... 22 short, potent stories ... they force the reader to constantly question what is real and what is imagined. Evenson accomplishes this feat by lulling the reader into a fugue-like state with his otherworldly imaginative prose, and like his predecessors Ballard and Poe, his unparalleled talent allows the reader to empathize with all characters — real and imaginary ... proves, once again, that Brian Evenson is a master of short fiction.
Brian Evenson whittles his unclassifiable, elliptical tales onto the page with an exacting obsessiveness normally associated with brain surgery ... A few of the stories read like arthroscopic probes into the subconscious with the guiding lights dimmed a little low, but Evenson’s inventiveness, literary skill and mordant wit are always on full display.
Much like Dante’s layers of hell, the stories in The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell tend toward making the readers feel trapped by the situations the characters are facing. These characters often end up back where they started, though their understanding of their situations can change drastically. Even though it can be enjoyable to be left wondering who lives and who dies or what is reality, at times the ambiguity begins to feel a bit predictable ... Sometimes the malleability of the truth works well ... Though the return of the shapeshifter/prosthetic leg is an enjoyable surprise, the collection would have been better served by starting with a more engaging story ... offers us short, though at times predictably repetitive, trips into the dark and unnerving areas in the world and in our minds, and in so doing offers readers a way to better manage moving through our own anxieties and uncertain world.
