Household Worms

by Stanley Donwood

Stanley Donwood says of a selection of stories contained in Household Worms that were inspired by drinking red wine alone at night: 'These were written to avoid staring for too long at a night-filled window that only reflected my own sorry-for-itself face. Perhaps I should try writing with white wine too. A lighter tone may emerge. Champagne would probably get me writing jokes for crackers. Never mind, never mind.' Donwood is best known as an artist, but this collection confirms his prowess as an equally talented writer of prose.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[granolabars · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would’ve probably enjoyed more if I had an English lit degree. I liked it but didn’t always get it

[Ben Please · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly wonderful collection of scenes and stories that totally leave your head in a spin. One of my favourites is one about working as a dishwasher in a restaurant and struggling with some the gigantic machines that are there to 'help' you, having to stick your arm in when things go wrong. Say no more.

But we wrote a song inspired by one of the stories in there, called "Sell your house and buy gold". A bystanders telling of the end of the world. We were actually mid writing for another book, called The Coincidence Engine, by Sam Leith, so the song has a few elements of free will references in there in relation to that one.

Hope you like the song. Keep Your Head Down

Join our Book Group to get all the songs we've written inspired by the books that we love. The Bookshop Band Book Group
Stanley Donwood

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was particularly struck by the guide to happiness. There is a dark cloud over the rest of this book which I very much enjoyed, the cloud and the book.

[Downward · Rating 3 out of 5]

mostly very short stories that lack any sort of character or arc, but contain grotesque depictions of contemporary life focusing on alienation. there's a lot of nightmarish stuff here, but a lot of it feels half-realized, which might actually be some of its appeal? stanley donwood doesn't write like a pro, he's just sort of mining anxieties without worrying about it being literary or complete. I liked it.

[Nik Perring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Top book. Review and interview with the author to come very soon.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked some of the pieces (I won't call them stories, because a lot of them didn't really follow any kind of story structure). I also found the style quite easy to read. Because the book was filled with very short texts (some kind of prose poetry?) it was hard to get really invested, however.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was sort of as I expected it to be - the darkest sadnesses of modernity rendered in little vignettes. It was ok but it felt less satisfying than either his visual art or Thom Yorke’s lyrics (maybe an unfair comparison, but they’re collaborators and mine similar subject matter.)

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a small stack of these on my shelf.
I gift them to other writers who I know will benefit. Writers with a little patch of darkness inside them, a patch that they secretly celebrate.

[Haley Hickman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried too hard to be meta. came off like a piece of modern art that feels like the artist didn’t know what they were doing and is trying to sell it anyway.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of what appears in this collection has been on Donwood’s website for years. Nonetheless, dada-esque,absurdist offerings that are quite fun.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as bleak, but perhaps not as powerful as previous works, Stanley Donwood has opted for a longer format in this new work of extremely short stories. He does succeed in building up the tension, such that by the middle of the book, the beginning of each new story makes one anxious to see exactly what awful or dreary thing will happen to the main character. The first person style Donwood favours seems, oddly, to give the whole book more of a disconnected feel, or perhaps the feeling of an immediacy of nothingness!