Use Once, Then Destroy [Hardcover]

Conrad Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2004

A serial killer is removing victims' hands in a Venice shackled by winter. A woman at the end of her tether finds a terrible release on holiday in the fens of East Anglia. A man is haunted by graffiti, and finds that his road to discovering the perpetrator leads to death. and worse. A husband trying to comfort his terminally ill wife seeks help in a forbidden zone from his childhood, where blood is the price of perfection. In this spellbinding collection of his best stories from the last ten years, award-winning writer Conrad Williams offers the kind of horrors that move subtly into you, like pain, or love, or regret. They are stories that explore the scarred outposts of desperation and desire, sickness and death, sex and decay. Within these pages you will also find the acclaimed novella Nearly People (nominated for awards by the International Horror Guild and the British Fantasy Society), in which a woman's search for food in a nightmarish city brings her attention from an enigmatic man known as The Dancer, and a host of terrible epiphanies. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Includes three stories never before seen: Nest of Salt, The Night Before and The Owl. Contents The Machine Supple Bodies The Light that Passes Through You Nest of Salt City in Aspic Other Skins The Windmill Wire The Burn The Owl The Night Before Edge MacCreadle's Bike Known The Suicide Pit Excuse the Unusual Approach Nearly People

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In these 17 mostly urban horror stories from British author Williams (London Revenant), memory is often unreliable and reality is just as untrustworthy. A typical tale edges into the surreal and sometimes the supernatural, then turns to madness and violence. These disturbing fictions pose a great many questions that are, on second thought, perhaps better left unanswered. If violence itself is seldom shown, its immediate aftermath is. Even the tales that seem abruptly truncated or intentionally obscure still leave vivid impressions. In "Nest of Salt," a man obsessively seeks Circus Street, a hidden "blackspot" of London that's a "nexus of filth." In "The Owl," a young British couple expecting their first child settles into a fixer-upper in a small French village. Minor stress is amplified and adroitly twisted into wrenching disaster. The near-future novella "Nearly People," which was nominated for awards by both the British Fantasy Society and the International Horror Guild, depicts a grim quarantined sector whose inhabitants suffer from disease and starvation. A woman there receives a glimpse of hope-or does she? We're rarely sure of anything in these depraved and elegantly ambivalent stories, except that Williams writes with a poetic brutality that definitely makes him a dark voice to note.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Grunge fantasy and dark fantasy could get little grungier or darker than Williams' grim, dense stories of dysfunction unto death. A hopeless photographer of subway accident victims in a London-like city sees more and more ghosts, until he realizes he is one ("The Suicide Pit"). A man searches the same city for a graffitist fixated on one word; all the while, fewer people apparently notice him ("Known"). The protagonists of several stories are finally flensed, filleted, or flattened; the most discomfiting thing about these endings is that they seem unpredictable and inevitable. The novella "Nearly People" returns to pseudo-London in a future when whole sectors are permanently quarantined; the heroine searches for food and to escape, but no one who doesn't peek will anticipate what her out will be. Williams is a word-drunk describer whose prose can become so clotted with colorful, sensual vocabulary that it must be reread to grasp narrative elements, and many readers will feel daunted. But Williams is also a genuine, deeply macabre spellbinder whose admirers will flat out adore him. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Nightshade Book; Sgd Ltd edition (May 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892389681
• ISBN-13: 978-1892389688
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,112,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ethereal prose strokes your soul like fetid colors on canvas, September 9, 2004

By 

Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Use Once, Then Destroy (Hardcover)

Painted onto paper with pen strokes much like a dark feather tickling down your spine, Use Once, Then Destroy is a chilling and eerie treat to the horror fan in you.

Not particularly graphic or even overly shocking, these tales are old time creepy combined with new world situations, brought to vivid life with the poetry of William's prose.

The horror are vague, and they hide in the shadows as they salivate over your soul, waiting for the appropriate moment when the air is at its chilliest to sweep over you in shivering apprehension and dread, leaving you bleak and trembling in their wake.

UOTD is a chilling collection of quiet terror, of felt but unseen things in the mists, of low-lying dread and unspeakable impulses. There are seventeen stories in all, too many to cover each one, but here is a quick summary of my favorites:

City In Aspic - a haunting and misty tale of a hotelkeeper in Venice, and the horrors that haunt him through the city's winter streets.

The Windmill - A vacation in Norfolk will be the beginning or the end of Claire's relationship.

Wire - A boy remembers his mother, and the dark terror that stalked her when he was young.

Edge - Another vacation gone awry, and love that turns bitter and violent.

The Owl - A young man and his expecting wife move into an old house in the country, and a storm comes that changes everything.

The Suicide Pit - In streets filled with "little samples and smears of humanity that won't erase", a lonely man finds his destiny.

Nearly People - (the longest and best of the stories) Eerily futuristic look at a quarantined area of a city, where Carrier stalks food for Jake, and meets the Dancer. I loved the Mowers, and there is some graphic and dizzyingly disgusting scenes in this tale, causing my shiver-meter to jolt into the red.

Conrad Williams' surreal and nightmarish tales are well worth the price, poetically written and devilishly creepy, this is a great collection to add to your bookshelf. Enjoy!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Existencial horror at best, February 2, 2005

By 

R. Benardes "www.maquinariodanoite.blogspot.com" (Bahia - Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Use Once, Then Destroy (Hardcover)

Conrad Williams is one of the best new names to appear in horror fiction in years.

Williams' stories are surreal urban nightmares with an existencial bent that reminds me how human and profound horror fiction can be.

This collection is a little bit uneven but the best stories like Suicide Pit, City in Aspic and Nest of Salt are masterpieces of anguish and despair and rank among the best existencial horror stories ever written.

USE ONCE, THEN DESTROY:

The Machine ======================= **

Supple Bodies ===================== ****1/2

The Light that Passes Through You = ****

Nest of Salt ====================== ****1/2

City in Aspic ===================== *****

Other Skins ===================== ****1/2

The Windmill ====================== **1/2

Wire ============================== ****

The Burn ========================== ***1/2

The Owl =========================== ****

The Night Before ================== -

Edge ============================== -

MacCreadle's Bike ================= **1/2

Known ============================= ****

The Suicide Pit =================== *****

Excuse the Unusual Approach ======= ****

Nearly People ===================== ****

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Use Once, Then Destroy, May 8, 2005

By 

K. Freeman (Apple Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Use Once, Then Destroy (Hardcover)

(3+/4-)

A collection of literary horror short stories.

Williams has considerable sentence-level talent, which gives his stories mood (to which plot cohesion sometimes becomes secondary)and sophistication. Nearly all are urban and extremely British (or alternative-British) in setting and theme, and that, as well as the unrelenting grimth of his tone, gives the work a certain sameness. Williams can definitely ring the changes on one type of story effectively, but it would be interesting to see if he can do other things as well.

Toward the end of the collection a couple of New Weird-ish, alternate apocalyptic stories add interest.

This might appeal to readers who like Kathe Koja's earlier work, for example EXTREMITIES.