The Hellmouths Of Bewdley

by Tony Burgess

Like 16 medieval B-movies, this collection offers compelling characters and obscure imagery, from insane doctors and supernatural dogs to dead men and a real ninja turtle. Believing that there is a shape that both fact and fiction seek, these intriguing tales are narratives occurring in defiance of the things they harbor.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Thriller, Canada

191 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Tony Burgess is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. His most notable works include the 1998 novel Pontypool Changes Everything and the screenplay for the film adaptation of that same novel, "Pontypool" (2008).

Burgess’ unique style of writing has been called literary horror fiction and described as ”blended ultra-violent horror and absurdist humour, inflicting nightmarish narratives on the quirky citizens of small-town Ontario: think H. P. Lovecraft meets Stephen Leacock.

Reviews

[PUMPKINHEAD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this a 3.5

While looking to expand my palette in the horror/thriller world of books, I kept hearing a lot about author Tony Burgess. His book 'Pontypool Changes Everything' (Apparently a badass zombie novel) has been on my radar for awhile and I keep meaning to pick it up (and I will, promise!). But in a used bookstore I recently stumbled on an earlier book of his called 'The Hellmouths of Bewdley', which I'd never heard of. So I snapped it up and cracked it open as soon as I got home.

This is a really strange collection of short stories centered around a small town called Bewdley. A bunch of country folk get themselves into all sorts of weird spots and scary scenarios. The tales are creepy, nightmarish, strange, and disjointed. Some of the plot lines and characters intersect, but they are all stand alone tales I guess. I was completely caught off guard, as none of these stories were what I expected (I've since learned from people that Burgess's work is very 'not what you'd expect'). It was like someone threw 'Creepshow' into deep left field and left it there to rot and ferment.

The writing is something else, really talented but quite unhinged. It even got quite poetic and was downright beautiful in spots. If I didn't know better, I'd say I was reading the prose of a madman (not joking) But the those stories... they were... SO. FREAKING. STRANGE! Some of them seemed to have no purpose, or plot, or resolution. And while I enjoyed a lot of it, I also had reservations about it. 'Hellmouths' wasn't something I so much read as experienced. And that experience was odd indeed.

I do recommend this book, but I'd go in with no expectations, as this Burgess guy does not seem to play to any audience except the one in his own head. It's sometimes brilliant and sometimes batshit crazy!

[Nuclearlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some serious horrific short masterpieces. The first story is the highlight with a few other glimpses into I'm guessing the shallowest parts of the what I can only guess is infinite darkness of this dudes mind. Can't wait to read ponty pool.

[Shelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I first heard about Tony Burgess when I watched Pontypool. I rather enjoyed the movie and wanted to read the book it was based on. Unfortunately I've yet to find a copy, though I'm still hunting so I picked up two of his other books instead.

Hellmouths is a collection of 16 short stories set in a small town called Bewdley and, if it was the first Burgess I'd been exposed to, I probably wouldn't want to read anything else by him. The stories are all fairly short and seem rather scattered. I was left scratching my head at the end of most of them trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. I even read a few of them more than once to see if I could find the spot where I got totally lost and/or try to figure out exactly what had gone on in the story.

Overall, they are fairly creepy stories but I just couldn't wrap my head around most of them. Perhaps I was just too tired when I read them or I'm just not one to appreciate subliminal or whatever kind of writing this would be catagorized as.

I'm hoping his actual novels are better.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sort of small-town Canadian Last Exit to Brooklyn complete with random acts of violence and spurts of formal experimentation and deconstruction. In general, it has more of a tilt towards horror, however without the full supernatural post-modernism later harnessed in his much more conceptually developed Pontypool Changes Everything. Here, instead, we encounter various scattered scenes of destruction and dissolution, often under an impassive eye granting equal attention to any axe blow or leaf shivering in the rain.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t work out for the life of me how to review a book again so I’m rewriting my original one for this current reread

Anyway. Much easier to read on a second go and I suspect a third and fourth might begin to bring an actual design to these troubling and strange stories. Because there are connections and shared obsessions and a genuine sense of a troubled world, hard to explain and hard to fathom. And so much is in flux, especially someone like Dr Mendez, a troubling figure whose status nags away at me as he returns again and again in these stories. It’s a dark vision but a wonderful one

[bartosz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations for The Hellmouths of Bewdley - a book by Tony Burges, the writer of one of my favorite horror movies: Pontypool. I hoped for another atypical twist to the typical horror tropes, funny characters and intelligent dread. Yet, the book is nothing like the movie.

The Hellmouths of Bewdley is a collection of short stories set in a fictionalized version of the Canadian town of Bewdley. This fictionalized setting is reminiscent of Stephen King's Castle Rock and is a common feature of two other books of Burges I got in my anthology - Caesarea and Pontypool Changes Everything.

The stories vary from boring - describing mundane lives of the dregs of society; to somewhat disturbing - taking a single idea and playing with it until it breaks.

In The Only Gay Man in Bewdley the author paints a picture of a homosexual man who hides his sexuality from the intolerant eyes of the local population. Being a witness to a crime - rape and murder - the homosexual pornography found in his house is used against him and lands him in jail where he finally finds love.

In Bewdley Torture Society two kids intellectualizing torture decide to abuse a retiree by playing back recordings of his dead wife uncovering the past of the retiree in the process.

Some stories are almost grotesque - describing the rape of a fifty-year old native Canadian by a teenage boy or a suicide by the means of wrist cutting. Some stories border on avant-garde and I must say:

I

Just.

Don't.

Get.

It.

Man.

Call me unhip. A square. Someone that just doesn't know.

I don't care.

The author lost me with his humor: a dog, voiced by Sylvester Stallone striking up conversations with other animals; an army of prostitutes being fed estrogen to create super soldiers; the before mentioned rape. He also lost me with his writing: experiments in narration, chronology and stream-of-consciousness techniques.

I really don't care.

Try as hard as I could I couldn't find any unifying thread to connect the stories. There's are some hints of an overarching intrigue - the people wondering out loud what's wrong with the Bewdley; one chapter hints that the groundwater is polluted in estrogen; another that the sex ratio is skewed towards males. Maybe the author anticipated more involvement with his book than I was willing to give or maybe I'm plain stupid but nothing encouraged me to treat the book as anything but bullshit and keep digging.

The only saving grace of the book is some of the stories are really good. I suggest reading The Only Gay Man in Bewdley; a Stripper, a Biker, a Mother and a Man's Dress; The Bewdley Torture Society; Ampersand; and Boy on Fire and just skipping the rest.

[Tyche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burgess gets a lot of mileage out of describing corpses as objects, finding beautiful imagery in the most unlikely of places. Really, the best thing about this book was its imagery. Its stories weren't really supernatural or surreal, but such wonderful surreal images grow in the space between scenes. When some people are talking, and it's so cold their words freeze in the air then fall to the ground and are pecked at by birds, I loved that!

I kept trying to determine some sort of interesting connection between the stories, but there really wasn't much of one. That's probably refreshing. The most I could glean was that some of the later stories might have been slightly autobiographical, with the "Tony" in the book being the author Tony.

I absolutely adored "The Only Gay Man in Bewdley" for the clever direction it went in revealing what its title meant. Really effective stuff there.

Thinking back on this book a couple months after reading it, the stories all seem to blend into a string of interesting moments. There's lots of highlights, but lots of things I've surely forgotten. "Wrist" I wasn't even able to read all the way through.

I dunno, I'm excited to read other things by Burgess.

[Joel Hacker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because I really wanted to read Pontypool, but somehow got the mistaken impression that this was not only part of, but also a prior installment in, some sort of arc involving Bewdley that should be read *before* Pontypool Changes Everything.
This is in fact, not the case. I would also hazard that this is likely not the ideal introduction to Burgess for the totally uninitiated.
Don't get me wrong, the writing in these 16 short pieces is as innovative, lush, and strange as you may have heard. But unless you're here for the pure poetry of it, I don't know that there's enough in most of these fragments to adhere and engage ones attention. I found myself reading a number of entries twice, the language and structure really are stunning, but its just not my thing. I think folks already fans of Burgess will likely get a lot more out of this. I'm still going to give Pontypool a shot (and maybe the n-body problem) not that I've been disabused of my mistaken notions.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let me start that I came to this collection expecting horror stories. Considering the use of “Hellmouth” in the title, I was expecting something at least vaguely connected to or hinting of the supernatural, and was terribly disappointed. Considering all this, I don’t get this (tenuously) braided short story collection. I had high hopes from all the reviews mentioning that it is unsettling. I found it to mostly consist of weird (or banal) shit happening, and then the story stopping. Occasionally it borders on bizarro and occasionally on litfic and sometimes maybe could be both. It’s frequently incoherent and unsatisfying, particularly if you’re looking for a traditional narrative arc. The closest we get to that traditional arc is in the sexxxploitation women-in-prison story in the middle. I can’t recommend this collection.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully strange collection of stories, some of which are more successful than others, some of which are truly disturbing, and all of which show a mastery of language that’s honestly second to none. This is the third book I’ve read by Tony Burgess, professional Elvis Impersonator, and he’s the most convincingly unstable literary mind I’ve come across. It’s impossible to know where a story will end up going or what theme will be put on display, but even at its most bizarre the writing is still full of tiny moments of real human insight. Definitely s mixed bag, with a few stories that are upsetting and problematic, but overall an excitingly unhinged read.

[Erick Mertz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frankly, I don’t know what I just read. I’ve heard this described as a novel in short stories but it didn’t feel quite that cohesive. I love Burgess’ style. Gritty. Unrelenting. Some of these stories were outstanding, displaying either a mastery of character, setting or mood but the whole wasn’t as interesting as the sum of its parts. I kept feeling around for the thread but it wasn’t quite there.

So, read it, enjoy it, but don’t feel like you need to go through sequentially.

www.erickmertzauthor.com

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a novel or a collection of short stories, more a series of vignettes of varying degrees of hallucinatory weirdness. Many of them are fascinating, several are just baffling. The alcoholism, drug use and violence kind of blends together after awhile, especially when nothing makes much sense and nothing is ever resolved.

In all it reads like it's missing a hundred pages of connective tissue. Here's hoping Pontypool Changes Everything will be better.

[Jason Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful language, but sometimes difficult reading.

[Marc · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure what I read. Weirdest collection.

[Molly Maloney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horror has never been so lyrically written.

[Lucas Chance · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.7

A very solid, very creepy novel in stories.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are good ideas, decent writing, and flashes of brilliance here but I found tedious the esoteric weirdness in between.