Magic Terror: 7 Tales (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Peter Straub is a fine sorcerer of horror whose bag of tricks includes stories of pure, unadulterated horror (Julia and Koko), as well as more subtle tales of psychological suspense (Mr. X and Shadowland). Now Straub conjures up Magic Terror, a collection of seven deeply disturbing tales that display his entire range.

"Bunny Is Good Bread" is without a doubt the most haunted tale of all, a harrowing account of a childhood from hell. The scary hero Fee was so traumatized as a 5-year-old by abuse from his father that he disconnects himself from the real world and lives as if in a film. Why? "If you forgot you were in a movie, your own feelings would tear you into bloody rags." Ever since the day Fee watches his mother die a horrible death, he's been tormented: "He was one-half dead himself; half of him belonged to his dead mother."

Fee is not the only character to be struck by a dark epiphany, a life-changing moment. In the lyrical "Porkpie Hat," a famous jazz musician recounts the ghoulish Halloween encounter that charted the course of his destiny, and in the twisted fairy tale "Ashputtle," a fantasy-inclined "princess" seeks retribution for a traumatic incident many years before.

In Straub's world, horror appears in different disguises--the dark mask of child abuse and the bloodied cloak of war ("The Ghost Village"). Regardless of how it shows itself, the effects will haunt long after lights out. --Naomi Gesinger

From Publishers Weekly

The war-numbed soldier who asks, "Just suppose...,that you were forced to confront extreme experience directly, without any mediation?" speaks for all of the spiritually traumatized souls who navigate the harrowingly rendered hells of these seven tales of suspense and horror. Straub (Mr. X) effortlessly plumbs the hearts and minds of a range of well-developed charactersAincluding a reflective assassin for hire, a five-year-old victim of domestic violence, an aging black jazz musician and a pompous Wall Street financial adviserAto locate epiphanic moments when their lives careened "out of the ordinary" and into the path of deforming private tragedy. In "Ashputtle," an implied murderess blames her crimes on an emotionally deprived childhood in which she imagines herself a modern Cinderella victimized by her cruel stepsisters. "Bunny Is Good Bread," an unnerving portrait of the psychopath as a young boy, follows young Fee Bandolier as he maladjusts to an unbearably gothic home situation in which his father has beaten his mother into a coma. "Porkpie Hat" is related as an alcoholic saxophonist's confession of a childhood brush with witchcraft, murder and miscegenation that continues to inform his blues-haunted music. In several of the talesAmost notably "The Haunted Village," which links to the novel Koko (1988) and stories from his previous collection, Houses Without Doors (1990)AStraub skillfully evokes the supernatural to suggest the dislocating effect of intense psychological upset. Mixing stark realism with black comedy, and reverberating with echoes of Conrad, Melville and the Brothers Grimm, these excursions to the dark side of life set a high standard for the literature of contemporary magic terror. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (June 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375503935
• ISBN-13: 978-0375503931
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,074,472 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange Tales, Great Writing, August 7, 2000

By	C. Fletcher (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been a huge fan of Peter Straub's since I read "Ghost Story" thirteen years ago. To this day, it's still just about my favorite book. With the addition of the Blue Rose trilogy ("Koko," "Mystery," and "The Throat"), which is also fantastic, Straub has quite a few titles in my short list of all-time favorite books.

It's his writing that gets me every time. It's always deeply moving, evocative, and poetic. Reading Peter Straub is like experiencing a richly-woven dream from which you just don't want to wake up.

I enjoyed Straub's last collection of short fiction, "Houses Without Doors," but felt it was less satisifying than the novels he had been putting out at the time ("Koko", "Mystery"). The stories in that collection had an experimental quality that worked at times, but sometimes left me feeling they were too bizarre for their own good.

There is a similar pervisity in the stories in this new collection, but I think Straub comes closer in "Magic Terror" to doing what he does so well in his novels. "The Ghost Village," one of the stronger stories in the collection, starts with a great Straub opening line and just builds and builds from there. Fans of "Koko" will enjoy revisiting the haunted Vietnam soldiers of that story.

"Porkpie Hat" and "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff," two more strong entries, are closer in length to novellas than short stories. "Porkpie Hat," which happily combines Straub's enthusiasms for jazz and the past, is a shere pleasure to read. "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff," a riff on Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," borders on the overly-bizarre, but is more than enjoyable enough to make it worth reading. The prose in this novella is almost downright Dickensian.

"Bunny is Good Bread" is a harrowing psychological etching of the childhood of a disturbed individual who will show up later in Straub's "Blue Rose" trilogy. The Cinderella-esque fable "Ashputtle" is similarly disturbing. "Hunger, An Introduction" is funny, strange, and stirring all at the same time. My least favorite story was "Isn't It Romantic?," which I felt was longer than it needed to be, and as result was too slow and predictable. But even when Straub isn't in top form, his language is always a pleasure to read. Another down-side to this kind of collection is that if you're a big fan, you've probably already sought out at least a couple of these stories in their original places of publication. Of the seven stories collected here, I had already read three. But it was fun to re-read them, anyway.

All in all, these seven tales deliver the reader on a satisfying journey of the psyche, at turns dark and tortuous (also torturous) and alternately achingly poetic. Straub often lingers in the finer spaces where beauty and wonder mix like dreamy liquids with the ether of the human soul. In "Porkpie Hat," he writes that "[a]nyone who hears a great musician for the first time knows the feeling that the universe has just expanded." That same universe-expanding quality can be found in Straub's prose.

If you've never read Peter Straub before, you should probably start with "Ghost Story" or the "Blue Rose" trilogy. The stories in "Magic Terror" tend more towards the category of "acquired tastes". If you enjoy Straub's writing and have something of an adventurous mind, I'd definitely recommend this book.

I felt that this was something of a return to form for Straub. While not as good or as consistant as his best writing, I was more satisfied with "Magic Terror" than I was with his last two slightly disappointing novels, "The Hellfire Club" and "Mr. X." I now eagerly look forward to Straub's new collaboration with Stephen King.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thinking Man's Horror, November 2, 2000

By	markcb100 (Wesley Chapel, FL USA) - See all my reviews

Peter Straub is never an easy read, even in some of his mostaccessible works like Ghost Story. Direct comparisons to the likes of Stephen King are fruitless, since about the only thing they have in common is their genre and the fact that the two authors seem to have immense mutual respect for each other. (The best story in this collection, "Bunny is Good Bread," is dedicated to King.) I maintain, however, that Straub is more than worth the effort.

While King's work has a consistency of style to it (I am also a huge fan of his writing), Straub's voice tends to change from story to story. The lead-off story, "Ashputtle," has the tone of a seriously twisted, very disturbing fairy tale to it--a psychotic teacher who envisions herself a disenfranchised princess. The next, "Isn't It Romantic," is a tale of an assassin, himself the hunted now, on his last job; it's easily the least of the 7 tales here, despite a good twist ending. "The Ghost Village," set in Vietnam and with some of the characters familiar from the Blue Rose trilogy, has several plot lines, all involving the theme of taking care of those close to you--a solid story.

#4, "Bunny is Good Bread," is a stunner--the tale of the childhood evolution of a serial killer. The gradual detachment from reality of the lead character, accompanied by traumatic scene after scene at the hand of his father, is actually painful to read. In my opinion, one of the best things Straub has ever written.

"Porkpie Hat" is a kind of jazz-tinged supernatural story (although the denouement suggests there may have been nothing supernatural about the events in the story). "Hunger, an Introduction" is a tale about the relation of ghosts to those still on this mortal plain.

The last, "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff," is a joy to read--a pitch-black comedy about revenge and its consequences. The (shameless) stealing from the classic Melville tale "Bartleby the Scrivener" only adds to the enjoyment.

A very good collection overall, far from deserving the relatively low composite rating it's gotten here.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More intelligent horror for intelligent readers., June 7, 2003

By	Chadwick H. Saxelid "Bookworm" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Magic Terror (Mass Market Paperback)

Stephen King summed up Peter Straub with this excellent statement, "He is the only one out there in the [horror] field writing bona fide literature." This collection of seven tales (most of which are novella length) just proves this true. However, to be honest, the short tale is not Straub's strong point. He works best in long, intricate narratives that both use and deconstruct the thriller genre, all the while saturating the story with literary and cultural references, parodies, and homages. Each of the stories collected contain some of these elements, but not all of them.

Ashputtle will have you rethinking that pudgy grade school teacher you mocked, or the one you now entrust with the education of your child. Isn't It Romantic has an assassin on his last job and rethinking his first job in a new light. The Ghost Village is yet another story linked to his classic Blue Rose trilogy, as is the horrifying Bunny Is Good Bread. Which explains just what made a mysterious killer the way he was. Porkpie Hat is a classic tale, the story within the story not only a beautiful return to the ghost story form for the author, but it is also Straub at his deconstructionist finest. Revelling in how our storytelling allows us to communicate a hidden truth and overcome tragedy. Hunger, An Introduction offers yet another story within a story, trying to make us understand what makes ghosts haunt us so. It also expands on themes presented in The Ghost Village quite nicely. The closing story, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, is a hilarious, albeit gruesome, black comedy about the karmic nature of revenge. Those who long for a return to witty, intelligent and literate genre writing need look here. Highly recommended.