Dramatically Different: A second-generation writer offers a new kind of ghost story

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Dramatically Different

A second-generation writer offers a new kind of ghost story

Katherine TomlinsonRichmond.comTuesday, November 20, 2007

Joe Hill is not yet a household name, but that's going to change. You may have read Hill's debut novel, "Heart-Shaped Box," a character-driven story about an aging rock star, a vengeful ghost and a girl called Georgia. Beautifully written, terrifically self-assured, and dramatically satisfying from the first to the last page, the book signaled the arrival of a major new talent.

This anthology of Hill's short stories in "20th Century Ghosts" was published in England two years ago, but is just now finding a U.S. publisher. That's good news for fans of character-driven writing of many genres. In this collection of more than 15 tales, you can actually track Hill's progress as a writer as he experiments with a variety of voices, moods and narrative structures. Some of the entries are barely stories at all, but just poetic reveries on a single thought ("Dead Wood"). Other stories are surreal snapshots of character ("My Father's Mask") that are unsettling and strange.

Fathers and sons figure prominently in a number of the stories, and one, "Better Than Home," may bring you to tears. Hill's own father is writer Stephen King, and King's spirit haunts some of the tales like a benign ghost. King's fans may remember a scene in "The Dead Zone" in which the protagonist and his old girlfriend have an afternoon together with her child and Johnny thinks about what might have been.

There's a similar scene in Hill's "Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead," a story of lost love and lost chances that is also an affectionate tribute to movie director George Romero. (The depiction of the chaos of a low-budget zombie movie set is often hilarious.) Hill is being marketed as a horror writer, but "Bobby Conroy" is as straightforward a story as you'll ever read in the New Yorker. In the UK, this anthology won several prizes for fantasy fiction. So much for labels.

The most fantastic story in the collection is an odd little tale called "Pop Art," chronicling the friendship of a boy and his inflatable best friend. It's a parable about racism and a tale about being different, but mostly it reads like a story that just popped out of the writer's unconscious like a helium balloon that refused to be kept inside.

Hill has told interviewers that this is one of his favorite stories, but readers may find the premise so unlikely that they never get past it to enjoy the sheer exuberance of the way in which the author works out his gimmick. If you do get into it, though, it is surprisingly effective and affecting.

As with any anthology, some stories are stronger than others. There's a definite progression in the stories here, a definite focusing of technique. Some stories exist solely to set up the twisted ending. The difference between the title story and "The Cape" is that you never see the twist in "The Cape" coming. Other stories feel like modern-day "Twilight Zone" episodes, spooky enough to make your hackles rise, but involving little or no horror. "Last Breath" falls into this category and the conceit of the tale is worked out with logic and quiet craft.

There are stories in this collection that will haunt you. "You Will Hear the Locust Sing," combines atomic anxiety with Columbine paranoia and a dash of Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Some stories will make you catch your breath, like "In the Rundown," with its depiction of petty workplace politics juxtaposed against inexplicable violence. Some of these stories are trifles, but none is bad.

The two best stories in the book, "The Black Phone" and "Voluntary Committal" are almost cinematic in the way they work their storylines out, but in each case, the central characters engage us in their dilemma.

What the stories all share is a depth of character that's rarely seen, even in novels. Every single character — including the inflatable Art (from "Pop Art") have a multi-dimensional humanity that makes them instantly accessible, even if they're not particularly likable. The characters here are memorable, even when the stories are not.

This book is perfect for holiday reading. You can pick it up and enjoy a story or two at a time in between baking cookies and running errands. Be sure to read the afterword, where Hill has buried a last story for his readers' amusement.
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