Customer Reviews

The Barrens and Others

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Author F. Paul Wilson made a fan out of me with his stunningly original novel The Keep, a tale of Nazis facing Lovecraftian horror in a Romanian castle. I became a fan of his Repairman Jack character in The Tomb, a sequel to The Keep, and that led me to The Barrens and Others, where Jack makes a belated return in the story A Day In The Life. It's rare to find a really good short story collection, and this is Wilson's second; The first was the amazing collection Soft and Others.

The stories here include:
Feelings, where a greedy Lawyer learns empathy the hard way.
Tenants, which finds an escaped killer hiding out with an old man
and his VERY unusual boarders.
Faces, a different spin on the serial killer tale, concerning a
hideously deformed girl who kills beautiful people in a
truly gruesome manner. (These three stories all take place
in the town of Monroe, and tie in with Wilson's Adversary
Cycle, which began in The Keep.)
A Day In The Life features the return of Repairman Jack, and will
be a real treat for Jack's legions of fans. No
supernatural stuff, just straightforward action/adventure.
The Tenth Toe, a humorous take on black magic in the old west,
starring Doc Holiday and featuring Wyatt Earp.
Slasher is a crackerjack revenge yarn with a jaw-dropper of an
ending.
Definitive Therapy features DC Comic's Batman villain The Joker.
No Batman, no action, just The Joker and his new
shrink exploring the depths of madness in Arkham Asylum.
Wilson delivers another killer twist at the end.
Topsy is a short tale of gluttony revolving around a morbidly
obese man hospitalized after a fall at home. Any EC
Comics fan will see the end coming, but it's a fun read
nonetheless.
Rockabilly features Dick Tracy and his coolest rogues gallery
member, Mumbles. "Kz maz, kpr!!" Loads of fun, as Mumbles
tries to become the next Elvis.
Bob Dylan, Troy Johnson, and the Speed Queen is the tale of a
time-traveller who goes back to the sixties to "create"
some classic rock tunes. Sci-fi isn't my cup of tea, but
Wilson did a good job of holding my interest here.
Pelts is Wilson's goriest tale, which is clearly an anti-fur
screed, but also works as grand-guignol. There's some real
stomach-churners in this story...
Wilson also includes the scripts for the aborted stage
adaptation of Pelts (Which would have been a sight to
see!) and Glim-Glim, an alien-invasion tale that was
produced for the TV series Monsters. Wilson prefaces each
story with a short introduction, and these alone are
worth the purchase price. My only quibble with the book is
that it didn't include some of his other Repairman Jack
short stories, such as The Last Rakosh, which are almost
impossible to find.

I have mixed feelings about this collection. On one hand, I want to applaud the design, commentary and stories Wilson has gathered in this volume. One might be tempted to use it to teach a course on writing. Wilson provides unique insight into the processes that gave birth to these tales, including even a play and teleplay. He also disperses throughout the introductions his personal experiences with the entertainment community. I think it's both insightful and fascinating. The caliber of work presented is a testament to Wilson's success as a "NY Times Best Selling Author." His selections cover a variety of genres, providing a vast supply of fuel for the reader's imagination. However, on the other hand does the average reader want all this extra material? True, they could skip that material, even the play and teleplay. Are they then getting their moneys worth? I believe they are. Fans of Wilson's Repairman Jack are sure to find THE BARRENS AND OTHERS a wickedly entertaining literary adventure. It is an exceptional collection of short prose that deserves a place on the shelf of both the leisure reader and aspiring/professional writer.

I have read a bunch of novels by F. Paul Wilson and have always been reasonably satisfied with the results. Good novelists, however, are not always good short story writers, so when I picked up Wilson's collection The Barrens and Others, I was somewhat optimistic that I would enjoy it, but also ready for disappointment. Happily, this book exceeded my hopes.

The Barrens and Others is a collection of a dozen stories and a pair of short screenplays, along with some commentary by Wilson. Although some of these stories fit into his Repairman Jack/Adversary universe, they are all standalone. I won't describe all the stories, but among the standouts are Feelings (in which an ambulance chasing lawyer gets a rather unusual curse), A Day in the Life (which features Repairman Jack battling a group of extortionists), Slasher (dealing with a man's obsession with his daughter's killer), The Barrens (a Lovecraftian tale of people seeking too much knowledge) and Topsy (which has a massively overweight man poorly dealing with his condition).

The best in the bunch, however, is Definitive Therapy, all the better because it was one of the stories I had the least hope for. A tale of the Joker (from the Batman comics), I figured this would be just a minor work that would be part of a minor anthology of Joker stories. Instead, this is easily the most creepy of the stories in this collection. Definitive Therapy focuses on a psychiatrist trying to analyze the maniacal criminal. Such an effort is doomed, leading to a truly chilling conclusion.

Generally, Wilson is a consistent four-star writer, never exceptional but never disappointing either. This collection is an exception and gets the highest rating. Even if you've never read Wilson before, if you're any sort of horror fan, this is a must-read.

Anyone who's read a word of F. Paul Wilson's has probably read everything they can get their hands on. THE BARRENS AND OTHERS should be no exception. This collection covers just a few years in the writer's life and stuns with each entry. A DAY IN THE LIFE is the consumate Repairman Jack story. FACES will thrill you more than the last dozen serial killer novels you've read. PELTS, both in story and play form, may make you gibber. Wilson has written many a short story in past several years not covered in this collection. Let's hope it's not too long before we're graced with another.

These are all good short stories. Of special distinction to me in this book is the story Definitive Therapy. Comic book fans, this one is not to be missed. This is without question one of the best Joker stories EVER told.

I have been a 'Repairman Jack' fan for years. My only complaint was that I thought that the character of 'Repairman Jack' was so intriguing in and of itself that the supernatural/fantasy stuff in the novels detracted from them. (This is the same complaint I have with Preston and Childs 'Agent Pentergast' novels.) So imagine my delight when I picked up this book of short stories and found a straight forward 'Repairman Jack' story ('A Day in the Life') that is in my opinion the best story about Jack that has been written.
This is not to say that the other stories held no interest and some are not for the squeamish. But as a lover of short stories, F. Paul Wilson fiction and 'Repairman Jack' this is my most prized work of Wilson's fiction.

I've been a fan of F. Paul Wilson since I first read THE KEEP, probably back in the early Nineties. I then plowed through all the Adversary and Repairman Jack novels, and have reread most of them from time to time over the years. However, I'd only read a few short stories by him, mostly just chance encounters in publications such as WEIRD TALES and CEMETERY DANCE magazines. The short stories by him were always good, so I finally decided to pick up a collection by him, and I'm glad I did.

Unlike many other authors' short story collections, there are no genuinely bad stories in this collection. Instead, they range from good to very good to excellent, and are surprisingly diverse in subject matter and genre. Most could be described in some way or another as "horror." However, there are also some scifi and crime stories mixed in (a Repairman Jack short, a story featuring the Joker, and a story featuring Dick Tracy), as well as some mixed-genre ones. I even thoroughly enjoyed Wilson's commentaries in between the stories on how each story came about and what else he was up to at the time -- it was fascinating to hear detailed career notes of one of my favorite writers.

If you like Wilson's novels, or if you're a fan of short genre fiction in general, pick this collection up -- I don't think you'll be disappointed.

The Barrens picks up where Wilson's first collection, SOFT, left off, presenting much of his short story output from the eighties and nineties. If SOFT, as Wilson says in one of his forwards, is "Watch Wilson Learn How To Write", then THE BARRENS is the payoff for his efforts. Highlights from this book include gruesome supplements to Wilson's legendary Adversary cycle, the Lovecraftian title story "The Barrens," and two previously unpublished screenplays, a stripped down version of "Pelts," and "Glim Glim", originally written for George A. Romero's Monsters. Repairman Jack fans will enjoy "A Day in the Life," which made its first appearance in STALKERS.

F. Paul Wilson had me hooked after The Keep, and I just recently acquire this book. He is so clever and versatile, and all the stories are great. Some are supernatural, some a creepy, some are just unsettling because of its plausability, and Wilson never leaves you a way out. You get hooked and you get rocked. This man is a genius and a short story master in the tradition of Lovecraft, King, and Matheson.

Good, as are all his books, however, it is difficult to bring the excitement to these stories that I normally have with Repairmam Jack novels.