Glen Hirshberg

Review of eBook

A documentary [ghost-hunting] filmmaker finds himself tapped for jury duty where a strange fellow juror [who works night security] engages him in a strange conversation. And then the strange fellow, inexplicably excused from jury duty, wanders out of the courtroom looking forlorn.

A couple of weeks later, the filmmaker finds himself thinking about the strange almost-juror, tries to track him down. Eventually, Look Outs, Incorporated [where, according to the cursive name on the uniform shirt he’d worn] identified him as Bulan, and the filmmaker takes a trip to where the man was working.

An abandoned mall. In the dead of night.

After several missteps and a startled fright or two, he finds Bulan.

And something else.

This short horror story, dark and unnerving, is set, for the most part, in a gloomy, abandoned shopping mall . . . in the middle of the night. The filmmaker, recounting the story from memory, gives the reader enough information to create that creepy sort of tension that all good horror stories seek to bestow upon the reader.

The telling of this spooky tale is from the point of view of the never-named filmmaker. Bulan speaks with the filmmaker only in the jury waiting room, mentioning several eerie encounters he’s had during his nighttime work. But finding him at work turns out to be a difficult proposition for the filmmaker . . . and then comes the terror.

Highly recommended.… (more)

Completely mischaracterised as horror, these are in fact deftly-written contemporary short stories with varying degrees of eeriness. The title story, in which a breakdown on the autostrada exposes the fragility of an American couple's relationship, is particularly unsettling. The other stand-outs for me were "Safety Clowns" and "Flowers on their Bridles, Hooves in the Air" with its King-esque journey into a haunted amusement arcade and background love triangle. The last two or three tales didn't grip me as much but Hirshberg is clearly a talent.… (more)

REVIEWED: Motherless Child
WRITTEN BY: Glen Hirshberg
PUBLISHED: May, 2014 by Tor Books (originally in 2012 by Earthling)

Motherless Child may be classified as a vampire book, but it is not related to the well-worn tropes familiar to most readers. Glen Hirshberg’s writing is as literary as any classical author, filled with pathos, explorations of the human condition, and a contrast of the good vs. evil theme, but with unexpected outcomes. Two young mothers, Natalie and Sophie, who have been turned into vampires, must leave their beloved children behind to travel the country searching for answers, trying to fight the effects of what they’ve become, until the inevitable showdown with those who changed them forever.

Four-and-a-half out of Five stars
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This book is adult fiction, described as psychologically intense, and that is an apt description of how the story unfolds. In Detroit, in the 1970's, Mattie, Spencer and Theresa were in the "gifted" program at their school. At that same point in time, a serial killer known as "The Snowman" was picking and choosing young victims with impunity. How those horrific murders affected families, neighborhoods and these three "exceptional" children, both at that time, and thirty years later is the framework of this story. A bit slow in the first part of the book, the intensity picks up and the story and character connections unfold in interesting ways. The author's view represents a kind of backward domino effect where we see the grand crash first and then the intricately arranged pattern leading up to it.

Karen J. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

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