Bumper Crop, by Joe R. Lansdale
I’ve always been a pretty avid reader of short stories. They’re
like little tiny books you can swallow in one bite, with plenty of space to
spare. They’re like literary hors D’oeuvres, but sometimes…they’re not all
good. Sometimes you’ll read one, go to the next, and then find it leaves a bad
taste in your mouth. Even Steven King is hit or miss with a fairly large amount
of his short stories…
BUT THIS. Every. Single. Story. I loved them all. Deliciously
dark, creepy, unpredictable. It’s insanely hard to find anything nowadays that’s
written well AND unpredictable. It’s even more difficult to find a book of
short stories that score every time in the awesome department. This book is one
of the best story compilations I’ve ever read. Don’t read them to children,
however, as they’re not nearly as child-friendly as Pet Semetary or Helter
Skelter.
Lansdale has a way with words, and manages to create a world
I would never want to live in. God of the Razor in particular is incredibly
dark, wherein if one is cut by a blade of any kind, the ‘god of the razor’ will
come out to take possession of him and transform the victim into a psychopathic
murderer in order to feed the god with bloodshed. I wretched just reading this
story…that’s no easy feat.
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