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Vile Affections
In Vile Affections, Caitlín R. Kiernan's seventeenth short fiction collection, the boundaries of desire, fascination, passion, and dread collide. That which is beautiful may easily be profane. Those who love us may devour us alive. A shadow may shine like a supernova. The eye of the beholder is God. In these twenty-two stories, Kiernan's trademark range is on display, taking us from submerged and monster-haunted dreamscapes to quiet bedroom conversation between lovers, from unexpected and uncanny roadkill to an object lesson on the perils of picking up hitchhikers on rainy Appalachian nights.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published November 30, 2021
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169 people want to read
About the author
Caitlín R. Kiernan
416 books1,666 followersCaitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American published paleontologist and author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, series of comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 17, 2021
In this collection, Kiernan strings together a disturbing mix of twenty-two dark stories.
These stories are about drowning and dark water, the end of the world, vampires and dreams and above all the telling of stories to one another. They are mostly vignettes without distinct beginnings or ends, and possess an unsettling ambiguity.
I enjoyed the dreamlike tone of the collection, the dwelling on dark places and fairytales, which reminded me of Angela Carter. The author has published many collections of short stories before, and you can tell that from her strong and assured prose. I also liked the etchings interspersed through the book, which add to the dark effect of the stories.
However, I wondered if the the collection would have been more effective if it were shorter. With twenty-two stories, they tended to blend into each other sometimes, especially as they isn't much variation in tone.
Overall, an enjoyable dark collection of stories. My favorite was Day After Tomorrow, the Flood.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
These stories are about drowning and dark water, the end of the world, vampires and dreams and above all the telling of stories to one another. They are mostly vignettes without distinct beginnings or ends, and possess an unsettling ambiguity.
I enjoyed the dreamlike tone of the collection, the dwelling on dark places and fairytales, which reminded me of Angela Carter. The author has published many collections of short stories before, and you can tell that from her strong and assured prose. I also liked the etchings interspersed through the book, which add to the dark effect of the stories.
However, I wondered if the the collection would have been more effective if it were shorter. With twenty-two stories, they tended to blend into each other sometimes, especially as they isn't much variation in tone.
Overall, an enjoyable dark collection of stories. My favorite was Day After Tomorrow, the Flood.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
June 2, 2022
Probably my favorite Kiernan collection so far! The stories are beautifully written, regardless of how horrific the contents may be. I continue to be generally very impressed and happy with their short fiction!
November 29, 2021
Vile Affections is a short story collection by Caitlín R. Kiernan, featuring 22 stories of personal horrors. All of the stories are different, however they all feature a single character making their way through seemingly ordinary days, with some things being slightly off. A woman may be a werewolf, a woman has dreams of drowning that may be prophetic.
A good bit of these stories use the second person. Sometimes it works well and immerses me into the story, while other times I get lost. That, however, is my own issue with second person and not Kiernan’s writing.
Their writing is fluid, fantastical, and a lot of these stories feel like fairy tales in real life. A bit like magical realism.
As with all short story collections, I enjoyed some more than others, but this is indeed a solid collection. Some of my favorites are The Lady and the Tiger Redux, The Last Thing You Should Do, Iodine and Iron, Mercy Brown, and As Water Is In Water.
Thank you to Net Galley, Subterranean Press, and Caitlín R. Kiernan for the ability to read this advanced review copy. Vile Affections releases on November 30th as a collectible edition.
A good bit of these stories use the second person. Sometimes it works well and immerses me into the story, while other times I get lost. That, however, is my own issue with second person and not Kiernan’s writing.
Their writing is fluid, fantastical, and a lot of these stories feel like fairy tales in real life. A bit like magical realism.
As with all short story collections, I enjoyed some more than others, but this is indeed a solid collection. Some of my favorites are The Lady and the Tiger Redux, The Last Thing You Should Do, Iodine and Iron, Mercy Brown, and As Water Is In Water.
Thank you to Net Galley, Subterranean Press, and Caitlín R. Kiernan for the ability to read this advanced review copy. Vile Affections releases on November 30th as a collectible edition.
February 1, 2025
Indescribable
March 27, 2023
Vile Affections is a collection of wholly forgettable short stories, Kiernan focuses in on quiet scenes of human (sometimes inhuman, sometimes superhuman) relationships, but unfortunately lacks both insight and variety in execution. The prose of these stories is baroque and bizarre, while enjoyable to read at times, Kiernan's skill surpasses sense in application, dense and stylistic writing passages often fail to highlight or emphasize the story, themes, and characters and instead distract from them. Too often are flowery turns of phrase seemingly employed for their own sake instead of the story being told.
What we are left with are tales that are scattershot style and no substance. The same broken, often grotesquely twisted intimacy between two partners is teased out over and over again with seriously diminishing returns. Kiernan revels in focusing only on mood, dropping us into brief scenes or often mere conversations with little context and less resolution. This would be a non issue if the scene itself were gripping or thought provoking, but here they are one note and quickly become tiresome.
The mood itself captured is broken, melancholic, and grim. A collection about what affection lacks, the point at which it reaches critical failure as the driver of a relationship. Interesting ground to mine briefly, but Kiernan soon runs out of tricks and new, engaging thoughts on the matter. Calling this horror would be a misnomer, Weird perhaps, but overall it's a very subdued set of stories. A few vampires and werewolves here and there, but on the whole little for a horror reader to sink their teeth into on the genre front.
Taken all together Vile Affections is weak in parts and even weaker as a whole, uninspiring stories one after the other. There are brief sparkles, especially when Kiernan applies talented stylistic flourishes to curious scenes or genuinely weird events, but these are far and few between, it ends up being a collection that ultimately lacks anything you'd remember 30 minutes after reading.
What we are left with are tales that are scattershot style and no substance. The same broken, often grotesquely twisted intimacy between two partners is teased out over and over again with seriously diminishing returns. Kiernan revels in focusing only on mood, dropping us into brief scenes or often mere conversations with little context and less resolution. This would be a non issue if the scene itself were gripping or thought provoking, but here they are one note and quickly become tiresome.
The mood itself captured is broken, melancholic, and grim. A collection about what affection lacks, the point at which it reaches critical failure as the driver of a relationship. Interesting ground to mine briefly, but Kiernan soon runs out of tricks and new, engaging thoughts on the matter. Calling this horror would be a misnomer, Weird perhaps, but overall it's a very subdued set of stories. A few vampires and werewolves here and there, but on the whole little for a horror reader to sink their teeth into on the genre front.
Taken all together Vile Affections is weak in parts and even weaker as a whole, uninspiring stories one after the other. There are brief sparkles, especially when Kiernan applies talented stylistic flourishes to curious scenes or genuinely weird events, but these are far and few between, it ends up being a collection that ultimately lacks anything you'd remember 30 minutes after reading.
April 2, 2022
Publisher's blurb:
Caitlín R. Kiernan's seventeenth short fiction collection, the boundaries of desire, fascination, passion, and dread collide. That which is beautiful may easily be profane. Those who love us may devour us alive. A shadow may shine like a supernova. The eye of the beholder is God.
This is the first of Caitlin Kiernan's work I have read and I was greatly moved by her command of the written word that not only brings intimacy, strangeness, eroticism, and horror, it is also as lyrical as a poem or a song delivered by a lover.
The collection of stories here is linked in one way or another. Either by theme or emotion. You will find the familiar such as Vampires, nightmares, hopelessness, and strangeness but each has that little extra feeling of anxiety perhaps because these were written during the quarantine of 2020.
I won't describe each story here, you need to experience them yourself and decide what they are to you, not to me. But I will just say something about one of them where the underlining theme really made me stop and think for a while...
One of the stories deals with a woman newly changed into a vampire and is less than happy with the idea of immortality. It made me think of the irony and the frustration that an opportunity like this could give you when you were already so done with life that you were walking into the ocean to drown and end the pain of your existence, and then not only saved but made immortal. Now you have a life that is neverending when life itself was unwanted.
My favorite line, that made me giggle was thought by a vampire who was examining the reasons for changing a human because she was lonely. "Food makes poor company." Brilliant!
This is a gorgeous collection and worth your time. It was released in November of 2021 by Subterranean Press.
Thanks to @Netgalley, Subterranean Press, and Caitlin R. Kiernan for the opportunity to read the eArc in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
Caitlín R. Kiernan's seventeenth short fiction collection, the boundaries of desire, fascination, passion, and dread collide. That which is beautiful may easily be profane. Those who love us may devour us alive. A shadow may shine like a supernova. The eye of the beholder is God.
This is the first of Caitlin Kiernan's work I have read and I was greatly moved by her command of the written word that not only brings intimacy, strangeness, eroticism, and horror, it is also as lyrical as a poem or a song delivered by a lover.
The collection of stories here is linked in one way or another. Either by theme or emotion. You will find the familiar such as Vampires, nightmares, hopelessness, and strangeness but each has that little extra feeling of anxiety perhaps because these were written during the quarantine of 2020.
I won't describe each story here, you need to experience them yourself and decide what they are to you, not to me. But I will just say something about one of them where the underlining theme really made me stop and think for a while...
One of the stories deals with a woman newly changed into a vampire and is less than happy with the idea of immortality. It made me think of the irony and the frustration that an opportunity like this could give you when you were already so done with life that you were walking into the ocean to drown and end the pain of your existence, and then not only saved but made immortal. Now you have a life that is neverending when life itself was unwanted.
My favorite line, that made me giggle was thought by a vampire who was examining the reasons for changing a human because she was lonely. "Food makes poor company." Brilliant!
This is a gorgeous collection and worth your time. It was released in November of 2021 by Subterranean Press.
Thanks to @Netgalley, Subterranean Press, and Caitlin R. Kiernan for the opportunity to read the eArc in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
October 31, 2021
Vile Affections has some of the most beautiful language I've read in a long time. Whether objects or scenery is vile or lovely, the descriptions are detailed and vivid.
When I first opened the book and saw that there were pages and pages of prose with no break, no white space, I thought reading it might be a slog. I was wrong though. The stories, even with the large amount of description, were interesting and reasonably quick to read.
Many of the stories had the same type of subject: dreams, a person telling a story to another, the fear of drowning, water, water, and more water in most, but they didn't seem to repeat themselves.
If you're a reader who skips long paragraphs this might not be for you. If you love gorgeous language you'll find much to enjoy in Vile Affections.
Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in return for an honest review.
When I first opened the book and saw that there were pages and pages of prose with no break, no white space, I thought reading it might be a slog. I was wrong though. The stories, even with the large amount of description, were interesting and reasonably quick to read.
Many of the stories had the same type of subject: dreams, a person telling a story to another, the fear of drowning, water, water, and more water in most, but they didn't seem to repeat themselves.
If you're a reader who skips long paragraphs this might not be for you. If you love gorgeous language you'll find much to enjoy in Vile Affections.
Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in return for an honest review.
August 17, 2023
I have been a fan of Caitlin for a long time now. I started with Silk and Tales of Pain and Wonder, and have read every single thing they've put out since. Vile Affections is their latest, and it's a collection of tales that are very CRK but also a collection of the writer they are today, not one that is looking to bank of the past. Caitlin continues to evolve with each collection and novel they put out. There are so many superb stories in this collection, mostly compromised of light horror and generally weird tales that have no real ending. Interpretation is key to understanding Caitlin's fiction. Readers so most of the work, which is something I don't mind doing at all. Keeps my brain alive.
Caitlin is the greatest and most prolific writer of weird fiction still alive.
Caitlin is the greatest and most prolific writer of weird fiction still alive.
July 24, 2022
Since discovering Kiernan's writing last year I have avidly worked my way through a lot of their anthologies and novels, which I think is the problem I had reading this latest 2021 collection.
A lot of the themes here - drowning, dreams, psychiatrists and deep water are themes Kiernan has covered already many times, but here stories are very absorbed with these particular concepts. Story follows story and sometimes there was little to differentiate between the two.
Admittedly I have probably over saturated my brain with their writing - of I had come fresh to this volume I probably would have enjoyed it a great deal more.
A lot of the themes here - drowning, dreams, psychiatrists and deep water are themes Kiernan has covered already many times, but here stories are very absorbed with these particular concepts. Story follows story and sometimes there was little to differentiate between the two.
Admittedly I have probably over saturated my brain with their writing - of I had come fresh to this volume I probably would have enjoyed it a great deal more.
January 17, 2022
I have read several of Caitlin R Kiernan's novels, but never any short stories. So this was a great introduction. I enjoyed these stories, and for anyone who hasn't read her yet, this would be a great introduction. Many of these would deserve to be made into novels. Will need to read more of her work, both novels and short stories. #VileAffections #NetGalley
April 3, 2024
I always loved Caitlin's writing. Just good stuff.
November 8, 2022
I read too many books and like too many authors to have a favorite writer, but Caitlin R. Kiernan's is my favorite WRITING. Their writing is the one mine most (inferiorly) resembles on those rare occasions I grind out a story. The present tense, the fossils, the deep seas and drowning dreams, the dark places and the overgrown dirt roads. Perfection.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews