American Morons

From the the Shirley Jackson and International Horror Guild Award winning author of THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN, THE TWO SAMS, THE JANUS TREE, and the Motherless Child Trilogy comes AMERICAN MORONS, a collection of dazzling and haunting tales... Two traveling college students confront their disintegrating relationship and the new American reality in a breakdown lane along the Italian Superstrade. A woman chases the ghost of her neglectful father to a vanished amusement park at the end of the Long Beach pier. Two recently retired teachers learn just how much Los Angeles has taken from them. In these atmospheric, wide-ranging, surprisingly playful, and deeply mournful stories, grandkids and widows, ice cream-truck drivers and judges, travelers and invalids all discover — and sometimes even survive — the everyday losses from which the most vengeful ghosts so often spring.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Ordinary bits of Americana show a dark and eerie aspect in the seven stories in Hirshberg's second collection (after 2003's The Two Sams). "Flowers on Their Bridles, Hooves in the Air" is set in the arcades of a dying seaside boardwalk where characters see their unfocused lives mirrored in the decaying rides and unwinnable games of chance. "Safety Clowns" uses the mundane routines of a neighborhood ice cream truck as a springboard for an incongruous tale of supernatural vigilantism. The title story recalls the oblique horrors of Robert Aickman's weird tales in its account of two American travelers abroad who find themselves caught up in the indecipherable but increasingly menacing rituals of another culture. Hirshberg grounds his dark fantasies in minute details of the everyday that give them a discomfitingly believable foothold in reality. His skill at drawing horrors out of commonplace situations peopled with credibly drawn characters distinguishes these subtle tales of the uncanny as some of the most effective and chilling in contemporary weird fiction. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Hirshberg splashed big with the five unconventional ghost stories in The Two Sams (2003). These stories amplify the impact. More than anyone else published and praised within the dark-fantasy genre, Hirshberg is a mainstream, middle-brow realist. His characters are as ordinary as tract housing and office cubicles. Their brushes with the other-than-normal occur in utterly mundane contexts. In "American Morons," young tourists (m/f) broken down on an Italian superstrade are helped by two gunsel look-alikes--would-be kidnappers? Well, not, it turns out, of them, at least. In "Safety Clowns," a 20-year-old who has just buried his mother tries out for an ice cream truck job by accompanying the company's best man for a day, during which he discovers that ice cream isn't all the truck delivers. There's nothing supernatural in either story, but few monster yarns are as nerve-racking. A monster, ghosts, and the inexplicable turn up in the five volume mates but not clumping, howling, or startling the characters like most horror-fiction bugaboos. Hirshberg is more concerned with the human heart and soul than with the supernatural. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

"With AMERICAN MORONS, Glen Hirshberg confidently shoulders his way through the generational pack to claim his rightful place on the summit. These stories are smart, challenging, ripe with feeling, expansive in every way: Horror as it should be writ, and as only the best and most expressive can write it." Peter Straub, author of IN THE NIGHT ROOM "Glen Hirshberg's stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content the stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader's brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing. It's a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg's storytelling skills in AMERICAN MORONS." Aimee Bender, author of WILLFUL CREATURES "AMERICAN MORONS, like THE TWO SAMS before it, is an excellent collection in every way. Hirshberg is among the best short story writers in, out of, or around, the genre of the fantastic. His fiction is marked by clarity, depth and a restraint and subtlety that make the horror and the wonder seem absolutely possible." Jeffrey Ford, author of THE GIRL IN THE GLASS "AMERICAN MORONS is the work of an original. Like Hitchcock or Ramsey Campbell, the style is precise, alert, and well-mannered, inviting us to enter Hirshberg's private world so that he may lock the door behind us. If there is anyone in contemporary fiction worth watching, it is Glen Hirshberg." Dennis Etchison, author of THE DEATH ARTIST

About the Author

Glen Hirshberg has been called "a writer to watch and to treasure" (Peter Straub) and "an original with real talent" (San Jose Mercury News). American Morons follows his International Horror Guild award-winning collection, The Two Sams, which made Publishers Weekly and Locus Magazine best-of-the-year lists. The Two Sams was hailed as "superb" (Elizabeth Hand), "profound, literary, and chilling" (Los Angeles Times), and "among the finest tales published over the past decade" (Jack Cady). He has also authored the acclaimed novel The Snowman’s Children. Hirshberg lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.

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