Mr. Malerman is a master of the kind of horror that sneaks up on you, not from Transylvania, but from right downtown. Goblin is Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, with added grue.
As a reader of dark horror and fantasy for most of my life, I do not scare easily. However, Goblin put some chills down my spine and created vivid horrific images that I will not soon forget ... what an ending ... I especially enjoyed how the six stories do not run into each other but are cleverly sprinkled with suggestions and brief allusions to the others. This collection is a wicked hybrid of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and Stephen King’s Creepshow as each story features a blend of the ironic and the horrific. It is a must-read for any fan of the supernatural genre.
It’s hard not to compare the town of Goblin to King’s haunted Derry. But at its heart, Goblin is all Malerman. Throughout the stories, he writes like a downhill train, weaving Goblin’s past and present into one rain-soaked horror show with stories featuring, among others, a man obsessed with being scared to death by a ghost; a hunter with forbidden game on his mind; and a magician whose magic might not be 'clean' ... These stories offer up a history lesson and guided tour of a severely troubled town. The writer-as-tour-guide is very clearly enjoying the trip, and it’s impossible not to revel in the dark glee.
Among the running motifs in the book is a hint of folk horror, as Goblin’s backstory includes land avoided by the local Indigenous population before white settlers arrived because of the horrors found there—a riff on familiar genre tropes that never quite gets enough room to breathe on its own. The good thing about Goblin's structure is that it allows Malerman to work in a host of styles. The tricky part, though, is that some of these novellas don’t work as well as others. Some of that may come down to personal taste, to be sure ... Goblin’s best moments come when Malerman taps into a vein of Bradbury-esque weird nostalgia and then takes it somewhere unexpected ... the ambition is impressive in and of itself.
Author Josh Malerman has demonstrated time and again his masterful ability to craft atmospheric tales with unforgettable characters (sympathetic and otherwise). But he tops himself with this nightmarish account of a small, quirky and quietly terrifying town where the rain seemingly never stops ... It is very difficult to get these stories out of one’s head once they have been digested. I sense that Malerman by design has left spaces between each tale that may be filled at a later date. One familiar with the town might be hesitant to read more but would find doing so impossible to resist, which also might explain why the residents of Goblin never leave. You won’t either, without finishing these novellas in one sitting.
... at its best when it’s suggesting horror, providing glimpses instead of long stares; when things get more overt, it starts to lose momentum. Though it’s occasionally uneven, and not as accomplished as Malerman’s excellent Bird Box books, there’s still plenty of spooky fun to be had in these tales and Malerman’s fans should enjoy their time in scenic Goblin.
Malerman (Bird Box) tantalizes readers with this enigmatic linked collection ... The dark, fantastic tone will put readers in mind of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. This is must-read horror.
With its array of misfits...Malerman's darkly comic portrait of Goblin is not without its grim appeal. He is right at home in the graphic-novel mode—without the graphics, save for occasional full-page illustrations by Chadbourne. But most of the stories lack either any real sense of surprise or a satisfying payoff. And a few of them drag on. Give the author credit, though, for continuing to explore alternative realities with alternative fictional approaches ... An entertaining but ultimately undercooked collection.
