April 2022 Monthly Read: Lisa Tuttle’s Dead Hours of Night.

[Bill]

We read Tuttle's A Nest of Nightmares as a monthly read at the beginning of the pandemic. I enjoyed a lot of the stories, though the style was a bit chatty and old-fashioned for my taste.

"Objects in Dreams..." is certainly chatty, with a long-winded setup. I love creepy spatial anomalies, and this seemed promising. But it was just too verbose for my taste.

I liked "Closet Dreams" a lot more. Again, a different sort of spatial anomaly. The double plot twist makes the ending all the more painful.

[Bill]

"Born Dead" felt really underdeveloped to me, despite the longwinded setup.

I liked the central idea of "Replacements", but the sexual politics seemed a little old-fashioned. (According to isfdb, it was written in '92.) Enjoyable overall though.

So have the multitudes of Tuttle-supporting voters started the book? Happy to wait if you need more time to get a copy etc.

[Bill]

I found "My Pathology" a pretty uncomfortable read. Tuttle is usually very empathetic toward her characters. I really like the central idea, but had a lot of trouble with the narrator: her subservience to the slimey boyfriend, and her machinations (view spoiler)[betraying her friend (hide spoiler)], and her final attitude toward her physical changes.

[Bill]

"Mr Elphinstone's Hands" was fun. But after Shelley Jackson's Riddance, it's hard for me to enjoy a story on spiritualism that's not totally warped and sarcastic.

[Vanessa]

I'm a little late starting this one. I forgot to vote and had just bought a different book by Lisa Tuttle, but none of my other book clubs are reading anything I'm interested in, so here I am.

"Object in Dreams" was okay. I agree that it was a bit long, but I also thought the ending was rushed. I did like having the main characters be divorced.

"Closet Dreams" (view spoiler)[I agree with Randolph that it is very easy to guess where the story was going, but I thought it added to the dread. (hide spoiler)]

[Bill]

Randolph wrote: "Am I nuts or does it seem like Tuttle hates being a woman? If a man had written these he would have been labeled a misogynist."
"Hates" is probably too strong. But I did mention earlier the old-fashioned sexual politics.

[Bill]

I loved the central idea of "The Dream Detective". But I was hoping for a tighter, darker treatment, and it was... not. "Vegetable Love" and "Where the Stones Grow" seem to be rather predictable single-idea stories.

[Vanessa]

Bill wrote: "I found "My Pathology" a pretty uncomfortable read. Tuttle is usually very empathetic toward her characters. I really like the central idea, but had a lot of trouble with the narrator: her subservi..."

My opinion was actually the opposite. (view spoiler)[I thought the combination of hints that the there's some level of mind control involved and the references to the main character not being a good person throughout the story were a little too heavy and made the ending less surprising than it could have been. (hide spoiler)]

Randolph wrote: "Replacements. Again I’ve read this before in one of those Year’s Best Horror doorstops. I get it but find some of the behavior somewhat unbelievable. Is it significant that only women seem to find ..."

It's about how hormones during pregnancy and postpartum help mothers bond with their babies and influence their behavior to be more nurturing. Except it is horror.

Born Dead, Replacements, A Birthday, My Pathology, and Food Man all seem fairly typical for women's body horror to me, except for maybe having a bit less gore. Food Man is the one that stands out to me as the most likely to have been received very well if it had come out in recent years, as this kind of horror has grown more of a following.

"Born Dead" is the story from that group that I liked the least. (view spoiler)[I think the main character has to have a baby with the dead guy. I'm okay with the concept of a story based around the main character becoming less fertile as she ages and this being a problem, but the story should end with a baby. (hide spoiler)]

"Mr. Elphinstone’s Hands" had me until the ending. (view spoiler)[His character wasn't very relevant by the end, so it was a let-down for the focus to shift to him to wrap things up. Even though it doesn't really seem to fit Tuttle's style. I think the focus should have been on the main character and her sisters. (hide spoiler)]

[Bill]

Interesting perspective on "My Pathology", Vanessa. Let me chew on that a bit...

Obviously I enjoyed all the bookstore spelunking in "The Book that Finds You". But I don't see it as much of an Aickman tribute, as Tuttle claimed in the intro. Aickman-esque strange stories are tricky to pull off, and I'm not sure Tuttle succeeded here.

[Bill]

Nominations for May's monthly read? Please share here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Vanessa]

I'm not a fan of the order of the stories. I think some of these stories toward the end should have been spaced out more.

"Dream Detective" was fun. I like that it's a little out of Tuttle's comfort zone. It's not something I would have expected from her.

I have waged war against garlic mustard plants and attended a lot of town council meetings, so I do like the concept of "Vegetable Love." The story was fine.

I'm pretty sure I also read the collection that "Where the Stones Grow" was originally published in. I agree with Tuttle that it's pretty old-fashioned. I liked the portions set in England, specifically the child narrator and the different explanations for the stones. It might be interesting to compare this to "Treading the Maze" from A Nest of Nightmares to see how her writing improved over that period.

I was reading the stories before the introductions, because that is how I usually prefer to do it. While I did pick up on the references to Robert Aickman, I actually thought it was a composite of more than one author from the couple of things that I didn't think quite fit. Without the introduction, I liked the story more. I thought the main character's relationship with Tommy and her love of the author were woven together very interestingly. As a tribute, it's weird.