Book Review: "Whispers in Your Mind" by Sandy Gillman

Ladies and gentlemen, Sandy Gillman has written a collection of horror stories for all of us to enjoy. I'm not going to lie to you: I went feral. These are entirely my kind of thing: uncanny, dark and kind of twisted. You can definitely see where the story is heading but you're still hopeful that something will change. Written with wonderful sparse detail and in some cases, even tracking two stories from differing perspectives on the same set of events, Sandy Gillman has really broke into the horror story world with a huge bang. I absolutely love this anthology and you can see all the work that has gone into making it detail-perfect.

The opening two stories are fantastic. All I Could Give Her Was a Chill and All He Could Give Me Was a Chill are two stories of the same event told from different perspectives. A married couple are in a bit of trouble because the husband won't stop gambling and has got himself in deep with loan sharks. We learn bits and pieces about the relationship from (in the second story) the way the wife was treated throughout their courtship, to the fact that there is a smiley-face bumper sticker identifying a car. I don't want to tell you too much about what happens in the meat of the story, but both of these people are in the wrong and it ends up getting really wild and ironic. It was definitely a great way to begin this anthology.

Welcome Home was another story that stood out to me. It reads almost like something you'd find in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, in which the house is basically warning you that it isn't all that great really. I love stories about people becoming victims of houses and there are very few of them. Sandy Gillman doesn't give us all the details of what exactly is up with this house, but the details she does give us involve it haunting the guest who lives there. It is chilling, often feeling odd and strange. As this piece of flash fiction moves on, we get a very dark atmosphere of blood pouring down the walls. With little explanation or backstory, this is a moment in time that the story suggest happens often enough to have an instructional warning manual. Truly terrifying stuff.

Another story I enjoyed was Eight Stops. It's written entirely in dialogue and tells the story of a person who sits on a train next to another person. At first it seems just a bit weird and unassuming (I'm not sure about what happens in America but the very thought of talking to a stranger on a train basically makes my skin crawl and makes me want to curl up and die. That's really the way talking to strangers works in Britain). Then, it turns a bit weirder when questions enter the conversation. The person talks about not being able to work, not being able to drive and then about food. But again, this all seems harmless as if they are just trying to get to know the other person they're sitting next to. After a while, a very dark and strange question enters the conversation that at first, feels philosophical but then when we scratch beneath the surface, we can definitely see what's happening here. Sandy Gillman creates a weird and uncanny atmosphere out of something that feels almost like an everyday conversation but not quite. There's something off about it from the very beginning and we can't quite put our fingers on what it is. These are the kinds of stories I absolutely love when it comes to reading horror.

Everything seems normal until it doesn't.

Sandy Gillman's book is really a must-read for people who want those short bursts of horror. They deal with everyday things: couples, homes, beaches and train journeys but in the end, nothing is really too normal and slowly, things begin to turn sideways. This atmosphere of messing with reality and twisting very regular situations into those that are not normal at all is almost a lost art in modern horror that seeks to do too much. Let's go back to the roots for a second and experience horror the way it was meant to be.