A Collapse of Horses: Stories

A stuffed bear beats with the rhythm of a dead baby’s heart; a crew on a space mission are dying of exposure to alien dust and at the hands of a killer among them; and a town keeps receding to the east as a man travels back to the father who drove him away.In these stories, Brian Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary—the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know.Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen works of fiction. He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and has won an International Horror Guild Award and American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.‘Evenson’s fiction is stark and often jaw-droppingly funny…Some of the stories here evoke Kafka, some Poe, some Beckett, some Roald Dahl, and one, a demonic teddy-bear chiller called “BearHeart™” even Stephen King, but Evenson’s deadpan style always estranges them a bit from their models: He tells his odd tales oddly, as if his mouth were dry and the words won’t come out right.’ New York Times‘There is not a more intense, prolific or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.’ George Saunders‘Evenson’s fiction is equal parts obsessive, experimental and violent. It can be soul-shaking.’ New Yorker‘A collection of 17 powerful and sometimes very weird stories, some of which will send a shiver up the spine of the most well-balanced reader. Brian Evenson has a genuinely original imagination and a strong stomach.’ Sydney Morning Herald‘Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.’ Jonathan Lethem‘One of the most provocative, inventive and talented writers we have working today.’ Believer‘A Collapse of Horses is a masterclass of the horror short story…Many of these tales will likely have readers leaving their lights on well after they put the book down.’ Aureolas‘Evenson is an American writers who sets out to disturb and unsettle his readers. He certainly succeeds with his latest collection of modern horror stories…All very weird, but somehow Evenson pulls it off.’ Daily Mail‘A Collapse of Horses is a masterclass of the horror short story. Evenson uses many classic horror tropes—ghosts, incarceration, isolation, surgery, uncannily animated toys—so there are echoes in his work of classics like Poe, Kafka and most recently some of the short stories of China Mieville and the American gothic of Welcome to Night Vale. But he fashions these ideas in his own unique way, painting weird scenes and planting visions that are hard to shake. So that many of these tales will likely have many readers leaving their lights on well after they have put the book down.’ Aurealis‘Stories that will not only unnerve and unsettle you, but also chill you to the bone…The ordinary becomes extraordinary and then terrifying. Shades of Kafka. Shadows of Stephen King. Each story brings a new sense of unease and dread. Horror storytelling at its best.’ North & South‘To a reader unfamiliar with Evenson’s unique cadence of nastiness, his latest collection of short stories, A Collapse of Horses, is the ideal introduction. Evenson moves through the genres—Western, science fiction, childhood reminiscence, ghost story, found document, confession—and finds ways to make them eerier. His open sentences are often striking…attention snagged our expectations are more than fulfilled.’ Times Literary Supplement

New York Time Sunday Book Review

“Some of the stories here evoke Kafka, some Poe, some Beckett, some Roald Dahl, and one, a demonic teddy-bear chiller called 'BearHeart™,' even Stephen King, but Evenson’s deadpan style always estranges them a bit from their models: He tells his odd tales oddly, as if his mouth were dry and the words won’t come out right.”

New Yorker"Evenson's stories, small masterworks of literary horror, are elegantly tense. They operate in psychological territory, never relying on grossness or slasher silliness to convey their scariness. . . . For the Stephen King fan in the house: an author as capable, if a touch less prolific."

“Evenson’s fiction is equal parts obsessive, experimental, and violent. It can be soul-shaking.”

Publishers Weekly

“Admirers of Evenson (Windeye; Altmann’s Tongue) applaud the edge he maintains between the unexplained and the intimate. This latest collection continues to explore that line, and for how much is left obscured, an eerie emotional echo remains. . . . Evenson’s journey along the boundaries of short fiction make for an eye-opening dissection of the form.”

Chicago Review of Books

“You never realize how deep his fiction has wormed its way into your brain until hours, days, even weeks later, when you’re lying in the dark and Evenson’s images come flooding back, unbidden. A Collapse of Horses will stay with you for a long time...whether you want it to or not.”

Los Angeles Review of Books"A Collapse of Horses is a perennially dusty, dark, haunted house of atmospheric dilemmas whose plots continually reverse a reader's expectations."

“While each piece in A Collapse of Horses stands alone as a tale that combines 'literary' and 'horror' elements in novel ways that blur genre distinctions, the collection intensifies as recurring motifs flow through the various narratives, settings, and fictional psyches: bodily and mental disintegration, the ambiguities of human physicality and consciousness, and the permeable borders between self and other.”

Los Angeles ReviewEntropy, "Ultimate Summer Reading List"

“Evenson is interested in philosophy and semiotics, the impossibility of ever truly knowing or naming the world, and our fundamental, helpless dependence on what our senses tell us. . . . . [His stories] are a wonderful feat of the uncanny.”

Toronto Star"Evenson is a writer with an uncommonly dark vision, and in 2016 he figures to find his biggest audience yet.”

“This is Brian Evenson’s 12th collection, and reading it one soon becomes aware of being in the presence of a peculiar intelligence.”

something utterly Lovecraftian, but without the baroque language

“Violence is punishing but unbelievably subtle in Evenson's delicate, minimalist stories. And ultimately, there is something cosmic

GQ"This new collection, released alongside new editions of three of his older works, offers a great summation of Evenson’s strengths as a writer.”

“A master of literary horror, Evenson’s books mix literary sentences with science fiction and fantasy tropes and tie them together with a thread of uncanny dread.”

a haunting uncertainty about knowledge, about the fixedness of reality

“A Collapse of Horses, [Evenson’s] recent collection of seventeen short stories, maintains a perfect balance of literary and horror. While not every entry would be categorized as strict horror, there’s something that lurks at the edges of these stories

The White Review, interview

“The stories that comprise A Collapse of Horses . . . venture into increasingly dark, even apocalyptic, terrain while maintaining a narrative control that owes at least as much to the experimental spirit of the Oulipo as to the usual suspects of American weird (Poe, Bowles, Burroughs).”

The Brooklyn Rail

“A Collapse of Horses is a stunning collection of disparate tales of existential terror, which could serve as a good introduction to readers who are not familiar with his work. However, allow your reviewer to warn you: once you have read Evenson, you will want to read all of Evenson; yet beware, like most addictions, it is a dangerous pursuit and one not easy to pass through unscathed.”

Strange Horizons

“There is no colour in these stories, and hardly an image. Taken separately, they can seem as cold as ice. But allowed to touch each other horribly, they burn. The collection as a whole comes as close to adding up as the world is likely to allow to those who have lost their way. Each story says what the world does to those who drift into its claws without a lie to cling to.”

Campus Circle

“One of the premier dark fiction writers working today, Brian Evenson releases a new collection of his hallucinatory stories, A Collapse of Horses. The brilliant title story reads like an Oliver Sacks case study rendered by Edgar Allan Poe. His standout novel Last Days, a labyrinthine mystery inside a cult of amputees, also gets a new reissue.”

San Diego City Beat

“While these stories have all the earmarks of Evenson's fiction with varying degrees of violence, horror and dread, A Collapse of Horses doesn't complete the picture of Evenson's career so much as spin it in a number of fascinating new directions, each more unsettling than the last.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“America’s greatest horror writer evokes the schism between perceptions and realities, and, to unsettling effect, collapses the unseen bond that so delicately bridges them.”

VICE

“Brian Evenson is one of the most consistently vital and unnerving voices in writing today. . . . No matter where you start with Evenson's work, the door is wide ajar, and once you go through it you won't be coming out.”

Electric Literature, "A Master at Work"

“A Collapse of Horses is a master class in unnerving storytelling; seventeen short narratives that range from horror to science fiction and from surrealism to noir. The variety is outstanding, the writing is superb, but what makes this collection deserving of attention is how Evenson manages to achieve a perfect balance between what is on the page and what is left out.”

Vol.1 Brooklyn"A Collapse of Horses is the first of Evenson's books I have read. Since finishing it, I have read three more, in succession.”

“Brian Evenson’s fiction can both bowl you over with its unpredictable narrative experimentation and chill you to the bone with its ability to unsettle and horrify.”

Windsor Independent

“For fans of Stephen King, Kafka, and Lovecraft, A Collapse of Horses is a delightfully terrifying collection.”

a way of slowly introducing the reader into the same medium as the characters, and indicting them in the process.”

“Weaving the act of storytelling into these terrifying stories is no small accomplishment. Evenson’s precision allows him to give his latest book multiple layers

Rue Morgue

“[Brian Evenson] happily straddles both literature and horror in an amalgam that’s rarely so powerful and convincing as in this collection.”

About the Author

Brian Evenson: Praised by Peter Straub for going furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice, Brian Evenson has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award and the winner of the International Horror Guild Award, the American Library Association s award for Best Horror Novel, and one of "Time Out New York" s top books. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and three O. Henry Prizes, Evenson lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University s Literary Arts Program. "

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