Granta 117: Horror

They should call the magazine Garbage instead of Granta! This edition pretends to explore the horror genre but all it produces is a book full of horrifically pretentious and soul-crushingly boring stories. Will Self’s False Blood prattles on about his heroin addiction with ridiculously verbose language – hey, lookit me, I’m edumacated, I has a degree an’ everthing! Paul Auster’s Your Birthday Has Come and Gone is Auster posturing yet again. He drones on about this and that, nothing rea [...]

Outside of Will Self, I only read the fiction here. 4.5* Stephen King, a popular yet critically underrated writer, explores immortality and fate when a retired judge revisits a fortune-telling patch of sand. Very strong story.4.5* Don DeLillo. This is the most accessible story I've read by DeLillo. A moviegoer evolves into a stalker - well that's what he's telling us This is a creepy, atmospheric tale and one which sucks you in. Thankfully, it doesn't contain DeLillo's customary abstract violenc [...]

who knew there were magazines on ?stephen king's "the dune" = thumbs uplillo's "the starveling" - on a creepy scale of 1-10? 6.5. i laughed a little too much to be "horrified."doty's "insatiable" - ugh, i can't even rate this on a creepy scale because it's not meant to be creepy. and i was never really a fan of walt whitman. though when i see doty tomorrow, i won't really be able to look at him the same way.

Let's get one thing out of the way before we go any further. There is little of what most people would call "horror" here. Granta is a magazine for really hip smart people who don't stoop to reading genre writing. So don't buy this if you want to read stories about spooks and zombies, or creepy things, etc. Unless you want to wade through a bunch of other non-horror stuff too. Okay, there is one zombie story. Caveat emptor. It's actually kind of sad that Granta feels they need to file these piec [...]

I was reading the "Horror" issue of high-falutin' literary journal "Granta," fruitlessly searching for anything remotely horrific, when I came to a story toward the end of the book called "The Colonel's Son" by Roberto Bolano. Bolano, some of you might know, is the latest big thing in Latin lit, the "Gabriel Garcia Marquez of our time," according to The Washington Post. (That's funny. I thought Gabriel Garcia Marquez was the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of our time.) Although Bolano died early, like T [...]

I've always meant to sample the delights of Granta - a literary journal of new writing - but it was only the combination of a 99p Kindle deal and an ongoing horror jag that eventually got me to try it. Much as I like the idea of what Granta promises, I can't say I'm likely to give it another go. It's not that the writing is bad - there's powerful stuff here from the likes of Will Self and Paul Auster - its just that a lot of it seemed like the kind of thing you'd get in a Sunday supplement, not [...]

I was expecting/hoping this edition to be straight-up horror, but as usual Granta's approach to its themes is more tangential than literal: here horror ranges from zombies to lost love to sex addiction to an illness. Horror in the everyday rather than in the supernatural sense. Once I got over that, I appreicated it for what it was. The stories started out a bit slow (Don Delillo and Will Self are two of my least favourite writers) and halfway through I put the book down. I did eventually come b [...]

A star for each story that blew me away. Joy Williams, Sarah Hall, and Rajesh Parameswaran are the authors. It's not that the other stories in this collection are dull; the pieces by Will Self, about his battle with cancer (a similar cancer that killed my mother), Julie Otsuka, about a Alzheimers inflicted mother, Roberto Bolaño, recounting a late-night zombie movie, and Santiago Roncagliolo, about Peru's "Shining Path" revolutionaries, are engaging. Even Stephen King's story is engaging though [...]

Not the strongest selection. I had high hopes for the theme, a personal favourite, and while I know the idea is to interpret the theme in wildly varied ways, some just fell short for me. Favourites were the Will Self (which I'd already read elsewhere, but still enjoyed the second time), the Auster (which has gone me desperate to read the whole from which this is an extract) and the King (classic, will a killer ending) and the Otsuka (heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time).

Overall I rated the magazine a three. Some of the horror stories/essays about genocide, cancer, Alzheimer was too real. I prefer to read to be entertained. The three short stories I really enjoyed I would rate a 5. They are in no particular order:THE DUNE by Stephen King, THE INFAMOUS BENGAL MING by Rajesh Parameswaran, and SHE MURDERED MORTAL HE by Sarah Hall.

Some of these pieces are beautiful, others slightly disturbing. None are what I would deem horror, but they touch on it in so many different ways.

Quando escritores ligados à literatura séria tentam a mão em literaturas de género muito pode correr mal. Sentindo-se talvez donos de uma verdade literária e mestres da palavra escrita, podem pegar nos elementos narrativos de literaturas de género que não levam muito a sério e remisturá-los. Tentando que dali saia uma história de terror ou ficção científica, normalmente ficam-se por resultados catastróficos. Ou então deixam-se ficar firmemente ancorados no seu género literário e [...]

I'm concentrating here on three pieces from the anthology; in each case, it was my first time reading the author.Will Self, ‘False Blood’This is an account of how Self was diagnosed with and treated for polycythemia vera, a condition which causes the blood to thicken through the overproduction of red blood cells. It’s a very frank piece: Self writes matter-of-factly about his past of drug-use – neither apologising not seeking to justify it, but simply treating it as something that happen [...]

Before I moved to the west coast almost twenty years ago, I was a very voracious and focused reader. I don't quite know what happened to me. Perhaps more time spent driving a car than using public transit. Maybe it's the climate. Maybe it's been the rise of the internet, which I sometimes feel has turned my head into mush. Anyway, back when I was more dedicated to reading, one of the things I read regularly was Granta, the quarterly literary anthology. The appearance of each new volume was an ev [...]

Granta #117 Lit journalSo apparently this is a long running english(the country) literaturejournal dedicated as best I can tell to new writing by mostly newauthors. Monster Lib was sent this short collection because it is ahorror themed issue and lets face it it features a new story by thegenre's ( and the world) most popular of authors Stephen King. A badsign for this journal is that a week after reading it when I sat downto review it I could only remember strongly two stories in the wholething [...]

I guess that Granta's idea of horror is not the same as mine. Maybe the story by Stephen King qualifies as horror; maybe also the story by Sarah Hall. But there is little else in this issue that qualifies in my opinion. I would not regard Will Self's assessment of his blood disease and his recounting of the experience of illness as horror. Rather it is a well written piece that could easily be described as a story that evokes feeling of fear, terror, and other emotions that also are associated w [...]

I've never read Granta before but saw this in Mumbai airport and picked it up for some horror short stories. I didn't actually get round to reading it for a few weeks but it's been fun to dip in and out of while moving houses. Horror is broadly defined here, usually more intellectual than the average horror tale. I enjoyed the odd recounting of what sounds like a really entertaining made-up zombie movie (The Colonel's Son); the first 'person' tale of an escaped tiger turned out to be surprisingl [...]

Interesting set of stories. Some are horror in a non-traditional way. The Stephen King story is actually quietly horrifying, building up slowly. I found the most engaging story to be one about a zoo tiger written by Rajesh Parameswaran. And besides Mark Doty's piece being about the known and supposed relationship between Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker (who knew?), is the mere mention of the writer of Count Dracula make a particular essay frightening in some way?Definitely some big names in this co [...]

The excellent Stephen King story at the end the book saved this.Reading about someone having bad luck is not 'my kind of horror' regardless of how well written it is. I appreciate that the editor wished to collect stories that explores the less trod path of this area but to give them the bold title of Horror stories is stretching it.With the exception of The Dune by King. He is really back on form here. A crisp and satisfying tale.

The best thing about this is the front cover art work. This was my first edition of Granta, and it'll be my last. Not because it isn't good, it just isn't for me. The title of horror is slightly misleading, unless I'm missing something, but there is very little horror to be found. Stephen King stands out (obviously) among them, the rest are mostly forgettable. If you're passionate about short stories and new writers, this will be ideal for you, if not you may be disappointed.

Horror should be in quotes. The stories are not scary. They don't go boo. They don't keep you up at night. What they are are good. I skipped some that weren't doing it for me, such as the first one and the one by Bolano. Otherwise, good job Granta. And, really, this is one of those publications that should be see on paper. The interstitials and the intro art to almost every story is a super cool bonus when seen as two facing pages. Kindle if you have to, but.

This collection includes Sai King's "The Dune". The protagonists' semi-private dune reveals names written in the sand; of people who will die the following day. The day one name is written, he calls his judge/friend over to witness his will, which must be done immediately. Read this one to find out why. ☺

I read Stephen King's "The Dune." If you're thinking about buying this anthology just for King's story (like I did), I'd suggest waiting for the story to come out in a collection someday. It's a fine little tale but nothing you absolutely have to read right this minute. Unless you're a fellow diehard fan.

Definitely not the best edition of Granta. But the Stephen King story is a good one, if you are a fan (as I am). Also loved Rajesh Parameswaran's The Infamous Bengal Ming and Deng's Dogs by Roncagliolo.

Good read, not quite what I expected but a typical Granta approach, worthwhile

i don't love the new editor. and am not entirely convinced by how american and male the selection now seems to be

I had different idea of 'horror stories' and was pleasantly surprised by some of the stories-Stephen King off course and Santiago Roncagliolo stole the show with their excellent pieces . However, I find that some of the author dealt with their subject matter quite pretentiously; top of the list might be Mark Doty with his short story. I didn't understand the relevance of explaining graphic details of his sex life in his story was definitely not relevant. It is definitely not the strongest collec [...]

I should have read the reviews of this first. How can "horror" be boring? But to be fair calling these stories "horror" is misleading. There may be horrible circumstances being discussed. And I do mean discussed to death. But these are not horror stories. When a Stephen King story about a creepy sand dune is the best and closest thing to a scary tale it's pretty bad.

A book named "Horror" puts the expectations on a level where one might look behind her/his back if someone's watching over her/him whilst reading this book. But in this case, it wasn't so at all.This book consists of short stories from several writers where the main plot was more about facing scary situations in our lives than conventional horror. I am not a native English speaker, but I am aware of the difference between the words "scary" and "horror". I don't quite know if the stories were cho [...]

Most recent issue of Granta is just great. When I saw "Horror," I thought, "Oh nozombies and chainsaw massacres." Not the case.The horror is of many sorts - personal, social, psychological,political. One of the last pieces called "The Dune" even finds Stephen King in Granta. Will Self's mordant appraisal of his past addictions and present unusual treatment for an unusual blood illnes renders him being "bled" regularly, but not with leeches. Don DeLillo's "The Starveling" finds a lost man journey [...]