Growing Things
Freaks of nature
RELEASED 2 JULY 352 PAGES | Hardback/audiobook
Author Paul Tremblay Publisher William Morrow & Company
Paul Tremblay hit the big time in 2015 with A Head Full Of Ghosts, with its genre-inverting narrative about a potential possession, told through the first-person POV of eight-year-old Merry Barrett. It’s no surprise, then, that Tremblay’s first collection of horror shorts – written between 2004 and 2019, with many previously unpublished in the UK – is bookended by stories that tie in directly to that novel.
Atmospheric opener “Growing Things” presents an early version of the Barrett family, and introduces us to sisters Merry and Marjorie, who are holed up in an apocalyptic future where plants have run wild. Meanwhile, “The Thirteenth Tower” is set after the events of A Head Full Of Ghosts, and tells one of the fairy tales briefly alluded to in that novel.
Both are engaging and lusciously written, as you’d expect, although the latter will perhaps prove a little too ephemeral for those hungry for more of Merry. As with the 17 other stories collected here, ambiguity reigns, and many of the collection’s mysteries are left either tantalisingly or frustratingly unresolved, hanging in the air like the red blood-puffs that feature in the noir-tinged “The Getaway”.
Varying in tone and execution – Choose Your Own Adventurestyle stories; stories told through notes and articles – these 19 tales are a great example of Tremblay’s command of form, with funny and freaky results. “Swim Wants To Know If It’s As Bad As Swim Thinks” is a powerful nightmare about motherhood, while the novella-length “Notes From The Dog Walkers” is an insidious creeper that includes a hilarious rant about an author referred to as Mr Ambiguous Horror.
It’s an appealingly self-aware collection, whose stories are wildly different from one another. There are hits and misses, but Tremblay’s writing is captivating, in particular the artfully selfreflective “Something About Birds”. Instead of being a perfect horror anthology, it’s a map of Tremblay’s development, showing how he’s become one of our most exciting and unpredictable horror authors. Josh Winning
In his notes, Tremblay confesses overusing the name Tommy, and adds, “I’d never write a sequel to A Head Full Of Ghosts.”