3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding intellectual horror., June 16, 2004
The only other author with this amount of control over a reader's brain that I can easily identify is Ray Bradbury. Tremblay's horror is in the same blood-curdling, cynically imaginative vein. Tremblay's short fiction is horrific for many reasons, not the least of which is that the reader can easily identify with the most evil, loathsome characters.
For instance, there is the poor, suffering protagonist with back pain. There's a murderous thug who has to swim. There's a demented, perfect magician and a writer having a devil of a time getting things copacetic. There are grandmothers with gifts, siblings getting in trouble and old soldiers dying. Much like Bradbury, Paul G. Tremblay has managed to distill the Human Experience and expose the raw nerve endings of human life. These stories are not scary because of blood and guts, or hideous monsters (although there are a few). They're disturbing and creepy because the characters are all too real, the kind of personalities that you already know, have dinner with, and pass by a thousand times on the way to work.
P.G. also flexes his muscles when it comes to creativity. More than a couple of these stories actively stretch your imagination, make the reader concentrate and present storytelling in a new manner. I was pleasantly surprised by the final short in this anthology, as it was demented enough to grab my attention from beginning to end, but not so chaotic that it lost me.
All in all: Bravo! A perfect collection of unnerving short stores.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful stories - memorable, and a unique concept, December 20, 2005
This review is from: Compositons for the Young and Old (Paperback)
Paul Tremblay is an author of deep vision and intense literate style. With this collection, "Compositions For the Young and Old," he has done what most authors don't even attempt; he has tied the entire work together in a cohesive tapestry of images that stand on their own, but would be lessened without the whole. Told in a sequential aging process, from the perspective of very young characters on through the haunting images of an aged colonel in a nursing home, this collection spans years of lives and many levels of pain and poignant emotion.
Some of these stories, particularly in the early pages of the book, are so painful they are difficult to read. A young boy, convinced that the only way he can regain his mother's attention after his father's death is to hurt himself, again and again, and what he does when his mother starts to not pay attention to his baby sister as well as himself. That is a difficult story for a parent to read, and yet, beneath it all there are messages themes that draw you on toward what is to come.
The variety is astonishing, not so much that one mind conceived all these words, but that despite its diversity of theme and setting, this collection fits together like a puzzle constructed of pieces and parts of many other puzzles that happen to fit in this new shape, as well as their old.
As in any collection, there are standout stories. THE POND is one such, how a life can be affected from an early trauma and molded all the way through death. CITY PIER and DOLE AS RIBBIT are two stories that join - two parts of one longer narrative that teases the reader into believing there may be a novel buried there, just out of reach. The two take place in a city that doesn't exist, built over massive piers that overlook an ocean of a hopeless future with an entire civilization living and crawling beneath the planks of the pier. Another amazing tale, one that won the Chiaroscuro Short Story contest and will stick with you for a long time to come is "The Laughing Man Meets Little Cat." This poetic tale uses a perpetually smiling man and his "mission" to lay bear the pain of the world in a little boy's life.
Tremblay shows his diversity by bringing in the ghost of Mark Twain through the eyes of a Ouija board and conjuring Poe from the words of his classic poem Annabel Leigh. Baseball winds its way into "Hackin' at the Peach," where the great Ty Cobb becomes a character.
And the line "Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me" is reversed in "The Harlequin and the Train" in a manner that is sure to cause both deep thought and the loss of perfectly digested food.
This is a very strong collection from a talented author. Readers of Cemetery Dance will notice that the prose is very reminiscent of Gary Braunbeck. One of the finest collections I've read in years.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful and thought provoking, August 3, 2004
Paul Tremblay is a true craftsman, and his literate stories will create emotions in readers similar to those of such luminaries as Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. There is an insightful intelligence at work here, and a love of language, but these stories are easily digested. The 20 tales are assembled in the chronological order of a man's lifetime, but they are only connected thematically; each gem exists unto itself. "The Harlequin and the Train," "With More Than Eyes," "4'33" and "The Laughing Man Meets Little Cat" are just some of the treasures you'll discover, and they will stand the test of time. Like Bradbury and Ellison, Tremblay is more interested in exploring the human condition than in limiting himself to any one genre, and anyone who reads this book will likely be as impressed by the breadth of material as they will be by the quality of the stories themselves. Get on this train now.
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