Pablo D’Stair’s novellas, The Unburied Man and The People Who Use Room Five, are two of the most visceral pieces or writing in recent memory. Reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk’s Guts, though written with a palpable sense of wonder and heart rather than gimmick, both novellas can physically effect the reader.
The Unburied Man begins with a man afflicted by some strange fever. He then buries himself in the woods and sleeps. He digs his way free, only to discover that two months have passed, and in his absence everything has changed. Or is it only he that has changed? Cut from some tender shadow of the psyche, The Unburied Man is at times funny, poignant, revolting, terrifying and hypnotic.
The People Who Use Room Five is at the outset equally as innocuous as The Unburied Man, and wraps its tentacles through you just as fast. One night with an odd guest at a hotel spills into a country-side exodus teeming with derelict flophouses and wraith-like men who disintegrate as if they’re made of ash. Think Hitchcockian innocent-on-the-run meets a deranged version of Michael Haneke. One of the most intriguing—and in a disturbing way, endearing—qualities of the piece is that the central mystery/inciting event is never really explained. Or, maybe it was explained, maybe even explicitly so, but you never realize because the prose carries you away, through skeletal branches that tear at flesh like razors, through forests black as pitch, and pummels you beneath the dirt, grinding you to a fine paste along with the others decomposing in the darkness.
Buy Here
Published by Brown Paper Publishing
Review by Nik Korpon
And don’t forget the review of D’Stair’s other novella, here: http://www.outsiderwriters.org/archives/4084
Not to again show up on my own comment page, but I did want to mention that though this novella collection is not being as aggressively passed around, print copies are available Absolutely-Free-Of-Charge, upon request (in the same spirit as my novel, Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate). If anyone wants it, drop me a line at unburiedcomments@gmail.com and one will be mailed out to you, you’ll have it inside of a week.
Cheers to all at OW for the overwhelming show of support.