Hey guys, it's Aisling back again with another book review for you.
This time around I've been reading Darker With The Lights On by David Hayden.
It's a collection of short stories and it's also a debut collection of short stories
as well which is quite interesting and there's just a really good quote on the
back here by Eimear McBride that I'm gonna read to you guys 'It's an open secret
that David Hayden is one of the most interesting short story writers around.
Why it's taken this long for his first collection to be published is beyond me.
But I, along with anyone with even the vaguest interest in looking at modernism
anew will be queuing up for a copy.' So that's a very good endorsement for
David Hayden there. I actually love Eimear McBride so that's why I wanted to share
that with you. Now this book it's another kind of ominous-looking hardback sort of
like the other book I reviewed for you guys it's what my manager described as a
very handsome book and I think I agree. It comes in a kind of a cellophane
wrapper when you buy it there's actually no barcode or anything so that's kind of cool.
There's about 20 stories in the book,
there is 20 stories in the book and they range from being maybe like a page and a half
long to about ten pages long. They're all incredibly different it's almost like
each story is set in a different world, there's no context giving for any of
them, which I love. It's very dark, kind of mutely hellish,
and existential is how I want to describe it. The characters kind of range
from sort of almost fantastical to incredibly realistic like there's some
stories that I kind of questioned whether they were you know there was
ghosts or was there some sort of weird curse happening and then there's one
story that's genuinely about a man kind of falling asleep on his chair in front
of the fire but there's so much going on. It's amazing how with such
simple stories you can instill so much feeling and darkness into the mind of the reader.
I think David Hayden is a genius.
There's a lot of stories in here
that I actually want to read again because I think even just reading them
once all the way through I couldn't you know do it justice but then there are other
ones that are really gonna stick with me. The very first story in it actually I
loved and this is what gripped me. It's called Egress and it's just the
thought process of a man as he's sort of falling to his death like he's jumping
to his death and it's kind of the thoughts he's having as he's going down, it's
really interesting. If you're a writer I would definitely recommend it, I think if
you're interested in writing your own short stories or even
if you're just interested in the craft of short stories or you like that format
because you know there's more and more collections of short stories being
published all the time, it's a really fulfilling read as well because every
story was so incredibly different I feel like I've read kind of 20 small books,
you know, my mind has been blown! I think the style is very unique as well like
you're not gonna read another collection of short stories like this one at all,
I don't think. So yeah I would definitely recommend this to people who maybe have
read a lot of short stories before or are just looking for something totally new
and if they're kind of into sort of dark, very very different sort of stories or
again like I say if they're creative and they might enjoy this sort of thing it
might give them inspiration on how to write their own or just help you
think outside the box basically. Okay guys so that's my review of Darker With
The Lights On by David Hayden I hope you enjoyed it
and I'll chat to you guys again soon Bye!