San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Suicide Woods’ probes edge of the wild
In many horror stories, the threats are evident, the villains instantly identifiable. It’s hard to overlook the danger when a squad of sinister zombies comes charging at you in chapter one. But some of us crave subtler scares, and as Halloween approaches, a new story collection reminds us that the genre thrives on nuance.
At 40, Benjamin Percy has already published eight previous books. His latest, “Suicide Woods,” contains 10 unsettling tales. Some are horror, others crime stories. Percy’s strongest characters are underdogs and survivors, people in dire situations that require extreme measures. This intelligent, entertaining book demonstrates why he’s emerged as one of the more interesting writers working this territory.
Incurable maladies, untimely deaths, bizarre goingson — these are common horror elements. But in “Suicide Woods,” Percy filters them through a specific set of concerns, repeatedly probing the line between civilization and the unpredictable natural world.
In “The Uncharted,” the 70page novella that anchors his collection, Percy critiques corporate excess while slowly dialing up the tension. The action begins in Silicon Valley, where Atlas, a tech company, decides “to map every inch of the planet. Every reef, every alleyway, every canyon.” Awash in cash and hubris, the firm sends explorers to Alaska. When the group disappears, the company appeals for help from a charismatic but damaged adventurer.
Josh Wilde was a boy when he survived a car crash that killed his family. Now 22, he appears to have a death wish. Millions watch his online videos, which show him scaling treacherous cliffsides. Can his team rescue the missing Atlas crew? They’ll try, but wish they hadn’t. Percy sets up a clash between the rescuers and a barely glimpsed adversary, the identity of which I won’t spoil here.
He builds tension with evocative sounds — what’s that strange “twotoned whistle”? — and foreboding glimpses of trees that bear enigmatic, clearly ominous carvings. Starting with a familiar narrative framework — readers might be reminded of James Dickey’s “Deliverance” — Percy imbues his tale with unforeseeable twists and intimations of the uncanny.
The permeable line between wildlife and humanity is the major theme in many of Percy’s other stories. In one, several people become tragically fixated on a woodland area known for its multiple suicides. In another, an intelligent bear has an extraordinary interaction with a cabinowning family.
Elsewhere, a “mud man” sprouts from a garden and upends a staid household, and an icy pond extracts a toll from an inattentive taxidermist. Each story takes an unanticipated detour.
Percy’s prose is efficient. He uses agile verbs — “cornstalks fang through the snow”; a branch is “wigged with lichen” — and gets right to the point. “The sickness begins with a cough,” he begins a story about a pandemic.
In a 2016 book about his craft, Percy argued that writers shouldn’t say too much about a story’s hidden meanings: “The impulse to explain will insult the reader.” Though his novella briefly breaks this rule — “mapping the world meant conquering it,” he writes unnecessarily — Percy typically shows ample respect for his readers’ perceptiveness.
In “Suicide Woods,” he tells small, strange stories, and lets us figure out the subtext.