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The Teardrop Method
Krisztina heard the song and she followed it across the city....
Winter in Budapest. In the midst of a terrible personal tragedy, singer/songwriter Krisztina Ligetti discovers she can hear songs of mortality. She spends her days following these songs until they lead her to people at the precipice of death. From the fading bars of their final breath, Krisztina takes the story of their lives and turns them into music.
When Krisztina is reunited with her father, a reclusive 60s pop star, she believes that she has finally found a way out of the darkness, but then she begins to receive news clippings detailing each of the deaths she has been witness to. A man in a porcelain mask who seems to be everywhere she looks and a faded writer who shares Krisztina's gift seem to know her, know that the past has a hold on them all, and that it won't stop until someone has paid the price.
‘The Teardrop Method is a story about stories; a beautiful novella about love and loss and the connections people make and then sometimes break. It’s quiet, haunting, and ultimately moving.’ Gary McMahon
‘Nightmare plotting infused with an aching mitteleuropäische sadness, Simon Avery’s tale of music and mortality could be the novelisation of a lost Argento movie.’ Nicholas Royle
‘Without any prep or background, I started reading the novella The Teardrop Method by British author Simon Avery, and was immediately engaged by the moodiness, the bleakness, the desperation and creaky, world-weariness of the setting and characters. These appealing elements perfectly coalesced into a tragic and fervent eulogy to the creative process – to Art with a capital A – as a means of salvation and transcendence and doom, and to love itself in all its complex iterations, exploring the concept of loving, dying, and even killing, in order to achieve the proper reception code from the eternal Muse while the roaring Danube drowns out the rest of the world. This is a very European story, in all its faded baroque finery and cafe claustrophobia. The snow is heavier here, the dawn ever more surprising. The supernatural and the natural are not so far removed in places like this. The old and the new forever caught in a twirling waltz.
The Teardop Method is also a brilliant showreel for Simon Avery, a relatively new author that I had not previously read. His balanced prose and mature grasp of doomed love (both romantic and familial), the transience of corporeal existence, and the grim hidden realities of even the most outwardly charmed lives mark him as an author of dark fiction florets already fully in bloom, growing big and tall and dangerously beautiful in a corroded hothouse hidden away in a backstreet of a crumbling cobblestone city five hundred years past its prime.
I highly recommend this novella, and cannot wait to see what melody Mr. Avery pens next. I’ll be listening.’ T.E. Grau
Buy The Teardrop Method from TTA Press here
Buy it from www.ttapress.com
http://store.clickandbuild.com/cnb/sh...
Winter in Budapest. In the midst of a terrible personal tragedy, singer/songwriter Krisztina Ligetti discovers she can hear songs of mortality. She spends her days following these songs until they lead her to people at the precipice of death. From the fading bars of their final breath, Krisztina takes the story of their lives and turns them into music.
When Krisztina is reunited with her father, a reclusive 60s pop star, she believes that she has finally found a way out of the darkness, but then she begins to receive news clippings detailing each of the deaths she has been witness to. A man in a porcelain mask who seems to be everywhere she looks and a faded writer who shares Krisztina's gift seem to know her, know that the past has a hold on them all, and that it won't stop until someone has paid the price.
‘The Teardrop Method is a story about stories; a beautiful novella about love and loss and the connections people make and then sometimes break. It’s quiet, haunting, and ultimately moving.’ Gary McMahon
‘Nightmare plotting infused with an aching mitteleuropäische sadness, Simon Avery’s tale of music and mortality could be the novelisation of a lost Argento movie.’ Nicholas Royle
‘Without any prep or background, I started reading the novella The Teardrop Method by British author Simon Avery, and was immediately engaged by the moodiness, the bleakness, the desperation and creaky, world-weariness of the setting and characters. These appealing elements perfectly coalesced into a tragic and fervent eulogy to the creative process – to Art with a capital A – as a means of salvation and transcendence and doom, and to love itself in all its complex iterations, exploring the concept of loving, dying, and even killing, in order to achieve the proper reception code from the eternal Muse while the roaring Danube drowns out the rest of the world. This is a very European story, in all its faded baroque finery and cafe claustrophobia. The snow is heavier here, the dawn ever more surprising. The supernatural and the natural are not so far removed in places like this. The old and the new forever caught in a twirling waltz.
The Teardop Method is also a brilliant showreel for Simon Avery, a relatively new author that I had not previously read. His balanced prose and mature grasp of doomed love (both romantic and familial), the transience of corporeal existence, and the grim hidden realities of even the most outwardly charmed lives mark him as an author of dark fiction florets already fully in bloom, growing big and tall and dangerously beautiful in a corroded hothouse hidden away in a backstreet of a crumbling cobblestone city five hundred years past its prime.
I highly recommend this novella, and cannot wait to see what melody Mr. Avery pens next. I’ll be listening.’ T.E. Grau
Buy The Teardrop Method from TTA Press here
Buy it from www.ttapress.com
http://store.clickandbuild.com/cnb/sh...
160 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2017
2 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
About the author
Simon Avery
37 books20 followersBorn in 1971, Simon Avery lives and works in Birmingham.
Over the last twenty-two years he has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Black Static, Crimewave, The Best British Mysteries IV, Beneath the Ground, Birmingham Noir, Terror Tales of Yorkshire and Something Remains.
He has been nominated for the Crime Writers Association Dagger award and the British Fantasy Award.
The Teardrop Method, a novella from TTA Press was shortlisted for the World Fantasy award.
Sorrowmouth, a novella from Black Shuck Books followed a mini-collection, A Box Full of Darkness, and in November 2024, Simon’s first novel PoppyHarp is released.
He can be contacted via Facebook, Twitter and his blog at: https://simonaveryblog.wordpress.com/
Over the last twenty-two years he has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Black Static, Crimewave, The Best British Mysteries IV, Beneath the Ground, Birmingham Noir, Terror Tales of Yorkshire and Something Remains.
He has been nominated for the Crime Writers Association Dagger award and the British Fantasy Award.
The Teardrop Method, a novella from TTA Press was shortlisted for the World Fantasy award.
Sorrowmouth, a novella from Black Shuck Books followed a mini-collection, A Box Full of Darkness, and in November 2024, Simon’s first novel PoppyHarp is released.
He can be contacted via Facebook, Twitter and his blog at: https://simonaveryblog.wordpress.com/
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 17, 2022
One of the things I really love about reading is discovering a new(-to-me) author whose work makes me think: YES. This person writes exactly the way I like, and exactly the kind of fiction I crave, and I want to read everything of theirs I can get my hands on. That’s what happened with The Teardrop Method, a quietly haunting speculative novella, accompanied in this edition by an equally spellbinding short story.
In the title novella, Krisztina, a musician, hears the songs of people’s souls. She follows them around wintry Budapest, and in doing so realises someone – a man in a strange mask – is following her. This is a story that’s both disconcerting and beautiful, suffused with melancholy. It contains wonderful evocation of music: its sound and power. The atmosphere is perfect, the setting palpable, and there’s a terrifying/tragic villain, and even a story within a story. But, as Krisztina mourns her late partner and reconnects with her father, it also has that grounding in reality and human connection which I think is essential to good uncanny fiction.
In the linked story ‘Going Back to the World’, we’re with Susanna as she returns to the house she once shared with her ex, Dave, after his suicide. (Dave appears, sort of, in The Teardrop Method; he’s a music journalist who interviews both Krisztina and her father.) There’s arguably a stronger flavour of horror to this story – it’s certainly quite a bit creepier – but it retains the humanity of The Teardrop Method, as well as that sense of quietness that is, somehow, both unnerving and comforting.
This book positions Avery as an obvious heir to Joel Lane – at times I felt I was reading a Lane story. And to be clear, I don’t think Avery is copying Lane’s style at all, more that they both have the same – rare – ability to capture and pin down an ethereal, unsettling mood. I loved The Teardrop Method so much that I’m already prepared to proclaim Simon Avery as a new favourite.
TinyLetter | Linktree
In the title novella, Krisztina, a musician, hears the songs of people’s souls. She follows them around wintry Budapest, and in doing so realises someone – a man in a strange mask – is following her. This is a story that’s both disconcerting and beautiful, suffused with melancholy. It contains wonderful evocation of music: its sound and power. The atmosphere is perfect, the setting palpable, and there’s a terrifying/tragic villain, and even a story within a story. But, as Krisztina mourns her late partner and reconnects with her father, it also has that grounding in reality and human connection which I think is essential to good uncanny fiction.
In the linked story ‘Going Back to the World’, we’re with Susanna as she returns to the house she once shared with her ex, Dave, after his suicide. (Dave appears, sort of, in The Teardrop Method; he’s a music journalist who interviews both Krisztina and her father.) There’s arguably a stronger flavour of horror to this story – it’s certainly quite a bit creepier – but it retains the humanity of The Teardrop Method, as well as that sense of quietness that is, somehow, both unnerving and comforting.
This book positions Avery as an obvious heir to Joel Lane – at times I felt I was reading a Lane story. And to be clear, I don’t think Avery is copying Lane’s style at all, more that they both have the same – rare – ability to capture and pin down an ethereal, unsettling mood. I loved The Teardrop Method so much that I’m already prepared to proclaim Simon Avery as a new favourite.
TinyLetter | Linktree
November 5, 2017
Originally published at Risingshadow.
Simon Avery's The Teardrop Method is the fourth novella in the TTA Novellas series. The previous novellas in this series are Eyepennies by Mike O'Driscoll, Spin by Nina Allan and Cold Turkey by Carole Johnston. This novella maintains the high quality established by its predecessors, because it's just as fascinating and original as them.
I'm glad I had an opportunity to read The Teardrop Method, because I haven't read many stories by the author (my first introduction to Simon Avery's fiction was his excellent short story "Charmed Life" in the anthology Something Remains: Joel Lane and Friends). I was deeply impressed by this novella, because it's a haunting and moving story with a touch of melancholy and sadness.
It's a bit difficult to classify The Teardrop Method due to its contents, but it can best be classified as literary speculative fiction. To be more specific, literary horror fiction with an emphasis on quiet horror comes to my mind when I think about the contents of the story.
Here's a bit of information about the story:
- Krisztina has a gift of hearing songs of mortality. Her gift leads her to people at the precipice of death.
- Krisztina hears a song and follows it across the wintry landscape of Budapest. She takes a cab and directs the driver from one street to another. When she gets closer to the source of the song, the notes of the song call out to her. She enters a coffee house and decides to wait for the source of the song to arrive. Soon she sees a man standing still in the snow. The man is wearing an expressionless porcelain mask. Krisztina has seen him several times in the past few months. Soon the man is gone and when Krisztina turns, the song and its host - József - has arrived in the coffee house.
- József takes Krisztina to his place. Krisztina wants to know József's song, she yearns to hear what it is of his life that suggests music, a lyric, verses and chorus. Soon Krisztina and József have sex and Krisztina wonders how much longer she has to wait for the song to come to her, because the song is loud and clear, but there's no sign of József's impending mortality. József asks Krisztina to stay with him for the night and sleep beside him. She agrees to his request. When she wakes up, she notices József on the wall of the balcony and sees him fall. When József falls, Krisztina hears his song in her head...
This is the beginning of a beautifully written story, which tells of Krisztina's life and what happens to her when she finds out that there's another person who shares her gift.
The characterisation works well and is achingly realistic. Krisztina is a fascinating protagonist, because she is an artist who has an ability to hear songs of mortality. She can see the persons' lives in their songs. When she hears the songs, she records them in her studio and turns them into music. She's preparing to release a new album based on the songs she has heard.
Krisztina's relationship with Alice is described well. The author fluently writes about how they became lovers and tells of the time they spent together before Alice's death. There's genuine human emotion in his way of writing about Krisztina and Alice. When you read about them, you'll be able to feel how much they loved and cared for each other. The author explores Krisztina's feelings in a realistic way and tells how she copes after losing Alice, because Alice's death was a devastating personal tragedy to her.
The author writes excellently about Krisztina's father, John Merriwether, his life and his sickness. John Merriwether is a reclusive artist who has recently recorded a new album, The Bleed, which is utterly different from his early albums. The songs on the album are dark and unsettling.
It was captivating to read about the fading author, Rebeka Stróbl, because she shares Krisztina's gift. Her gift is, however, slightly different, because she has to kill people in order to have their stories. She can hear people's stories, but can't have them until she kills them. The author writes about her in a chilling way.
This novella has a distinct European milieu that acts a beautiful backdrop to the bleak happenings. The author paints a beautiful picture of Budapest and its locales with his words and leads readers into a world where the supernatural and the mundane intertwine with each other.
Simon Avery's beautiful prose is one of the main reasons why this novella is excellent. I like the author's way of combining and writing about several elements - love, loss, loneliness, supernatural, music and art - because everything about the story feels effortless and intriguing. Elements related to music business are handled exceptionally well.
This novella includes a bonus linked short story 'Going Back to the World', which was originally published in Black Static issue #44. This short story features Dave Cook (he's a journalist who reviews Krisztina's records and interviews her father for Wire magazine) and tells of his life and death.
I can honestly say that Simon Avery's The Teardrop Method is one of the finest and most fascinating novellas I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I highly recommend this novella to speculative fiction readers, because it's a beautiful and subtly complex exploration of death, love, loss and how to recover from a tragedy. Its darkly beautiful atmosphere and delicate story will captivate everyone who appreciates quiet horror.
Highly recommended!
Simon Avery's The Teardrop Method is the fourth novella in the TTA Novellas series. The previous novellas in this series are Eyepennies by Mike O'Driscoll, Spin by Nina Allan and Cold Turkey by Carole Johnston. This novella maintains the high quality established by its predecessors, because it's just as fascinating and original as them.
I'm glad I had an opportunity to read The Teardrop Method, because I haven't read many stories by the author (my first introduction to Simon Avery's fiction was his excellent short story "Charmed Life" in the anthology Something Remains: Joel Lane and Friends). I was deeply impressed by this novella, because it's a haunting and moving story with a touch of melancholy and sadness.
It's a bit difficult to classify The Teardrop Method due to its contents, but it can best be classified as literary speculative fiction. To be more specific, literary horror fiction with an emphasis on quiet horror comes to my mind when I think about the contents of the story.
Here's a bit of information about the story:
- Krisztina has a gift of hearing songs of mortality. Her gift leads her to people at the precipice of death.
- Krisztina hears a song and follows it across the wintry landscape of Budapest. She takes a cab and directs the driver from one street to another. When she gets closer to the source of the song, the notes of the song call out to her. She enters a coffee house and decides to wait for the source of the song to arrive. Soon she sees a man standing still in the snow. The man is wearing an expressionless porcelain mask. Krisztina has seen him several times in the past few months. Soon the man is gone and when Krisztina turns, the song and its host - József - has arrived in the coffee house.
- József takes Krisztina to his place. Krisztina wants to know József's song, she yearns to hear what it is of his life that suggests music, a lyric, verses and chorus. Soon Krisztina and József have sex and Krisztina wonders how much longer she has to wait for the song to come to her, because the song is loud and clear, but there's no sign of József's impending mortality. József asks Krisztina to stay with him for the night and sleep beside him. She agrees to his request. When she wakes up, she notices József on the wall of the balcony and sees him fall. When József falls, Krisztina hears his song in her head...
This is the beginning of a beautifully written story, which tells of Krisztina's life and what happens to her when she finds out that there's another person who shares her gift.
The characterisation works well and is achingly realistic. Krisztina is a fascinating protagonist, because she is an artist who has an ability to hear songs of mortality. She can see the persons' lives in their songs. When she hears the songs, she records them in her studio and turns them into music. She's preparing to release a new album based on the songs she has heard.
Krisztina's relationship with Alice is described well. The author fluently writes about how they became lovers and tells of the time they spent together before Alice's death. There's genuine human emotion in his way of writing about Krisztina and Alice. When you read about them, you'll be able to feel how much they loved and cared for each other. The author explores Krisztina's feelings in a realistic way and tells how she copes after losing Alice, because Alice's death was a devastating personal tragedy to her.
The author writes excellently about Krisztina's father, John Merriwether, his life and his sickness. John Merriwether is a reclusive artist who has recently recorded a new album, The Bleed, which is utterly different from his early albums. The songs on the album are dark and unsettling.
It was captivating to read about the fading author, Rebeka Stróbl, because she shares Krisztina's gift. Her gift is, however, slightly different, because she has to kill people in order to have their stories. She can hear people's stories, but can't have them until she kills them. The author writes about her in a chilling way.
This novella has a distinct European milieu that acts a beautiful backdrop to the bleak happenings. The author paints a beautiful picture of Budapest and its locales with his words and leads readers into a world where the supernatural and the mundane intertwine with each other.
Simon Avery's beautiful prose is one of the main reasons why this novella is excellent. I like the author's way of combining and writing about several elements - love, loss, loneliness, supernatural, music and art - because everything about the story feels effortless and intriguing. Elements related to music business are handled exceptionally well.
This novella includes a bonus linked short story 'Going Back to the World', which was originally published in Black Static issue #44. This short story features Dave Cook (he's a journalist who reviews Krisztina's records and interviews her father for Wire magazine) and tells of his life and death.
I can honestly say that Simon Avery's The Teardrop Method is one of the finest and most fascinating novellas I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I highly recommend this novella to speculative fiction readers, because it's a beautiful and subtly complex exploration of death, love, loss and how to recover from a tragedy. Its darkly beautiful atmosphere and delicate story will captivate everyone who appreciates quiet horror.
Highly recommended!
November 4, 2017
This novella was fantastic. The short story is forgettable but the title tale is mesmerising.
August 19, 2018
Thoroughly enjoyed this novella which seamlessly weaves a story of music and magic both subtle and speculative. And the bonus accompanying short story is just as good. Both tales featuring strong and believable characterisation rendering the fantastic also believable. Recommend.
June 16, 2018
Music in fiction is a hard thing to get right. Avery does a nice job of using music as a symbol in this novella that deals with art, death and the notion of self.
August 16, 2018
It's no wonder that "The Teardrop Method" is a World Fantasy Award finalist. It's delicate, cinematic, and atmospheric.
January 26, 2021
“…the song had followed her from the dream. It had escaped into the dark rooms;”
…and also into lighter ones, towards a sound-chiaroscuro of art helping art, death helping art, too, and vice versa, as we all do in our creative world that I map out on my site, I hope. I am pleased that my chance instinctive quote earlier from Ligeti prefigured the later importance of Paris in this monumentally haunting novella, as well as of Budapest, not only the road accident in Paris, this book’s accident and a different one there, but K’s eventual home city, where her second Sapphic love to replace the first also enhances that death- and art-synergistic mapping I mention above. The father-daughter synergy, too. Walker with no stalker left. A Yellow King, a Yellow Jack. A new song. A new dream. After horror’s nightmare. A song for a song. A knife from ear to ear? Thanks, Dave Cook, for your review of ‘The Teardrop Method.’
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
…and also into lighter ones, towards a sound-chiaroscuro of art helping art, death helping art, too, and vice versa, as we all do in our creative world that I map out on my site, I hope. I am pleased that my chance instinctive quote earlier from Ligeti prefigured the later importance of Paris in this monumentally haunting novella, as well as of Budapest, not only the road accident in Paris, this book’s accident and a different one there, but K’s eventual home city, where her second Sapphic love to replace the first also enhances that death- and art-synergistic mapping I mention above. The father-daughter synergy, too. Walker with no stalker left. A Yellow King, a Yellow Jack. A new song. A new dream. After horror’s nightmare. A song for a song. A knife from ear to ear? Thanks, Dave Cook, for your review of ‘The Teardrop Method.’
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
January 19, 2023
If I'd remembered this was a short novella I would have finished it days ago. Perhaps it is better that it simmered in my mind a few days, though. A very strange tale for sure, but the writing is compelling and the story kinda winds its way through the brain, trying to make sense of itself.
I didn't exactly "like," it but I am glad to have read it and might look into Avery's other stories. He strikes me as being in the same school as Borges and Calvino, both of whom I enjoy reading when the mood strikes. Sometimes I want works I can chew on.
I didn't exactly "like," it but I am glad to have read it and might look into Avery's other stories. He strikes me as being in the same school as Borges and Calvino, both of whom I enjoy reading when the mood strikes. Sometimes I want works I can chew on.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews