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Friday 6 April 2012

Quiet Houses ~ Simon Kurt Unsworth

'Quiet Houses' is a collection of linked ghost stories. At the conclusion of the collection investigator Nakata maintains, 'I have tried to show that there are places we can't yet understand, that there are places where the quietness lets some of us experience things differently.' The fact that many of the stories in this collection are quiet (think measured, restrained) doesn't impede upon their power to chill and horrify. In 'The Elms, Morecambe' widower Wisher is haunted by the ghost of a girl who makes everything cold and miserable. 'The Merry House, Scale Hall' is a frightening, epistolary story that offers a horrifying explanation for the disappearance of fourteen local children. In 'Beyond St. Patrick's Chapel , Heysham Head' Nakata is chased by underground trails which move like worms 'burrowing through the dirt just below the surface of the earth... questing ceaselessly onwards.' This collection has been described as 'quietly impressive, quietly ambitious and loudly terrifying.'

Read 'The Elms, Morecambe' here.
Read Unsworth's blog here.
Read a review of 'Quiet Houses' here.

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