Day 16 of Blogtober! Let’s take a look at a recent excellent collection…

Valancourt Books (whom I have written introductions for) has really stepped up their game in recent years. Following the release of their excellent Valancourt Book of World Horror volume 1, which provided the first English translations of outstanding works by authors from around the world, they carried on and started releasing the first collections in English of a number of those authors! I’ve already written about the fantastic collection The Black Maybe, by Attila Veres, and now I’ve finished A Different Darkness and Other Abominations, by Luigi Musolino.

Musolino is one of Italy’s leading horror writers, and this collection highlights his best work, consisting of 8 stories and three novellas. I first encountered his fiction in the aforementioned Valancourt Book of World Horror volume 1, which contained his short story “Uironda,” also included in this collection. To be honest, “Uironda” didn’t stand out to me when I first read it, though it was a well-written story, but I trusted the Valancourt folks that his work as a whole would grab my attention. And it did! I read the whole book over the course of two evenings.

Before I talk about the stories, let me note that all the translations were done by Valancourt Books’ resident smarty-pants James D. Jenkins, and they are excellent translations! (I am a little jealous because James knows multiple languages and I have never really gotten close to mastering anything other than English!) The translation of a story could make or break it, especially in a field such as horror where a subtle turn of phrase can make all the difference, and James definitely stepped up here.

The stories are all delightful; to give you a sense of them, let me summarize a few of my favorites below.

• Lactic Acid. A man who has taken up jogging for his health decides to take a shortcut home before his birthday party and finds that the route is anything but short, or healthy.
• Les Abominations des Altitudes. When an eccentric climber goes missing in the Alps, a father and son go out in search of him. They not only find the hiker, but a mysterious artifact that he holds, that could spell doom for them all.
• The Carnival of the Stag Man. When a journalist is assigned to cover a strange nighttime village festival celebrating the Stag Man, he learns that there is much, much more to the story than a simple piece of rural folklore.
• Black Hills of Torment. This one must be read to truly appreciate. People in the town of Orlasco, who ridiculed a young man named Luca who was obsessed with painting black hills around their home, find themselves trapped in a nightmare that they cannot escape.
• A Different Darkness. When a young girl goes missing, her parents find unexpected solace in a seemingly bottomless black pit in their basement, from which they think they can hear their child’s laughter. But is it their lost daughter calling to them, or something else?

The stories are all of a supernatural nature, but their true focus is the guilt and dark secrets that humanity holds within itself. And the stories can be quite dark in this sense: in addition to the story of child abduction that I have mentioned, there are stories of abuse, both human and animal. The story “Like Dogs” I found a bit difficult to read due to this, but I should stress that nothing is gratuitous — any violence or horror that one reads has a point to it, and it is never overdone.

So I was very happy that I decided to read A Different Darkness! They are overall excellent stories and, as an American, it is fascinating to get a different perspective on horror from a different cultural background. With that in mind, there are two other Valancourt collections by world horror authors, and I will be reading them soon…