HASTY FOR THE DARK: STORIES by Adam Nevill

There are dedicated, vocal fans of Adam Nevill among horror readers, with praise that I’ve been hearing for a while. His work has always looked interesting to me, so when I felt like reading another short story collection, I jumped into this one as my introduction to Nevill’s work. 

Each story in this collection has an elusive quality, a creeping, disorienting feeling that really lends to the horror. Each stands out in how little they spoon-feed the reader, challenging our ideas of horror and story form. One of the standout stories here, “Hippocampus,” reads like a found-footage movie in prose form, with no dialogue or characters, just pure mood and discovery as we explore an ship of death adrift in a storm. And most of the stories take everyday circumstances of discomfort and take them to the extreme, pulling pure horror out of the day-to-day, like a horrible subway commute in “On All London Underground Lines,” abusive relationships in “The Days of Our Lives,” or aging and Alzheimer’s in “Little Black Lamb.”

Not everything here is great, as some of the stories are just plain boring, but it’s a solid collection and if you’re looking for challenging stories that aren’t your usual fare, give this one a look. 

GRADE: B