Customer Reviews

The Haunted Heart and Other Tales

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

 

 

I admired that classic TV show for its excellent writing and stories with fully-developed relatable characters, who found themselves in strange but plausible situations. These are also the strengths of author Currier's diverse anthology of his short stories, a few of which have already been published in other compilations.

Although I loved all twelve stories in the book, I especially enjoyed "The Country House," a tale of a gay couple whose second home turned out to be haunted by a dangerous spirit, and "The Man in the Mirror," a sad tale of an aging actor dealing with consequences of his past actions. But my favorite is the titular "The Haunted Heart," an immensely-satisfying twenty page epic about a wandering ghost who interacts with several gay male acquaintances over a period of years.

Truthfully, short stories are not usually my preference, as it is rare that an author can fully develop a plot and characters in so few pages. But I found each of these stories just as satisfying and unique as a full length novel, so much so that, as I often do with longer stories, I thought about each story for days after I finished reading it. Definitely want to read more from this talented author. Give it five twisted stars out of five!

Jameson Currier is a story teller who weaves his tale around you until you genuinely care about the characters. He has the ability to capture dialogue with an almost journalistic objectivity; this places you in the scene as an eavesdropper, making you part of the story. He is one of the few writers who can be equally literary, erotic, dramatic and damn funny, sometimes all in the same sentence. His collection of ghost stories, The Haunted Heart, allows him to showcase these abilities in original stories that are not intended to frighten so much as entertain. There are a multitude of ghosts here, not just the spirits of the dead, but the ghosts of abusive relationships, bad decisions, personal flaws, and the ever-present ghost of AIDS that forever hovers in the lives of gay men. As a fellow writer, I was equally entertained by the inclusion of short descriptions of how each story came to be, from idea to completion. A good collection for anyone's library.

I very much admired this collection, both for its intelligence and its style. These are genre stories only in the sense that Henry James and Edith Wharton also wrote horror.

Actually, now that I think of it, there's always been a chasm between ghost stories and the rest of the horror genre, ghost stories being much more likely to boast serious literary merit ... and intent. It's certainly the case here. The gay themes just give this already brilliant book that much more of an edge.

The Haunted Heart and Other Tales is not your typical single-author ghost-story anthology. That's to say that it isn't your typical ghost-story anthology of today. This collection harkens back to days of "gentler" ghost-stories, the type of ghost stories that I grew up on. In fact, as I was reading this, the style reminded me very much of Ambrose Bierce crossed with the old Alfred Hitchcock magazine stories. (Interestingly, going back and reading the foreword and afterword, these appear to be some of Currier's influences). This is not a bad thing. This, to me, is a very good thing.

Readers expecting today's traditional ghost-story line-up might be a bit disappointed in this collection, but what Currier has done is gone back to the type of stories he (and I) enjoyed in his youth. Stories where the ghost is not only an apparition, but a metaphor, a commentary on various aspects of humanity. In that respect, the title of the collection is perfect in that this is about Haunted people; not necessarily ghosts that terrorize the reader.

Some of the stories do work better than others, but there really isn't a bad story here. A few tweaks with pacing might have helped to liven up those with which I connected less, and I would have liked a little more "show" rather than "tell" in a few of them, but again this goes back to the source of inspiration, being particularly evocative of Bierce. Most effective are those stories which have a strong through line with the AIDS epidemic; the experience of living though it or not; of having survived it or not. There is exceptional emotion here and Currier uses the ghost-story milieu to look deep into the human soul and psyche.

In the end, the ghosts in Currier's gentle collection didn't give me chills or frighten me, but what they did do is leave me haunted. Just as the title promised.