Thanks to Valancourt Books, I’ve been on a world horror kick lately, aided by their recent slew of foreign language horror collections translated into English, most of the stories translated for the first time. Quite recently, I read A Different Darkness by Italian author Luigi Musolino, and last year I read The Black Maybe by Hungarian author Atilla Veres, and both collections were fantastic. Both authors were featured in The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories volume 1, and this past week I picked up and read another collection by one of those authors, The Secret Life of Insects, by Bernardo Esquinca.

Valancourt Books has really done a genuine service to the horror community making these translated titled available.¹ It is really rewarding and insightful to read horror from other countries for a number of reasons; one of these is that different countries have different legends, cultures, and politics, and these result in different perspectives on horror. Another reason is the opposite: it is quite enlightening to see that, in spite of these differences, we are all disturbed and unsettled by essentially the same things, and we are all struggling with the same existential questions about life and meaning. I’m now addicted to getting all the Valancourt world horror editions, and will be blogging about each of them as I read them.

The Secret Life of Insects collects fourteen of Esquinca’s short stories over a wide range of his career, the earliest from 2008 and the most recent from 2020. All the stories are compelling and fascinating; most of them are quite short, and make for a quick read before bed, with three in the collection a bit longer. Here are a few short descriptions to give you an idea of the types of stories included:

• The Secret Life of Insects. A forensic anthropologist returns to an investigation into the death of his wife, who died under mysterious circumstances. He did not supervise the case himself at the time, but reexamining the evidence suggests something impossible.
• The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. A man in a slowly dying marriage becomes concerned with the recent behavior of his wife, who has taken to sleepwalking and uttering strange phrases and night and has become obsessed with an erotic Japanese print of a woman with an octopus.
• Señor Ligotti. A struggling author with a family comes across an offer too good to refuse: the aging Señor Ligotti offers him a permanent home in an apartment building for virtually nothing, with only the innocent condition that the lonely Ligotti be allowed to visit and make conversation from time to time. Like all deals that are too good to be true, this deal comes with a nasty catch. This was the story featured in the first Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories.
• Come to Me. A lonely woman makes a deal with a witch doctor to secure the love of the man of her dreams, but she learns to her horror that one was to be exceedingly careful in following the doctor’s instructions.
• Demoness. A group of high school friends reunite two decades later at a class reunion of their Jesuit school, and eventually reflect back upon a horrific experience of what must have been demonic possession in their school days. None of them, however, have understood the true implications of that experience up to now, but they will learn.
• Dream of Me. A collector of “cursed dolls” receives a new doll for his collection anonymously by mail, which is unprecedented since he always vets all of his acquisitions personally. His investigation into the true story of the doll will lead him into revelations he wishes had remained uncovered. This story has “stories within a story,” as Esquinca shares fictional catalogue entries of many of the dolls in the collection.
• Tlatelolco Confidential. A story of an apocalypse, told from the point of view of multiple people there for its beginning — including one who is already dead.
• Sea of Tranquility, Ocean of Storms. A biographer shares his life experiences with his cousin Rodolfo’s schizophrenia, which has led Rodolfo to an obsession with the moon and a unique conspiratorial belief about the Apollo moon landings. When Rodolfo dies, the biographer seeks out Alan Bean, an Apollo astronaut who became a painter of the moon when he returned to Earth, but that effort leads to an impossible discovery.

The stories here are of a much more subtle nature than those of the aforementioned Musolino and Veres, and remind me in many cases of classic ghost stories where, at the end of the tale, you’re not even sure if there was a ghost at all. Many of the stories feature longing and regret as major themes, and failed relationships are prominent throughout the collection. Several of the stories feature strong sexual themes, especially “Demoness,” which includes a detailed discussion of masturbation. All of the descriptions are relevant to the stories, and nothing is excessive in my opinion, but it is worth mentioning for readers to prepare them.

I think “Demoness” in particular will stick with me the longest out of this collection; it has a fascinating perspective on demonic possession and its impact, and I’ve found myself pondering its implications even beyond the supernatural angle.

Overall, The Secret Life of Insects is another fantastic collection of stories by a talented author, worth reading on its own merits but also a wonderful look at horror from the perspective of another country.

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1. As always, worth mentioning for full disclosure that I’ve written introductions for Valancourt Books in the past and am friends with the Valancourt folks.