- Hardcover: 216 pages
- Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications; Sgd Ltd edition (June 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1587670852
- ISBN-13: 978-1587670855
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.2 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,824,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The open road is a malleable metaphor pregnant with dark and dangerous possibilities in this uneven trilogy of tales from Stoker-winner Braunbeck (Home Before Dark). "The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss" is an outré first-person account of a DWI offender who travels to a bizarre subworld where traffic fatalities are reconstructed from remnants of junked cars. In "Congestions," a harried driver trapped in a traffic jam unravels psychologically as he witnesses a parade of surreal images outside his car that may just be projections of his own crumbling mind. Though original in conception, each of these stories suffers from a glut of details disproportionate to their slim plots. By contrast, "Merge Right" is a taut piece of Twilight Zone–style paranoia, featuring a man whose nighttime mission to take his dead wife's ashes to a final resting place grows creepier by the mile. At the very least, this collection reinforces Braunbeck's reputation as one of the more inventive contemporary writers cultivating the dark fantasy terrain. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Braunbeck's Road Rage, Sep 29 2006
By Dan Weinstein "The Used Book Guy" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Destinations Unknown (Hardcover)
Gary Braunbeck may still not be known much yet outside of the small press, but DESTINATIONS UNKNOWN is one more piece of evidence that he's rapidly becoming one of our finest modern fantasists. The short novel that opens this collection, "The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss", is like the flipside of J. G. Ballard's "Crash", a wry and outlandish look at car culture. Braunbeck starts with a story of an average Joe working off community service hours by driving an ambulance, but soon turns our protagonist's world upside-down, when he finds himself in a community where both cars and people are recycled, and "The Road" is a living, breathing thing. Like a great road trip, this tale takes plenty of entertaining side trips, but they all point the way to an ending full of action, comedy and horror. Probably no author since R. A. Lafferty has been able to pull off a mix like that, although comparisons to the emotional punch of Theodore Sturgeon are apt as well.
The collection is rounded out with two shorter works, "Congestion", an uncomfortable piece about a man suffering a heart attack while stuck in a traffic jam; and "Merge Right", a serious left turn into the dreadful surrealism that has marked much of the author's other work.
The volume is also graced by the fine cover art of Deena Warner. One could have wished for an introduction, perhaps discussing Braunbeck's own forays into car culture, but the excellent fiction should be enough for anyone.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
take a dark road trip, Aug 1 2007
By Noira Janssen "Noira" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Destinations Unknown (Hardcover)
This collection of three road trip novellas from Gary Braunbeck won the Bram Stoker Award in 2006. IMO the Stoker is well-deserved. A very entertaining book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emotional, surprising, and fun, Sep 5 2008
By Joseph Gut "fletch127" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Destinations Unknown (Hardcover)
Three stories - one novella, and two shorts. The novella, "The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss" is equal parts strange, inventive, thought-provoking, and genuinely creative. It doesn't take long for Gary to develop sympathy for his characters and for him to always establish some personal link between the reader and his worlds.
A second story, about a man who is on a lonely drive with his wife's remains in an urn in the passenger seat, really had me near tears. The way he weaves suspense, grief, internal-dialogue, and the supernatural together, is just amazing. You feel like you're riding along in the backseat and you've known the protagonist all your life.
What I've read of Gary Braunbeck has been outstanding, and I am looking to pick up everything I can find now. I live in Ohio, too, and I've been to Denison U. which is in the town where he grew up and morphed into his fictional Cedar Hill, Ohio. You can't pass this guy up - trust me.
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