although if you follow this account, you probably know I’m still very fond of a good cemetery). However, I still love when a book can haunt me, be it in a literal or metaphorical sense.
In The Black Phone (originally published in 2005 as 20th Century Ghosts), Joe Hill manages to weave the two genres together in this beautifully haunting collection of short stories. He even directly states in one, “He said that every fictional world was a work of fantasy, and whenever writers introduce a threat or a conflict into their story, they create the possibility of horror.” Hill is a master of creating short stories and can set up fully formed plots in just a few pages without hitting you over the head or relying on the dreaded “shock ending.”