Occultation and Other Stories

Occulation is a solid collection of short stories which would have made the likes of Poe and Lovecraft proud. The stories range from average (The Forest, -30-, The Broadsword, Mysterium Tremendum) to good (Occultation, The Lagerstätte) to excellent (Six Six Six, Catch Hell) to masterpiece (Strappado). I loved Strappado so much, I could write a dissertation to sing its praises. It is one of the most gripping and scariest short stories I have ever read.Laird Barron's books are not for everyone - his writing is the epitome of bleak, and his characters are not always relatable, in my humble opinion. Nevertheless, his prose is mesmerizing, and the universe he weaves will not leave you indifferent. He is my favorite cosmic horror author currently.

I feel dread in my bones at least once per Barron collection -- it makes me look up from the book and wonder why the air seems so very still -- and rarely more enduringly than in Occultation’s centerpiece and masterpiece “Mysterium Tremendum.”I don’t want to spoil the story. But it’s like being in a car accident.Then there’s the comparatively petite title story. Not quite dreadful, but its own strange and distinctive creature. I confess I started out rather set against it. Partly this was the relatively uncomplicated characters and partly because of the em dashes Barron uses in lieu of quotation marks here and elsewhere in the collection. It’s sometimes hard to track who’s talking and tell whether they’re talking or just thinking.But something happened to me en route that made me forget these issues. Without knowing I’d bought into the story, I’d bought into the story. Indeed, I’d fairly hung it on my wall. I felt a though I had suddenly moved inside a ’70s velvet painting of a desert motel in the deep night.Again, I felt like an invisible participant. Was this a memory of a painting that Barron triggered or one of his own that I just happen to share or something else entirely? I don’t know and I don’t really need to know. The effect is what it is and it worked. I was out there in the dark.The kickoff piece “The Forest” is something different yet again. Barron here samples but effectively sidesteps straight horror in favor of a progressively more tragic rumination on the past and loss. Again, I started out not taking to the story -- something put me off on the first page -- but my persistence was rewarded with fascination and I was sorry for more than one reason when it ended.“-30-” is this collection’s “Proboscis.” That is, the story’s deliberate vagueness ties into its appeal. I suppose I could ranked this farther down and demanded more explicit answers. Why are these people here? What has happened? Why the tie-in to characters from “The Forest”? (It appears to be set after that story.) But having to figure it out for myself, and what might be wrong with my read, gives the story a new dimension. It belongs to me in a way that a more straightforward story wouldn’t and it will bring me back to try to thread the needle again.That’s a great half a collection. Each story an experience in itself.But not everything here works quite so well. In some ways, this is very much a sophomore effort.“Catch Hell” is a close call: Its summit is utterly rank and utterly evil -- probably the best scene of its type I’ve ever read. Worse than dread in its way.But the scene stands out more than the tale around it. Barron unnecessarily preempts its essential mystery with one particular scene ... and the scene itself doesn’t quite earn its keep.Similarly, I much enjoyed the the closer “Six Six Six,” but left it thinking that writing shouldn’t seem like a race: Barron plows through it as though running behind schedule and pushing his effects out onto the stage willynilly.The evil-voices-in-the-vents conceit in “The Broadsword” has a Stephen King-ish tang and the story’s horror elements feel ritualized and thus blunted. I wasn’t spooked. I did not sympathize. I spent much of the story simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, and drop it did.I know a lot of readers enjoy “Strapaddo,” but I found it slight -- despite a taste of the nonspecific queasiness that would surface again in “The Siphon.”Finally, I never connected to the grieving widow of “The Lagerstätte,” and wonder if Barron erred in swiftly killing off her family. (I think “The Forest” works so well in part because we’re introduced to love and desire before loss.)

The first thing that struck me about Occultation was that, after having read it and The Imago Sequence - Laird's first anthology - for the first time, I immediately turned around and read them both all over again. That's never happened to me before with any other book - not sure what it means, just taking note.Laird is often spoken of in the same breath with Thomas Ligotti, but they could not be more different. While I am in awe of Ligotti's work, his universe is one of futility - of clockwork horrors that don't even afford their victims the grace of personal animosity. Laird's horrors are intimately personal, with a predator/prey relationship oft-times fraught with gleeful malice - while his protagonists are doomed, they oppose their fate with a frontiersman's fatalism and stoic refusal to submit - this, I assume a result of Laird's upbringing in rural Alaska. While the characters in both Ligotti's and Barron's tales wind up as no more than peristaltic grist for the maw of Lovecraftian horrors intent on provender, Laird's protags at least have the decency to kick and struggle on their way down the gullet, rather than succumbing to the numb despair exhibited by Ligotti's people.Then there is craft. Laird leaves so much unsaid that the majority of his stories unfold puzzle-like behind your unconsciousness after you're done with them, ultimately looming several times their original size back in your oh-so-vulnerable lizard brain. His wording, phrasing, and editing are flawless - literally among the best wordsmithing I have encountered among writers active today. I am reminded of Joyce Carol Oates' very best in some of Laird's work, or Ramsey Campbell at his most hallucinogenic - Laird's characters are often face to face with facts and realities they refuse to recognize or acknowledge. Allusion is especially strong in all of Barron's work.This is strong stuff - not because of its often graphic violence, or its bleak Lovecraftian cosmological mindset - but more for Laird's unrelenting insinuation. With Laird Barron, resistance is futile - if anyone reads a hundred years from now, he'll still be in print.Occultation has an introduction by WFA winner Michael Shea of Nifft the Lean fame, with a beautiful opening sentence: "Laird Barron's carnivorous cosmos . . ." which says much. All the stories are excellent, but a few stood out for me. 'The Forest' is one of those tales that you just can't stop thinking about when you're done. The title piece is one that would have reduced Kafka and his cronies to stitches if Laird somehow traveled back in time and read it out loud to them at one of their writer's gatherings. 'The Broadsword' almost qualifies as science fiction (though technically ANYTHING smacking of Lovecraft's oeuvre could qualify as such) with a masterfully open ending that makes you ask yourself (***potential partial plot spoiler***) whether it would be preferable for the whole story to be a delusion on the part of the narrator -- trust me on this, if it IS delusion, the seconds after the end of the story can only be ugly indeed.Deserving its own paragraph, ghost story 'Six Six Six' is IMHO one of the finest short horror pieces I've ever read, on par with Poe, HPL, Machen or Ramsey. I foresee this tale being anthologized a lot in the future, it may even earn a position as a 'saw,' alongside such classics as William Hope Hodgson's 'A Voice In The Night,' or Saki's 'Svredni Vashtar.' It's THAT good, and it disturbed/infuriated me. Read it and weep.

I have read this (and every other title by this author) three, four, and five times, and will do so again.Every time that I go through his stories, I notice a new facet of detail.I really can't recommend his books strongly enough.

Decent modern weird-ish horror. To me this read like a cross between Stephen King and HP Lovecraft, though more King than Lovecraft unfortunately. The stories have a tendency to jump about a bit and revisit the same type of characters which left me with a sense of 'seen it all before' by the time I got to the end of the collection.I thought the least successful efforts were 'Catch Hell' and 'Six Six Six', both of which had a pretty obvious 'Rosemary's Baby'/Hammer Horror devil worship thing going on. 'Six Six Six' particularly jumped about all over the place and felt as if it had been phoned in. My favourites were the (very) short 'Occultation' which had a very unnerving David Lynch type quality (though some might say it doesn't really go anywhere) and, particularly, 'Mysterium Tremendum' which I felt was the only story in the collection really worthy of the Lovecraft comparisons. 'The Broadsword' was also very good though that suffered from being a bit incoherent and jumbled in its themes.On the whole though I enjoyed the collection, just wouldn't rate it half as highly as some. 3.5 stars would be more accurate but I'm rounding up for effort! Would certainly try more Laird Barron in the future, particularly at not so steep a price.

I absolutely loved this collection. There’s a depth to each story and a pervasive atmosphere, pulling you into these little worlds with grasping, filthy hands. I especially enjoyed the commitment to creating an atmosphere, how each story took its time to come to the boil, making this collection a rich experience.100% recommend.

Creepy, thrilling and fantastic!I read this collection over a number of months reading a story every now and then. And each time I returned to it, I was blown away by the quality of story telling throughout the collection.This has been my first Laird Barron collection I have read, and it definitely won't be the last. Laird has the skill of brilliant story telling, and I enjoyed every single story in this collection.If you have not checked Laird out yet, I heavily recommend you do!Overall, 5*Favourite stories - The Broadsword and -30-

This is the second collection of Laird Barron stories that I have had the pleasure to read. The first being the brilliant Imago Sequence. This second collection actually on the whole, tops the Imago Sequence collection. The stories in Occultation are in my opinion more accessible to take in as Laird can be quite challenging ay times. They are gripping, mysterious, creepy and sometimes weird and horrific but they all share one thing in common, they are superb pieces of fictional work. I highly recommend this book and I now look forward to reading more of what Laird has awaiting....