Small Beer Press

286 pgs/$16.00

There’s a sense of wholeness to Errantry: Strange Stories which makes it appear, at first, easy to discuss. The subheading is ‘Strange Stories’ and strange they are. Ten stories make up this collection, ten distinct but obviously blood-related kin. Each populated by wonderstruck onlookers or sinister, eccentric figures. Each set in places – Woodlands, coast, mountains, cityscapes – that are uncertain grounds, warped by mysterious forces, but rich in realistic detail. There is a sense of accrual in each story. But what is being accrued is a sense of long lasting dis-ease. An enthrallment that is hard to shake or find out the edges of.

It’s no wonder that one of the stories in the collection won the Shirley Jackson Award. Like Jackson’s work, there is a claustrophobic creepiness to almost every story, despite the wonders. Hand’s stories here are more expansive, yet have that undercurrent of a formless force closing in, be it weather, or birds gathering in a falling evening sky. For the scope of this review, I’d like to focus mostly on the award-winning story above, my favourite of the ten, ‘Near Zennor’. Continue reading →