New Books That We Love!: Chris recommends an underestimated master of horror!

Brian Evenson is a writer of thematically dark, often violently detailed, portraits of people on the edge of sanity. He is first and foremost a literary writer—that is, more concerned with style than plot—who just happens to write fiction within the horror genre. It's a genre that has all but turned into vampires, werewolves, zombies and, at least lately, an atmospheric backdrop in which romantic affairs play out in explicit detail. Finding true craftsmen of the grotesque story—think Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King—is becoming more and more difficult, especially if you’re not interested in the aforementioned monsters. For more than a decade Evenson has published hundreds of short stories within the genre and has recently published his fifth novel.

Immobility, albeit not strictly horror, is his take on the post-apocalyptic story. The world as we know it has come to an end, either from world war, alien invasion, disease, or some other mysterious event. There are survivors, but few. One of the survivors is a man who, at the opening of the novel, thaws out in an underground base, his captors looming over him with a keen interest. Who he is and how he became frozen in an underground tank is a mystery to him; all that he knows is that he cannot move his legs and that the captors require of him a task that he alone can perform. He is assigned two doltish twins to accompany him on his journey into the barren wasteland that was once a major metropolitan city. Their task is to take turns carrying him and their knowledge of their mission is limited to basic survival.

As simple as the premise sounds, Evenson crafts a highly suspenseful, richly atmospheric and at times surprisingly humorous novel that manages to make you think about the future in a way you may not have before. Looming underneath the surface of the story is a deeply important philosophical question: if man is responsible for the destruction of the planet does he deserve to have it back? Though the novel doesn't answer that question, it does gives you ample opportunity to consider it, and you'll be left breathless while doing so. Horror has never felt so existential.

Review by Chris S.