From Amazon.com
World Fantasy Award- and Bram Stoker Award-winner Gahan Wilson is best known as a cartoonist, his work gathered in numerous collections drawn from
Playboy,
The New Yorker, and
The National Lampoon, but he is also a writer. His fiction is the equal of his cartoons--delightfully macabre, witty, and warped--but apparently has never been collected until
The Cleft and Other Odd Tales, which contains 24 short stories and short-shorts that range across a startling breadth of genres: horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, supernatural-detective, and even Oriental pulp adventure. Each tale is narrated in a unique, engaging voice and accompanied by a deliciously grim original illustration.
In "Sea Gulls," an unhappy husband bent on murder finds his plans for his wife foiled in peculiar and chilling ways. In "The Casino Mirago," a desperate international fugitive finds himself in the most clandestine of gaming establishments, gambling for very strange stakes. In "Them Bleaks," a horror writer finds he has moved his family to a small town frightfully unsuited to his expectations. --Cynthia Ward
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Though he's better known for his darkly funny cartoon grotesqueries than for his short stories, Wilson has written numerous tales whose weird wit matches that of his drawings. In fact, an aptly odd original illustration accompanies each of the 24 stories?many previously published in Playboy or genre magazines?in this collection, which traces Wilson's writing career from 1962 ("The Book"; "Phyllis") through 1998 ("The Cleft"). Wilson writes in a straightforward, intelligent, anecdotal style that presents an amusingly sinister look at humanity. Many of the stories are first-person narratives told in distinctive character voices, varying from the boyish breathlessness of the graveyard classic "The Marble Boy" to the cattily feminine purr of "Best Friends." In "The Sea Was Wet As Wet Can Be," perhaps the book's most chilling tale, Wilson combines Lewis Carroll, the vapid lives of the well-to-do and genuine horror with impressive originality. There is a strain of social satire in many of the stories, as members of the upper classes often meet unusual?and decidedly unpleasant?fates. In "Them Bleaks," Wilson describes a certain ghoulish item as "a macabre object, without doubt, but it undeniably had a peculiar kind of charm." The same can be said of this collection.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
