The perfect date keeps her biggest secret until just before marriage

Reviews and meditations about stories collected in The Weird, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s seminal anthology of weird fiction.
The perfect date keeps her biggest secret until just before marriage
A chilling tale in which monks gaslight the protagonist about the existence of a suffering man
Man meets woman--but this tryst's got a twist
“In no animal had I ever found such a profound connection to myself.”
In which the sale of shrunken heads drives a South American country into chaos
In which a creepy child sits on a flickering TV set and everyone pretends it's fine
Photo by Kaysha on Unsplash Amos Tutuola’s “The Complete Gentleman” borrows from the tradition of Yoruba folktales to tell the story of a “beautiful” man who borrows his ‘complete’ body—feet, neck, skin, and all—from their owners. Surreal like the best folktales, it made me think of some of Italo Calvino’s more grotesque Italian fairy tales, …
Continue reading Weird #37: “The Complete Gentleman” by Amos Tutuola (1952)
Probably the best haunted house story about the alienating effect of mirrors that you will ever read.
Moral of story: know your client.
Things go wrong when an older couple decides to stay at the cottage past Labor Day.