- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown (4 Jun 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1408700875
- ISBN-13: 978-1408700877
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.4 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 467,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Cranes that build the Cranes
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Dyson's timing is perfect as a Swiss watch. When he wants you to laugh, it's wonderful. When he wants you to be afraid, my God, you'll think twice about turning out the light.
--Steven Hall, author of 'The Raw Shark Texts'
--Steven Hall, author of 'The Raw Shark Texts'
Product Description
Jeremy Dyson is a master of the macabre, of stories brimming with black humour and the promise of something sinister just around the corner. In his new collection he explores the dark depths of the human condition, offering tales of death, disaster and - just occasionally - redemption. An unhappy, near-autistic bookseller acquires miraculous powers over life and death and exacts his revenge on the world - in a cruel and unexpected way. Alone in their isolated boarding school, three boys explore the mysterious cellar that is officially off-limits, only to discover something far worse than they expected about the building and themselves. A pathological fear of violent crime drives a wealthy property developer to purchase a private island and build himself a home of absolute security. Unfortunately he succeeds in attracting the very thing he fears the most. In these and other tales of suspense and horror, Jeremy Dyson introduces the reader to a world that is at once mysterious and strangely familiar ...
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Hand on heart, I'm already a fan but a critical one and I'm so pleased to say this collection of stories is superb. Not a single dud. All written with the same musical style and sense of surprise and twist. You will enjoy each one and each one will leave you thinking deeply about yourself and about the world.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I hadn't come across Jeremy Dyson's stories before, but this volume has made me eager for more. These stories are all gems, perfect in pacing, chilling in tone, each conveying perfect horror or weirdness.
Many are stories of outsiders, people on the edge - a lonely boy who self harms, a bullied schoolboy who explores the cellars of his school and finds more there than he expected. in "Isle of the Wolf" David Spotpal builds a property empire but can never overcome his childhood fear of violence. Eventually he devotes his fortune to buying an island where he can construct a fortress and live alone. In "The Challenge Club" accountant Justin Crabbe, who has felt himself on the outside of things since a disastrous incident when he was 7, yearns for the glamorous life to be found in the eponymous Club. Eager to please, to fit in, he demeans himself for the shallow celebrities who are members. Crabbe, like several of the protagonists, is tiring of his partner - similarly, Charlie Thoroughgood in "The Coué" (another outsider, running a seedy mail order business from a decaying council estate) resists his girlfriend's plans to have a baby, obsessing instead over a different child.
The best, for me, is "Bound South" where the setting in which the story is told to the narrator (in best MR James tradition, it is over a meal, with the fire repeatedly stirred against the winter cold - but not in an ancient college room) and the story itself mesh perfectly.
I only have two quibbles - the blurb for the book (cited above in the Amazon description) describes Yani in "Yani's Walk" as "near-autistic". As described in Dyson's story, Yani's another socially awkward outsider, like Crabbe, but there's nothing autistic or near autistic about him. And in "Bound South" the story refers to lettering two metres high - in the early part of the 20th century this reads slightly wrong. But those are really just quibbles, this is a fine book and now I have another author to catch up on!
Many are stories of outsiders, people on the edge - a lonely boy who self harms, a bullied schoolboy who explores the cellars of his school and finds more there than he expected. in "Isle of the Wolf" David Spotpal builds a property empire but can never overcome his childhood fear of violence. Eventually he devotes his fortune to buying an island where he can construct a fortress and live alone. In "The Challenge Club" accountant Justin Crabbe, who has felt himself on the outside of things since a disastrous incident when he was 7, yearns for the glamorous life to be found in the eponymous Club. Eager to please, to fit in, he demeans himself for the shallow celebrities who are members. Crabbe, like several of the protagonists, is tiring of his partner - similarly, Charlie Thoroughgood in "The Coué" (another outsider, running a seedy mail order business from a decaying council estate) resists his girlfriend's plans to have a baby, obsessing instead over a different child.
The best, for me, is "Bound South" where the setting in which the story is told to the narrator (in best MR James tradition, it is over a meal, with the fire repeatedly stirred against the winter cold - but not in an ancient college room) and the story itself mesh perfectly.
I only have two quibbles - the blurb for the book (cited above in the Amazon description) describes Yani in "Yani's Walk" as "near-autistic". As described in Dyson's story, Yani's another socially awkward outsider, like Crabbe, but there's nothing autistic or near autistic about him. And in "Bound South" the story refers to lettering two metres high - in the early part of the 20th century this reads slightly wrong. But those are really just quibbles, this is a fine book and now I have another author to catch up on!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If your tastes encompass the bizarre, the sinister and the downright strange then this is the collection for you. The range of stories on offer here, whilst cleverly imagining a diverse selection of odd characters and events, cohere well into a unified and satisfying whole, and thus achieve one of the main assignments of any collection of short stories.
The author also manages to incorporate a sufficient degree of tension and suspense into most of them, and this makes for an enjoyably unsettling reading experience. Only in one or two of the tales does the author stray into formulaic territory, and rarer still does he lapse into revealing too much detail in the writing.On the contrary, this writer patently revels in the knowledge that the more space he has left for the reader, the greater the likelihood he has of producing some genuinely creepy material and generating a high degree of psychological unease.It would be against the true spirit of a review to lead you to the weaker tales by name,and in any event, readers will probably demur from my opinion in this regard.
Mr Dyson is to be applauded. If his intention was to provoke frissons of fear in the reader, he has succeeded in his enterprise, and his work is recommended to those who enjoy the twisted pleasure which is likely to come their way from reading this book alone...and at night....
The author also manages to incorporate a sufficient degree of tension and suspense into most of them, and this makes for an enjoyably unsettling reading experience. Only in one or two of the tales does the author stray into formulaic territory, and rarer still does he lapse into revealing too much detail in the writing.On the contrary, this writer patently revels in the knowledge that the more space he has left for the reader, the greater the likelihood he has of producing some genuinely creepy material and generating a high degree of psychological unease.It would be against the true spirit of a review to lead you to the weaker tales by name,and in any event, readers will probably demur from my opinion in this regard.
Mr Dyson is to be applauded. If his intention was to provoke frissons of fear in the reader, he has succeeded in his enterprise, and his work is recommended to those who enjoy the twisted pleasure which is likely to come their way from reading this book alone...and at night....
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Compulsive reading
This book drew me in from page 1 and I couldn't put it down. Beautifully crafted, twisted, dark and hilarious.
Published 1 month ago by Ruby Woo
Gothic short stories
A decent set of horror/gothic short stories, perhaps could have done with a few more to fill the book up, didn't quite capture my attention to the extent that the author's previous... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Peter Connor
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