“He showed them the way into the nightmare, but he could not show them the way out…” Thomas Ligotti.
“More a singer than a writer,” was one of the things Graham Masterton said about my book Psychonaut. I am tempted to say the same about Thomas Ligotti’s “Teatro Grottesco”, but here it is the repetition of phrases within the melody of his stories that leads me to that conclusion. Whole sentences are repeated again and again within the tales until they feel like mantras or chants, or indeed song lyrics.
After reading the first two stories in this collection I felt I had never read more perfect horror shorts. While the entire collection is fascinating and extraordinarily dark, the later stories feel more like Kafkaesque surrealism combined with philosophical treaties on existential crises rather than pure horror tales. If you love H.P. Lovecraft, but want less racism and sexism, then Ligotti is for you. He’s a modern and far less offensive Lovecraft, with similar themes of madness, remoteness, nightmarish dreamscapes, dread and anxiety. Almost all his characters are heavily medicated. In one town we are told everybody needs medication to survive.
Many of the tales are connected by characters and places. All are connected by illness mental or physical, often both. The narratives vary in lucidity. Some seem to wander while others are perfectly coherent. I cannot decide which works best.
It is a gorgeous read. My favourite tales were “Purity”, “The Town Manager” and “Gas Station Carnivals”, but they were all wonderful. Don’t take my word for it. Check Ligotti out for yourself. You will not be disappointed.
5/5 stars.