romehow I’ve never managed to read any work by Adam Nevill. So, when he offered a free trilogy of short novellas on Kindle, self-published under the title of Before You Sleep, I jumped at the chance. All three were fantastic, although I have my personal ranking of the stories. Overall, each was riveting and eerie with predominantly subtle passages of horror. The first, “Where Angels Come In”, was my favorite. A boy recounts his experience while recovering from traumatic injuries obtained while he and a friend explored an off-limits haunted house (the big, white house in the woods). The friend didn’t make it out, while the nature of narrator’s injuries are beyond imagining. I mentioned that the horror was subtle across the three stories (and for the most part it is), but the escape attempt from the haunted house doesn’t exactly qualify as “subtle” – and is gripping.
The second piece, “The Ancestors”, involves a little Japanese girl who has moved to a new house with her parents. She’s lonely at first, but then befriends the ghost of another little girl and the toys left behind when other children have “left” the house. This one was my least favorite, although it was by no means a dud. The narration is creepy and unnerving, and you never quite get a sense of what the heck is going on.
The last story is “Florrie” and it recounts the behavior of a young man who recently purchased a townhouse from an elderly woman – whose furniture and belongings remain mysteriously within the house. I found this story surprising in both the tone and the plot line and was sucked into the story.
Overall, these are not gore fests and the endings are rather ambiguous, so those of you who need closure might be disappointed. However, I found the prevailing sense on uncertainty quite satisfying.
The second piece, “The Ancestors”, involves a little Japanese girl who has moved to a new house with her parents. She’s lonely at first, but then befriends the ghost of another little girl and the toys left behind when other children have “left” the house. This one was my least favorite, although it was by no means a dud. The narration is creepy and unnerving, and you never quite get a sense of what the heck is going on.
The last story is “Florrie” and it recounts the behavior of a young man who recently purchased a townhouse from an elderly woman – whose furniture and belongings remain mysteriously within the house. I found this story surprising in both the tone and the plot line and was sucked into the story.
Overall, these are not gore fests and the endings are rather ambiguous, so those of you who need closure might be disappointed. However, I found the prevailing sense on uncertainty quite satisfying.
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