The Beast You Are: Stories by Paul TremblayThank you to Goodreads Giveaways and William Morrow for the review copy of The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay.
Book Description
The Beast You Are is a book of short stories ending with a novella in verse by the same title. The stories in the volume tend to have dark content, but in many different forms.
The short stories in The Beast You Are are playful, experimenting with plot and structure. For example, one is written as a series of blog posts and comments, another as letters to a magazine with editorial responses, and another as a series of diary-like entries with numbered days. The topics are firmly planted in the horror genre, such as a review of an exorcism, monsters, and pandemics.
Many of the endings leave room for ambiguity and the reader’s imagination. They also deal in the fantastic, not just imagining monsters, but also animal characters.
The short stories in The Beast You Are are playful, experimenting with plot and structure. For example, one is written as a series of blog posts and comments, another as letters to a magazine with editorial responses, and another as a series of diary-like entries with numbered days. The topics are firmly planted in the horror genre, such as a review of an exorcism, monsters, and pandemics.
Many of the endings leave room for ambiguity and the reader’s imagination. They also deal in the fantastic, not just imagining monsters, but also animal characters.
Would I teach this book?
I can see teaching this book, under certain conditions. In a fantasy or horror writing class, perhaps, though most of the stories did not seem to fall in the horror genre so much.
I would be more likely to teach a few of the stories than the whole book. At the very end of the book, there are notes about each story with some discussion of the inspiration for them, which could be helpful to writers.
More than anything, this book felt like the writer was writing for enjoyment. Most stories are polished, but the purpose seems less to explore characters or social themes or even create a suspenseful plot and more to push and poke at what a short story can be. From that angle, The Beast You Are could be a good jumping off point for discussion and practice.
View all my reviews
I would be more likely to teach a few of the stories than the whole book. At the very end of the book, there are notes about each story with some discussion of the inspiration for them, which could be helpful to writers.
More than anything, this book felt like the writer was writing for enjoyment. Most stories are polished, but the purpose seems less to explore characters or social themes or even create a suspenseful plot and more to push and poke at what a short story can be. From that angle, The Beast You Are could be a good jumping off point for discussion and practice.
View all my reviews
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