A review by shawcrit
The Pump by Sydney Hegele
4.0
I've never been more terrified of beavers and I will never look at them the same after this.
Many of these stories - which feature different people living in the same town, some more interconnected than others - straddle the line between realism and weird fiction. Some are more straight up weird than others and some are more straightforward depressing tales about living in a shitty place and having few options. My favourite of the stories are ones that leaned strongly into the weird. The weirdness here is less cosmic Lovecraftian in tone and more "unsettling things beneath the surface of the ordinary" kind of weird, so it sneaks up on you. There are some incredible images and passages but some of the stories did not fully cohere for me.
Many of these stories - which feature different people living in the same town, some more interconnected than others - straddle the line between realism and weird fiction. Some are more straight up weird than others and some are more straightforward depressing tales about living in a shitty place and having few options. My favourite of the stories are ones that leaned strongly into the weird. The weirdness here is less cosmic Lovecraftian in tone and more "unsettling things beneath the surface of the ordinary" kind of weird, so it sneaks up on you. There are some incredible images and passages but some of the stories did not fully cohere for me.