Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
"We tell ourselves stories, we stoke our fears, we keep them burning. For what? What do we expect to find there inside?What are we all doing to ourselves?"This collection of short tales can definitely be classified as belonging in the horror genre, and yet they are unlike anything I have ever read there. No ghostly apparitions appear and no monsters lurk in the shadows, but uneasiness creeps steadily throughout each tale and it seeps out from inside of reader and characters alike, where the true...
I almost (almost) wish this had been released in time for me to read during my own residency in Iceland - although I think that would have been too much for my poor, fragile, terrified heart to take. Especially in the first few days of the residency, when I had for some reason decided to go three days early, alone, very ill (having missed and postponed my first flight to Reyjkavik the day before), dragging too many kgs of canned food over the 1.5 kilometre walk from the bus-stop to the residency...
And it started off so well too! :( I’m really surprised by this latest short story collection by Kirsty Logan - I adored her previous book, A Portable Shelter, and was incredibly excited for this one but sadly the latter half of this book left me thinking ‘what was the point of them? And are they dark for dark’s sake?’ My favourite section BY FAR was part 1 which focused on various stories all discussing home and how and where we feel at home and why. These stories were certainly very surreal an...
horror short stories with a queer bend, these include a lot of scottish mythology and are truly delicious
A dark and feminist collection of short stories. As with most collections, there were stories I felt were really strong and some that I found weak, but overall a good collection. I don't think it will appeal to everyone (it is quite strange in places), but then again it is not meant to. My absolute favourite was "Girls are Always Hungry When all the Men are Bite-Size", which fired my imagination and has me itching to write something about mediums and spiritualism, albeit in a Victorian setting.
Beautiful, horrible, perfect.
I want to steal the words from her mouth, swallow them and then spit them out as if they were my own! I think I’m beguiled?
‘’A house is family. A house is history. A house is a body. One subject that comes up again and again in horror, both new and classic, is houses. Haunted houses, home invasions, axe murderers lurking in the attics and chasing us into the basements. Our homes are a site of endless terror.We are afraid that someone will come into our house when we don’t want them to. We are afraid that the thing we fear is already inside. We are afraid that we can’t make it leave. We are afraid that the lock on
When I saw the books listed for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize one that I was most eager to read was Kirsty Logan’s new collection of stories “Things We Say in the Dark”. Logan is a writer who has produced a number of fictional books which creatively engage with traditions in horror writing and fairy tales to innovatively say something which is both current and personal. These new stories continue in this vein focusing specifically on themes to do with the home, family and birth. Many invoke ima...
Stunning. Horrifying. The fastest I've ever read a short story collection. I can't get enough of this writer!
Her best collection yet. Daring, challenging, dark and dreadful (in the most literal sense), this is a book about women's fears, human fears, the fears of being a person. This is a short story writer at the top of her game.
I wrote this!And some people have reviewed it!"Just in time for Halloween comes Kirsty Logan’s deeply, deeply unsettling and brilliant collection of short stories. Some feature horror, nearly all feature dread and, in the manner of Shirley Jackson, all will burrow their way into your brain and not let go." - Stylist"In a literary world seemingly saturated with gaudy horror that attempts to induce fear through the ill-treatment of women and the harmful othering of disabilities, Kirsty Logan is he...
This was super disturbing so !! it did it's JOB and it did it well. It's also really queer which I didn't know going in and that was a glorious treat. It's basically a collection of short stories and vignettes, all taped together by an anonymous author pausing to commentate how isolated herself to write the stories, and the lies she spins along the way. Some of the stories were purely snippets, and just left me vaguely disturbed and creeped out. Some were pretty chill, and a few I didn't really
No rating Ever since its announcement in early 2019, Things We Say in the Dark has been high up on my most-anticipated list. It’s no secret that I’m as close as it gets to a fangirl when it comes to Kirsty Logans work. I’ve adored everything she’s written thus far, and was expecting a collection of horror-short-stories in her style to be a 5-star experience for me as well. I didn’t even consider the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Yet here we are… I have to say in advance: it’...
I ADORED this book. I am not a fan of horror stories but these are just the right kind for me. I jumped on this collection because of what an excellent writer Kirsty Logan is. And this was everything i hoped the short story collection would be. Creepy, unsettling, poking towards uncomfortable etc. This also makes it a very difficult collection to review. The book starts off with one-page descriptions in italics which are kind-of autobiographical. Logan herself was at Iceland while writing the bo...
HOLY WOW this was pretty amazing! Twisty and dark, surreal and creepy, gothic and spooky. YAS! I had my eyes on this one some time ago and finally one of my libraries had it in their collection! This book features one big overarching story (how the author (or whoever is the narrator there) goes to Iceland and the things she experiences there, loneliness but also creepy things) and short stories in various themes. The stories are weird, surreal, and at times I just went WTF while reading or when
Many of these 20 stories twist fairy tale imagery into nightmarish scenarios, enumerating fears of bodies and pregnancies going wrong. Body parts are offered as tokens of love or left behind as the sole evidence of an abduction. Ghosts and corpses are frequent presences. I also recognized some of the same sorts of Celtic sea legends that infuse Logan’s debut novel, The Gracekeepers.Some stories are divided into multiple parts by headings or point-of-view changes. Others are in unusual formats li...
I adored this! I love horror but have found it hard to find horror books that capture a genuine unsettling feeling - this delivers in spades. I've loved Kirsty Logan's work for years, and reading this felt like a natural expansion of her previous works. The folklore, relationships, and smooth writing style are all familiar, but the depth of darkness and grossness are new. It felt real and present to see queer individuals and couples, not just as dying side characters but with their own plots and...
The book starts with a short introduction from the “author” herself, where she is set in Iceland, in a remote village without any distractions. The collection carries many autobiographical features, as Logan was actually writing this book in Iceland. From short passages, we can observe how the book is being written, which gives us a bit of break between individual stories. She wanted to add this dimension into the story as it gives the reader the feeling of comfort and realisation, that the stor...