Goblin

A Novel in Six Novellas

By: Josh Malerman

Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman

Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of Bird Box and Malorie comes a chilling story that revolves around a mysterious small town, revealing its sinister secrets one by one.

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal • “Must-read horror.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

Goblin seems like any other ordinary small town. But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you’ll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin....

A Man in Slices: A man proves his “legendary love” to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh’s — and sends her more than his heart.

Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.

Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture — and kill — the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin’s dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.

Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.

A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care...and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.

The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it — until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.

©2021 Josh Malerman (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Goblin seems like any other ordinary small town. But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you’ll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin.” (Tor online)

“The mythology of Goblin’s history is richly drawn within these stories, and connects them with a style that keeps the reader turning pages. Malerman has created a town which may even be darker than King’s, Grant’s, and Bradbury’s nightmares. Goblin is all Malerman and should be listed on every horror reader’s itinerary of places to visit, with the lights turned low and the night breeze creeping into the room.” (Monster Librarian)

“[A] masterpiece.... This book, comprised of a sextet of short novellas, takes the small town motif and shreds it, molding it into something which fills the reader with uneasy pleasure from cover to cover.... Malerman has created a town which may even be darker than King, Grant, and Bradbury’s nightmares. Goblin is all Malerman and should be listed on every horror reader’s itinerary of places to visit, with the lights turned low and the night breeze creeping into the room.” (Cemetery Dance Online)

A little let down

I understand it’s 6 stories but the closure on some of the stories seams weak or lazy. I I wonder if there was a time crunch or something that prevented the endings to carry substance. Maybe I just missed the mark on this one and you should give it a shot for yourself, but I fear I didn’t.

literary horror

what I liked:
-very atmospheric
-little to no cliché horror monsters /ghosts/demons etc... yet very much a horror novel.
-excellent world building reminiscent of Michael McDowell's "Blackwater" saga
-slow burn yet engaging

what I wish was different:

-its a little light on suspense; not the "page turner" that some one like Stephen King would write
- I wanted more; would love this to be expanded into a series. I feel like it wetted my appetite for the world of Goblin but didn't quite satisfy.
-I was looking for the "novellas" to intertwine a bit more than they did.

Conclusion;
-we need a follow and/or expand version.
- I really enjoyed this book.

Eh

Well, I enjoyed the prologue and epilogue, and the first and last story. I really don’t know what I was expecting and usually that can be fun. I really wanted to enjoy this but it just didn’t work for me. It is what it is and there’s probably a few people out there that will really enjoy these stories and will probably read them again, but I won’t be one of them. I don’t say that in any mean spirited away, it’s just a book I won’t revisit.

Good collection

Not scary for me, but each story was good, and they loosely linked together to give you a feel for the town as a whole.

Fell flat

A novel in 6 novellas, but actually 7 if you include the wrap around prologue and epilogue, which is actually the best story. I went into this so excited. Halloween approaching, cool creepy cover art, a prologue that gripped me immediately, the first novella was pretty good..... then it went south from there. 2 of the novellas were good, 2 were flat out awful, and the other 3 had a good build up with a flat ending. I loved Bird Box, but this novel did very little for me.

Great narrator!

I liked the stories (sort of like grown-up Goosebumps), but a couple could have been shorter.

Awful story. Waste of time.

No resolution to any of the tales. Too much animal gore and wandering around in characters minds without any real development. Hard to keep my attention focused. Just all around bad.

It’s very ehhh

The reader is perfectly fine, the material is very lackluster. Going for a Hitchcock level of spooky rather than the monsters of a King it falls very short of even creep show or tales from the crypt. I’d pass.

Truly Awful

I stopped listening halfway through the second story. There is nothing even remotely frightening in this collection, unless one is referring to the writing.

Not worth its weight in salt

Some of the premises of the short stories were interesting but hardly much suspense, pretty quickly it's too obvious where the stories are going, and not a single ending with either any real conclusion or payoff. This book is not worth your time