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In the Mean Time

by Paul Tremblay (Goodreads Author)

4.41 of 5 stars 4.41 · rating details · 54 ratings · 25 reviews

A history teacher begins his unorthodox senior course with clips from an ominous surveillance video, causing a student's home life to deteriorate along with the lessons. A girl with a second head that changes into different historical and fictional identities tries to find her father while figuring out how to handle Mom and the book club. A blog documents society's slow, u...more

Paperback, 214 pages

Published October 19th 2010 by Chizine Publications (first published October 2010)

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Apr 12, 2012 karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: littry-fiction, welcome-author, czp, hey-shorty

holy freaking crap!!

i am giving this five stars, even though there were one or two stories there that i didn't think were the best, because the ones that were great were GREAT as in "i want you guys to all read this book-great."

first - a word. barnes and noble has this publisher shelved in sci-fi/fantasy which is so frustrating to me because the world being the way it is, fewer people browse genre-sections than browse general fiction-literature because the assumption is that sci-fi/fantasy is go...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Alan by: karen

Shelves: short-stories

Nearly 5 stars. Superb stories: strange and weird (a girl with two heads, a man who fills his house with spiders), or post- or pre-apocalyptic (in one the world is overgrown with bamboo like plants, that eventually come up through the floorboards; in another there is a cerebral aneurysm epidemic). OK there are innumerable examples of strange and/or end-of-the-world stories but what sets Tremblay apart is the odd combination of humour and compassion. And the smooth, expert writing. It was possibl...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Richard Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Review originally published at The Nervous Breakdown:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/rt...

When you enter the world of Paul Tremblay most anything can happen, and usually does. His recent collection, In The Mean Time (ChiZine Publications) defies expectations, the cover art a soft purple hue all filled with glittery type. It shows the faces of two sweet girls, which at first glance (pay attention, readers, the show starts here) could be two sisters sitting very close together, twins maybe. But...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Jody rated it 5 of 5 stars

IN THE MEAN TIME by Paul Tremblay

IN THE MEAN TIME by Paul Tremblay is a collection of weird short fiction that lives up to its title, offering readers fifteen sociopolitical tales that inform us of inner conflict as well as interpersonal conflicts, world-ending plagues, psychological horror, and inconsolable loss as they lead us down dangerous avenues where adaptability and resiliency are the only means of defense and survival. IN THE MEAN TIME unfolds in a merciless world not unlike our own, an...more IN THE MEAN TIME by Paul Tremblay

IN THE MEAN TIME by Paul Tremblay is a collection of weird short fiction that lives up to its title, offering readers fifteen sociopolitical tales that inform us of inner conflict as well as interpersonal conflicts, world-ending plagues, psychological horror, and inconsolable loss as they lead us down dangerous avenues where adaptability and resiliency are the only means of defense and survival. IN THE MEAN TIME unfolds in a merciless world not unlike our own, and yet distinctly different from ours – as different and distinct as the writing style and literary voice employed in the telling of these tales.

The first story-offering is titled “The Teacher” in which a high school teacher employs unorthodox methodology to instruct his students on the subject of violence. This story is one of my favorites. The rest of the stories in order of TOC are as follows: “The Two-Headed Girl” – in which a young child compensates for loss in a most unusual manner; “The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas: An Excerpt from A History of the Longesian Library” – where readers of Tremblay’s novella CITY PIER: ABOVE AND BELOW revisit City in a tale about the mysterious balloons of Annotte that appear every nineteen years and wreak havoc on the residents; “Feeding the Machine” – a cautionary tale about denial and sublimating suicidal urges; “Figure 5” – a visually stunning, other-worldly story about the merging of art and plague, bringing to mind the Garten der Luste triptych painted by Hieronymus Bosch, another favorite of mine; “Growing Things” – in which two young sisters battle urban botany gone terribly wrong; “Harold the Spider Man” – gives us a recluse who keeps some unusual eight legged pets with odd appetites; “Rhymes with Jew” – a sociopolitical tale about class distinction; “The Marlborough Man Meets the End” – three brothers wage war on advertizing and the destruction of habitat; “The Blog at the End of the World” – an online blogger who details mysterious deaths occurring in and around her city; “The People Who Live Near Me” – psychological horror utilizing the unreliable narrator in a tale about projective identification and decompensation, my third favorite in this collection; “There’s No Light Between the Floors” – a nuanced tale with a nod to Lovecraft about the survivors of an apocalyptic event; “Headstones in Your Pocket” – a USA border patrol agent will stop at nothing to quell his haunted past; “It’s Against the Law to Feed the Ducks” – a riff on Shirley Jackson’s “The Summer People” about a family on vacation trying to cope with the disappearance of fellow vacationers; “We Will Never Live in the Castle” – another riff on a Shirley Jackson story, her famous and last novel WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, in which a disenfranchised teenage boy sets up housekeeping in an abandoned amusement park after an end-of-the-world disaster has occurred, and lays siege to “Cinderella’s Castle”.

Paul Tremblay is the author of COMPOSITIONS FOR THE YOUNG AND OLD, his first collection of short fiction; two novellas titled CITY PIER: ABOVE AND BELOW and THE HARLEQUIN AND THE TRAIN; THE LITTLE SLEEP and its sequel NO SLEEP TILL WONDERLAND, two Chandleresque crime noir novels featuring protagonist Mark Genevich, the narcoleptic detective.
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Oct 04, 2011 William Freedman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Paul Tremblay is singularly talented. Adept at setting a mood, disciplined in stripping away the non-essential, insightful at creating sympathetic characters, he exudes writerly skill.

So why did I give his anthology In the Mean Time only three stars? Because there is one key element that he is uneven at: storytelling.

You can't call this book a collection of short stories. Some of them are stories and some of them are better described as vignettes. I could imagine submitting "The People Who Live...more Paul Tremblay is singularly talented. Adept at setting a mood, disciplined in stripping away the non-essential, insightful at creating sympathetic characters, he exudes writerly skill.

So why did I give his anthology In the Mean Time only three stars? Because there is one key element that he is uneven at: storytelling.

You can't call this book a collection of short stories. Some of them are stories and some of them are better described as vignettes. I could imagine submitting "The People Who Live Near Me" or "There's No Light Between Floors" to my crit group and here them whine, "That's cool, but does anyone ever do anything?"

These works have their place, but they don't necessarily appeal to my old-fashioned, provincial taste for plot and character arcs. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy the collection overall.

The longer works tended to appeal to me. "It's Against the Law to Feed the Ducks" and "We Will Never Live in the Castle" were absolutely brilliant. The first two stories, "The Teacher" and "The Two-Headed Girl" drew me in to Tremblay's darkly lit world and made me want to stay. They were followed by "The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas" -- which read like a New Weird story written just because some BFA adjunct assigned Tremblay's class to write one -- that made me think twice about reading on.

But ultimately, I'm glad I did.

And that's despite the looks I got from people in restaurants and other public places as they saw this pink, glittery book in the hands of a man in his 40s. A closer look at the cover would have shown the main character(s) of "The Two-Headed Girl" wearing a two-collared T-shirt, and that the cover art was a sly send-up of the YA novel geared toward morose teenage girls and assigned to eighth-grade classes a decade later once these ugly ducklings come back to roost as middle-school English teachers. I never felt so self-conscious of what my book looked like to other people since I was reading Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South, which featured a glossy rendering of Robert E. Lee in full battle regalia. (I definitely recommend reading that book, but I strongly recommend against sitting on a park bench along Washington's Georgia Avenue while you're doing so.) I'm such a huge fan of Erik Mohr's art, which has graced so much of ChiZine Press's portfolio, that I hesitate to suggest that this time he may have outsmarted himself. Even so, I can't say enough positively about Mara Sternberg's interior illustrations.

Ultimately, I look forward to reading more from Tremblay. I'd definitely take a look at a novel-length work from him. My sense is that, as a storyteller, he needs more room to run.(less)

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Mar 20, 2011 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Wordlessly, Jody and Joe climbed down the ridge. They crept behind the jagged boulder and found his body, lying adjacent to the flat rock upon which he landed. The boy looked like Joe and the boy looked like Jody, but only smaller, younger. The left side of his head was dented, caved-in, and was missing a flap of scalp. His left arm was held out stiffly and twitched, beating like one wing of a broken hummingbird. The lower half of his face had crumbled, ice cream melting over a cone. He was brea...more Wordlessly, Jody and Joe climbed down the ridge. They crept behind the jagged boulder and found his body, lying adjacent to the flat rock upon which he landed. The boy looked like Joe and the boy looked like Jody, but only smaller, younger. The left side of his head was dented, caved-in, and was missing a flap of scalp. His left arm was held out stiffly and twitched, beating like one wing of a broken hummingbird. The lower half of his face had crumbled, ice cream melting over a cone. He was breathing, but irregularly. They crouched, hands over their mouths, but not over their eyes. His chest inflated sharply, then deflated slowly, a sagging balloon. The right side of his face was perfect, asleep. His left eye was swollen shut, or missing. It was hard to know for sure with the orbital socket broken, pushed in, along with the area around his temple. Everything leaked slowly. There were too many colours on his face. And his teeth, his teeth, they were baby teeth, as small as seeds, and they peppered the sand and dirt around his head, those miniature headstones in the sand. Then there was one long sigh and the boy stopped breathing and his arm stopped moving.

***

A collection of 15 dark fantasy/surrealist tales, Paul Tremblay’s In The Mean Time is a wildly uneven book—at times brilliant and subversive (such as the frame-by-frame creeping of a security video taken in a classroom that forever disrupts the life and mental state of a student), but equally capable of being overtly mundane and obtuse. Already a published author several times over, Tremblay’s skilful use of language shines in every story (as seen in the disturbingly brilliant portion up above). But it’s the tales themselves that suffer from a somewhat discombobulated tone.

Narrative is clearly not Tremblay’s intent with these tales. He’s not interested in telling us a story or taking us on a ride. No, what drives these disparate stories is the onion peeling of layers and layers of distress, trauma and psychosis—all captivating conceptually, but not always relayed in an intriguing manner.

In cases where this style absolutely works—“The Teacher”; “The Two-Headed Girl”; “There’s No Light Between Floors”; “Headstones in Your Pocket”—the characters provide just enough three-dimensionality to really succeed at pulling the reader into the layers of subtle distress (particularly with the last story mentioned, which I felt to be the highlight of the book). They exist apart from the tales, and not as products for the writer to experiment with.

Conversely, where this stylistic approach doesn’t work as well—“The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas: An Excerpt from A History of the Longesian Library”; “We Will Never Live in the Castle”; “The People Who Live Near Me”—the author’s experimentation results in characters who feel less approachable/relatable and more as if they were avatars for a concept only partially realized. In this regard, the collection suffers from a strange duality that prevents it from ever feeling like a complete work; many of the stories wind up feeling anticlimactic when paired with others, their intent diluted from the lack of a complete vision that is sometimes endemic of works of short fiction. This is not to say that all short fiction collections need to have a mosaic-like approach to them, but I have always felt that the more successful ones in this regard have at least an understandable focus or conceit that guides the selections and how they are paired with one another.(less)

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Oct 29, 2010 Caleb Ross rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: guilty-by-association, fiction-short-stories-single-author

Twitter Review: #ITMT In The Mean Time by Paul Tremblay @paulGtremblay http://bit.ly/bfWKjw

#ITMT story1: The ticking clock is a child’s impending pain. Incredible suspense. I suffered an entire life during this story.

#ITMT story2: Does simple psychosis explain the girl's 2nd head? Her mother's unhealthy support of the condition tears me apart.

#ITMT story3: like a scary retelling of Barthleme's The Balloon through the meta lens of academic legacy.Starts simply clever but ends deep.

#ITMT story...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

http://www.hipsterbookclub.com/review...

Paul Tremblay blends fantasy, horror, and realism in his new short story collection In the Mean Time. In 15 stories of personal and social catastrophes, Tremblay confronts the loneliness, fear, paranoia, and endurance of humankind.

The book collects a handful of Temblay’s published stories from the past decade with a few original to the collection. The author plays with elements of different genres, ranging from realism to dark fantasy and science fiction....more http://www.hipsterbookclub.com/review...

Paul Tremblay blends fantasy, horror, and realism in his new short story collection In the Mean Time. In 15 stories of personal and social catastrophes, Tremblay confronts the loneliness, fear, paranoia, and endurance of humankind.

The book collects a handful of Temblay’s published stories from the past decade with a few original to the collection. The author plays with elements of different genres, ranging from realism to dark fantasy and science fiction. The disquieting opening story, “The Teacher,” sets the tone for the collection. A high school teacher challenges his students’ perceptions of inevitability with an unorthodox lesson plan, while one of his students copes with her dissolving home life. With subtlety, Tremblay confronts the strain of everyday life and the personal traumas we endure. That theme carries through the book to varying degrees, pitting personal catastrophes against end-of-the-world incidents. Whether coping with an emotional or literal apocalypse, Tremblay’s characters share the same sense of devastation and desire for survival.

Some more explicitly rely on science fiction or horror, like “Figure 5,” in which a plague transforms its victims into gruesome creatures. In the final story in the collection, “We Will Never Live in the Castle,” characters seek refuge up in an abandoned amusement park after the apocalypse. The most successful stories, however, fall somewhere in between realism and fantasy. By adding just a hint of the fantastic or absurd, Tremblay amplifies the mood and tension without detracting from a story’s honesty. For example, in "The Two-Headed Girl,” a teenage girl copes with the pressures of isolation, a strained relationship with her single mother, and a longing to locate the father she never knew. She also happens to have an extra head that takes on the shape and persona of historical and fictional characters. An element of the absurd or fantastic in Tremblay’s stories only highlights the strangeness of our everyday lives. Like a surrealist painting, Tremblay challenges readers to question rationality and zero in on the natural and sometimes uncomfortable emotions at the heart of a story. The fantasy or sci-fi elements may first appear to take the reader outside of reality, but as each story progresses, readers find themselves relating to the characters more and more.

Notably, Tremblay writes a variety of characters convincingly. Whether it’s a pregnant woman struggling with an unusual eating disorder, a paranoid blogger chronicling the impending apocalypse, or a sweet-tempered five-year-old boy, Tremblay writes each with equal authenticity.

"It's Against the Law to Feed the Ducks,” one of the more affecting stories, demonstrates Tremblay’s strengths in subtlety and characterization. Five-year-old Danny accompanies his parents and baby sister on vacation to Lake Winnipesauke. An unspoken catastrophe strikes that, in his naivety, Danny cannot comprehend. Through Danny’s perspective, readers get mere glimpses into the situation – people deserting the town, his parents speaking in whispers, the electricity shutting off. The child’s innocence is heartbreaking.

Danny tries to send his ears out again and this time he hears his parents in the hallway. They speak with one voice. He hears words that he doesn’t understand. They might be arguing and they might be laughing and they might be crying but it doesn’t matter, because Danny knows tonight was the best night of their vacation.

Despite the stories’ short lengths—there is even a flash fiction piece—Tremblay gives his characters distinct voices and relatabilty. His ability to write fully developed and genuine characters helps keep even the more absurd stories relevant.

Even with the often dark subject matter, Tremblay scatters hints of absurdity and dark humor throughout the stories. In “The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas: An Excerpt from A History of The Longesian Library,” citizens of an ancient city dread the spontaneous and mysterious appearance of balloons that return every 19 years. Some shrink in fear, others believe they are a gift from God. “The Blog at the End of the World,” formatted in a series of reverse-chronological blog entries, comes complete with typos and reader comments. One blog comment states, “sorry about your friend its so scarey that were all gonna die.” Another reads,”Hi remember me? Come check out my new gambling site for all the best poker and sports action. It’s awesome. http://www.gamblor234.net.” Not even an apocalypse will keep the spammers down. The comic relief not only offers momentary reprieve from heavy plots, but again amplifies the surreal nature of the stories.

In the Mean Time is at once eerie, disturbing, challenging, and wonderful. Tremblay challenges readers’ sense of security and may not leave any parting consolation—except perhaps to say that we’re all in this together. (less)

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Apr 11, 2012 Karen Heuler rated it 5 of 5 stars

The first story in this book, "The Teacher," is extraordinary. A charismatic teacher shows a very disturbing video, frame by frame, as students and teacher alike are changed by the experience. One of the best stories I've read recently.

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Apr 24, 2011 Brandon Tietz rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been reading a lot of collections lately. For the uninitiated, collections compared to novels are more difficult to sell, both to the publishing house and the consumer. Why? Because people prefer that “one big story” instead of “a bunch of little ones.” That, and it’s far easier to market a novel with its one synopsis compared to a collection with its multiple ones. For years, it’s been like that, so when a collection does come out, one would expect it to be exceptional.

So here are some col...more I’ve been reading a lot of collections lately. For the uninitiated, collections compared to novels are more difficult to sell, both to the publishing house and the consumer. Why? Because people prefer that “one big story” instead of “a bunch of little ones.” That, and it’s far easier to market a novel with its one synopsis compared to a collection with its multiple ones. For years, it’s been like that, so when a collection does come out, one would expect it to be exceptional.

So here are some collections that I’ve read:

-"Rust & Bone" by Craig Davidson
-"Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk
-"Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock

Of course, the list goes on, but these three I think are most relevant to my (and possibly your) literary palette if you’re from the school of Velvet or Cult, or even if you’re just into a darker sort of fiction (don’t make me say “transgressive”).

Paul Tremblay’s "In the Mean Time" travels along the same lines as the aforementioned. It’s dark, haunting, and pretty f***ing beautiful at times, if I do say so myself. Sometimes it’s terrifying and sometimes sad, but sometimes you don’t know what it is—only that you’re paying attention and waiting for that particular void to be filled. Keeping comparisons light, the collection, a Chizine publication, does something that the other three do not: it varies. It changes pace, tone, and even genre.

Tremblay’s story “The Two-Headed Girl,” (which translated to a fantastic cover, by the way) is an examination of identity and deformity the likes of which I’ve never read, a circus sideshow act within suburban America. He gives us his take on horror in “Figure 5,” a tale of plague survivors so fantastically detailed the reader will cringe. Tremblay is even able to make antagonistic balloons work in his piece “The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas,” which, all things considered, stuck with me for days considering its imagery of looming, seemingly innocent evil.

Of course, like most collections, there are going to be stories that don’t work for the reader as much as others. “It’s Against the Law to Feed the Ducks” follows a family on the run from a catastrophic event, and the story did what a story should do: sucked me in, kept me moving right along with them, but there’s a major unknown in this piece that isn’t revealed. As a reader, I wanted a certain amount of closure that I didn’t get.

The main strength of In the Mean Time is that this is one of those few collections that you could read straight through. Like I said, I’ve read collections from Chuck and Craig and Donald, but I always got worn out and had to put them down after a few pieces. Call it consistency if you want, but reading story after story of shock, depravity, shock gets a little daunting. Tremblay mixes it up, keeps you on your toes, and this book serves as a showcase for his various writing talents. With In the Mean Time, you don’t get one flavor on repeat, so go into it ready to sample a very wide array of literature with this one. You won’t be disappointed.

Brandon Tietz (author of "Out of Touch")
www.wearevespertine.com
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May 11, 2012 Mairi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Almost every time I pick up another Tremblay work, just a few pages in, two things happen: (1) I am reminded of what an incredibly talented author he is. (2) I kick myself for not having read whatever it is sooner. In the Mean Time was no exception.

Reading through: I found myself physically leaning forward as if it will help me unfold the story sooner, but not actually wanting to read any faster. I read to the end of stories and realized I'd been holding my breath or grinding my teeth or both....more

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Jan 07, 2013 M Griffin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I first saw Paul Tremblay's name mentioned in the blogs of several other writers I enjoy, so it should be no surprise that I enjoy the fictional worlds he creates. I love the way Tremblay balances strange and playful elements against emotional realism and seriousness. These stories take chances, but never leave the reader behind in pursuit of writerly flourishes or abstractions.

The bulk of the collection is comprised of whimsical yet dark pieces existing in a sort of no-man's-land between genre...more

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Jul 22, 2011 Paul Eckert rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked the stories in In the Mean Time, but I didn't love most of them. My reaction is something like a fierce ambivalence, if such a thing could ever make sense.

I was really excited to read this collection. Summaries promised tales of a two-headed girl, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and other oddities. Sounds like my kind of party.

The stories gave me the premises I'd hoped for, but somehow, many of them didn't deliver, or just didn't have the type of lasting impact I look for in a good story. M...more I liked the stories in In the Mean Time, but I didn't love most of them. My reaction is something like a fierce ambivalence, if such a thing could ever make sense.

I was really excited to read this collection. Summaries promised tales of a two-headed girl, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and other oddities. Sounds like my kind of party.

The stories gave me the premises I'd hoped for, but somehow, many of them didn't deliver, or just didn't have the type of lasting impact I look for in a good story. Many of them ended with a shoulder shrug cadence that echoed my own waning interest.

The collection starts out great with "The Teacher," a story in which a high school teacher employs radical teaching tactics with his senior class, with disastrous results. This story did a great job of infecting the reader with senioritis and the "What the hell do I do now?" anxiety that goes along with the last year of high school. "Figure 5" was another strong tale about a society infected with a strange virus, a man that attempts to understand it from afar. It seems to be an apt metaphor for class struggle. Also really liked "The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas", about a man reading an academic essay supposedly written by his mother after her death.

The second half of the collection are also good stories, but as I think back to them, I remember my frustrations with them. As I read each story, I remember liking the characters and their environments, but I kept waiting for something to really happen. As much as I liked them, I felt they treaded water a bit too much without really taking the story deeper.

"There's No Light Between Floors" was strange, but it never really had an impact. "The People Who Live Near Me" has an interesting cast of strange characters, but it ends with a headscratcher that I never really understood. The only story I really didn't like was "Headstones in Your Pocket." I didn't like it when I read it in Weird Tales, and a second read didn't do anything to heal old wounds. For such a long story, it never really felt like it went anywhere. Tremblay relies too much on flashbacks to explain the actions of the present.

Probably my favorite story in this collection was "It's Against the Law to Feed the Ducks," which tells a story of apocalyptic doom as seen (or hidden from) the eyes of a four-year-old boy. It made me remember what it was like to see the world through the eyes of a young kid, how the behavior of grown ups was always interesting, confusing, and boring at different turns.

I would recommend this book, because I think it deserves to be read. Some of the stories are underwhelming, but the ones that are gold are worth the read. I'm still interested to read Tremblay's novels.(less)

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Sep 07, 2012 Barbara Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars

I re-read this to take away the taste of the John Shirley anthology, and it worked. With Tremblay you don't know what is coming next, but the odds are that it will be strange and cool. Probably best characterised as slipstream, with some being absurdist and others realistic.
The stories are up and down, of course, but most of them strike home. The strongest may be We Will Never Live in the Castle, a post-apoc story of doomed love and revenge in a derelict theme park. Love! Death! Minigolf!

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May 11, 2012 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: _owndont, _reviewed

Unprompted, Mr. Bob launches into an explanation of how the swing set works. Maybe he does know that I have young Madame Curie with me and he’s trying to impress her. If so, that’s really creepy.

In the Mean Time is a collection of short stories with the uneven depth of a fever dream. I found the collection to be hit and miss, with a couple fantastic stories, but most being either unmemorable or strange for the sake of being strange and with little substance. Going by the ratings, 4.5, I feel thi...more

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Dec 15, 2010 Sheri White rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great short story collection. Even the stories that weren't my favorites were very well-written. I would definitely buy more of Paul Tremblay's work.

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Mar 29, 2013 Nicholas Kaufmann rated it 4 of 5 stars

A collection of mini-masterpieces about the end of the world, both actually and personally. I hate Paul Tremblay for being such a talented writer. Or I would if he had a uvula. But he doesn't, so I take pity on him. You should, too.

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Oct 07, 2010 Cindy marked it as to-read

Shelves: anthology, spec-fic

Found via this interview listed at SFsignal.com.

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Oct 13, 2012 Frances rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: collection, horror, owned, contemporary, weird

Strange and heart-twisting stories; particularly fond of "The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas: An Excerpt from A History of the Longesian Library". It's late and I'm feeling inarticulate and not a little sad (possibly just finishing this has something to do with that), but really need to say these are lovely.

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Dec 17, 2010 Richard Larson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Review forthcoming!

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Apr 13, 2012 Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars

It pains me a great deal to admit this, but this book is wonderful. Slightly bent, funny, bizarre, and awesome, often at the same time, Tremblay's series of tales are remarkable, and it's no wonder his star is rising as fast as it is. Scratch that: it's a mystery why it isn't rising faster. Definitely one of my favourite books this year. (And I'm still angry about it.)

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Feb 01, 2012 Jasmine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american

I already reviewed this once and goodreads ate it, and I'm sleepy so highlights:

1. I liked paul tremblay when I talked to him about crime novels so I started his book a year ago.

2. I picked it back up and finished it this week.

3. It is very well written, but I don't answer followups about short story plots.

4. I'd like to read a novel by him.

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Jul 15, 2011 Alicia rated it 4 of 5 stars

These stories will alarm you. The people who populate them live where the edges between reality and the frighteningly fantastic is not clear (to us or them) with sometimes catastrophic results.

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Nov 29, 2010 Daniel Short rated it 5 of 5 stars

Thoughtful stories and a different look from Paul Tremblay. Excellent!

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Nov 05, 2011 Wahiaronkwas David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: dark-fantasy, everything

So much to say...but I'm not coherent yet.

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May 10, 2013 Jennifer Hackler marked it as to-read

May 09, 2013 Sirensongs marked it as to-read

May 08, 2013 Ashley marked it as to-read

May 05, 2013 Brittany marked it as to-read

Apr 21, 2013 Ipsith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: noirs

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About Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay is the author of novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland.

He is a two-time nominee of the Bram Stoker award has sold over fifty short stories to markets such as Razor Magazine, Weird Tales, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, and Horror: The Year’s Best 2007. He is the author of the short speculative fiction collections In the Mean Tim...more

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7781495-in-the-mean-time?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347469869l/7781495.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7781495-in-the-mean-time?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]In the Mean Time by Paul Tremblay[/url]

In the Mean Time

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