Wounds

Stories

De: Nathan Ballingrud

Narrado por: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Matthew Lloyd Davies, Rebekkah Ross, Jacques Roy

“Stretch[es] the boundaries of the genre.... It’s horrifying, but there’s beauty.” (The New York Times)

“One of the field’s most accomplished short story writers.” (The Washington Post)

A gripping collection of six stories of terror - including the novella The Visible Filth, the basis for the upcoming major motion picture - by Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud, hailed as a major new voice by Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay, and Carmen Maria Machado - “one of the most heavyweight horror authors out there” (The Verge).

In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives - both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books).

Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in The Visible Filth to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table”, Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

©2019 Nathan Ballingrud (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

Decent collection of horror!

I was happy to discover that these were pretty interconnected, and I’m guessing they connect more than I gathered on my first listen. I’d say it’s definitely worth a second read through, just to get all the nuances of this hell-infested world that’s on display. I loved some stories and narrators more than others (I picked this book simply because I adore Corey Brill’s voice) but honestly, it’s a solid read. Every story has a different vibe to it so it doesn’t get boring or tiresome if you’re not really feeling one writing style or the characters. Power through and the next will surprise you I’m sure!

My new favorite short story collection

Surprisingly emotionally charged stories with shared details creating a through line in these vivid, harrowing, incomprehensible depictions of hell and it’s intersection with the corporeal realm. I can’t recommend it enough.

I must be desensitized

wasn't as gory and horror-filled as it was made out to be, but it was still a great read. The stories seem a little disjointed until you figure out that they are all related somehow. The final story sets the groundwork for the first 5. I enjoyed it and will be looking for more work from this author.

Genuinely Re-listenable

For some reason I found the Hulu adaptation of “The Visible Filth” easier to digest than the story in “Wounds”, so I came back to the book. I’d actually rank “…Filth” low on a list of the six stories best-to-worst.

Ballingrud is an exceptional author for contemporary horror. I’m no English major, but I think this is what they mean by “literary horror.” The language here is awesome, even the bonkers supernatural pirate period piece goes down smooth.

To really top it off, most of the several readers are standouts too. I’m here at goodreads looking for more of their work.

Beautiful yet Deeply Unsettling

Rating: 9.0/10

Wounds is a beautiful yet deeply unsettling collection. This set of stories is going to stay with me into the deepest dark of night, chilling me to the marrow and leaving me with a constant sense of unease. I can say without a shadow of doubt that I have not read anything like it.

I had the pleasure of meeting the author at a Noir at the Bar event in Birmingham last November and heard him read a passage from one of the collection’s stories, The Butcher’s Table. From the pure grittiness and atmosphere that the short passage exuded, I knew that I had to grab a copy of Wounds and stick it near the top of my TBR. Well, I did better than that. I grabbed the audiobook a few days back and ratcheted it up the mountain.

If you read tons of collections or anthologies, you sort of expect that there will always be a story or two that you don’t exactly connect with, let alone enjoy. Whether it has to do with characters, tone, pacing, plot, etc. It is an unfortunate thing that happens, but I don’t know many authors that can pull it off.

But Ballingrud did. HE DID THE DAMN THING.

Included are some of the most disturbing stories I have come across in my horror reading “career” and immediately cement the author on my must-read list. Tales of diabolists, ghouls, cannibals, artifacts from Hell itself, and much more. These lead to stories rich in cosmic, occult, and even fantasy horror.

The two (2) that stood out the most for me were “The Visible Filth” and “The Butcher’s Table”; the first being the basis for the Hulu original film “Wounds” and the second being a brand-new novella. The imagery alone in both of these stories are enough to keep you wanting more, but the prose mixed with the multitude of unsettling occurrences left me salivating.

I don’t enjoy going in-depth with every story because I want you to find out what happens for yourself. All I can say is that you may want to leave the lights on.

Great job!

Pretty great collection of stories with an interesting theme. Narrations were great especially the last story.

Great job!

Amazing collection

I was really impressed by the quality of the short stories in this collection and the structure of the overall book. It took me to around the third story to figure out that while the stories all have varying settings and themes, they are all drawn together by the same concept of "hell". The final story brings the collection full circle and gives more insight into the first story. The narrators were all amazing and match the tone and setting of each story. This is the first work by Nathan Ballingrud I've read/listened to, but I plan to check out the rest right away. Also, I'm really excited to see the adaptation of Wounds this summer.

Butcher’s Table is amazing

Wow. Just wow. Butcher’s Table is such a solid example of excellent horror writing. I’m going to find more of this author’s work to read.

Bad narrator

The person reading sounded like they were gasping for air and struggling to get the words out. I honestly was not able to tolerate more than a few minutes of the story because of the narrator. It seemed like it would be a good book. I may read it when I have time instead of listening to it. Hopefully, the guys voice will not haunt me.

Another fantastic collection from Ballingrud

If you have not read Nathan Ballingrud before, you owe it to yourself to get both this collection and his excellent (but tonally very different) first short story collection: North American Lake Monsters. For those who have read Ballingrud before, Wounds will not disappoint, it's overflowing with poetic imagery, morally complex characters, and cosmic horror. However, the stories in Wounds do depart somewhat from those in NALM (which were mostly stories strongly rooted in the tradition of literary realism but with uncanny or supernatural elements creeping in just along the edge) in that they are closer to cosmic / supernatural horror with a hefty dose of literary realism built in. To cite an example, The Visible Filth, one of the two novellas in Wounds, is just as much a character study of the inhabitants of a seedy dive bar in New Orleans as it is a supernatural horror story about a shadowy group interested in invoking strange beings through acts of ritual violence, but the supernatural elements clearly drive the plot. other stories in Wounds such as Skullpocket (which recalls some of the more macabre stories of Ray Bradbury or Neil Gaiman) and The Butcher's Table are set in somewhat fantastical alternative universes, but nevertheless are anchored with nuanced and complex human emotion. There are also some really intriguing recurrent themes and conneccted references in Wounds that suggest a larger mythology, so it will be exciting to see where Ballingrud goes next. overall, I cannot recommend this collection highly enough. Ballingrud is one of the most original and exciting voices in horror (or really, in literature) to come along in years and I envy those who will buy this collection and get to experience his stories for the first time.