Wounds
Ratings10
Average rating3.9
A gripping collection of six stories of terror–including the novella “The Visible Filth,” the basis for the upcoming major motion picture–by Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud, hailed as a major new voice by Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay, and Carmen Maria Machado–“one of the most heavyweight horror authors out there” (The Verge). In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives–both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
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"The Atlas of Hell" 4/5
I really loved this one found it to be a kind of horror comedy which I could easily see playing out well on the screen. The characters all felt a little goofy and like caricatures but in a very loveable way.
"The Diabolist" 5/5
Probably the only one that I felt was actually really creepy and worked so well as short story, it didn't need more or less, it was weird and off putting in all the right ways.
"Skullpocket" 4.5/5
A weird story that also had a weird sense of charm to it, that also reminds me why I typically don't like shorter stories as I wanted so much more, it was over to quick and I was stuck wanting more from this weird little world.
"The Maw" 1/5
My least favorite, jumping between the two perspectives was a bit much, and overall just felt like it had no real structure.
"The Visible Filth"4/5
Very much had a blumhouse vibe to it, and I can see it as one of those horror movies with a bunch of dumb 20 somethings getting into stuff they shouldn't. Not horrible, enjoyable in some spots but nothing special.
"The Butcher's Table"3/5
Rather than not being enough this one felt almost like it had to much, it either needed to be a longer novel or need to have some stuff cut out, I didn't find the characters memorable or interesting, which was sad cause there was definitely something interersting there with the whole idea of the cults.
