Furnace

A while back, I was looking to expand my fiction collection into areas in which previously I had not had much experience. A big one was horror in all its forms - from the gothic classics to modern cult works. I took NPR's semi-exhaustive list of the 100 best horror novels and stories of all time as my springboard - a list much debated in terms of its quality and completeness, but as I said this was uncharted territory for me, and so pretty much any source would do.

And so one book that caught my attention was Furnace. A collection of short stories by Alaskan writer Livia Llewellyn, I couldn't help but be drawn to the way the compilers over at NPR could talk about everything around it so enthusiastically, and yet seem to shy away from this one - ending with a simple warning: "read with care".

And they weren't wrong. Furnace certainly provided some of the darkest, most out-there writing I've ever come across. It actually doesn't get off to a great start; Panopticon is by far the least readable story of them all, an impenetrable mess of obscure prose with an unsatisfying build up - something about urban decay, I think? - and a conclusion that leaves more questions than answers. But once you get past that, there are some real masterpieces of the medium to be found. Llewellyn draws on the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, Chuck Palahniuk and most of all the queen of the genre, Angela Carter, as she weaves a host of confusing, spacey tales that remind us that the scariest thing of all is the unknown. Wasp & Snake reads like an Aesop's fable for the future, with a stern reminder of the importance of integrity. In the Court of King Cupressaceae, 1982 is cosmic horror at its bizarre best, and Allochthon at its most desolately heartbreaking. Better still were the stories that leaned to the side of comedy: Stabilimentum takes an amusing look at the things going on in the world that would be better left unexplored, The Last, Clean, Bright Summer twists Lovecraftian monster fiction into the perspective of a teenage girl - pagan birthing rituals are, like, so embarrassing - and my personal favourite It Feels Better Biting Down provided some genuine laughs as a pair of possibly supernaturally gifted twins bicker over who gets to keep their extra fingers, and whether they should tell their parents about the monstrous being they seem to be morphing into - after all, they're about to be called in for dinner. Lastly comes a much more straightforward piece of romantic fiction, from earlier in Llewellyn's career: The Unattainable recounts a chance meeting that turns into the satisfaction that a woman has spent her life searching for, but then finds herself needing more. It seems a bit incongruous, but is arguably the best written of the lot.

So there's plenty of diversity in the writing here, and in its themes and inspiration - but there are a few elements that link everything together. One is sex - unavoidable and in-your-face in every story, but still a lot more tasteful than you might imagine, and only occasionally tipping over into the territory of sleaze or shock factor. Llewellyn is certainly adept at moulding her prose style so as to transform the act into a primal, almost spiritual event. It's also worth noting that all of the protagonists here are female, and all interesting, well-developed characters - something lacking in a lot of what I read, but perhaps not in horror writing in general, which could be a reason to seek out more in this vein. And lastly, hanging in the background of everything here, is the dust and decay of America - of towns forgotten but still inhabited, of the vast expanses of emptiness, and of the lurking tide of nature always ready to reclaim what has never properly been taken away.

All in all it's an interestingly inconsistent, impressively written set of short stories that provided me with a fresh perspective on a field of literature not really on my radar - and I had to admire Furnace for that.

4/5

Earthy, eerie musings by a woman from the corner of the world? I'd go for this: