The Relaxed Snowman

Friday, January 20, 2012

The Useless - Dominy Clements

As in the opening tale, Dominy Clements explores the idea of a text spreading or infecting those that come into contact with it, willingly or otherwise. Daniel Ausema’s story similarly employs the image of the severed tree to paint a larger canvas, a synecdoche of the condition of the surrounding landscape. This tale incorporates both of these elements whilst raising questions as to the reliability of the narrator’s perceptions. Dominy Clements’s main character, the wife of a university lecturer, finds herself stranded alone in the desert after she and her husband’s car has run out of gas. In a memorable early scene where she awaits her husband’s return on foot from a nearby gas station, her eyes fall upon a strange figure lying on the side of the road. ‘For some reason, my brain has been accepting that everything is as normal as the situation allows, and I fall back into a more relaxed state on seeing the return of my better half.’ The better half however turns out not to be her husband but a stranger, a man who introduces himself as Bob. Her husband he informs her, is unwell, and waiting for her in the nearby town. Revealing more of the story would spoil any surprises. The tale has a nice twist, and several memorable weird scenes. It also provides an additional interesting variation on the relationship between the body and text, and those perceptions that bind them.

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The Useless by Dominy Clements starts out as a cliche, a breakdown in the dusty west, but soon moves beyond that into a nightmarish exploration of the power of words

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The Useless by Dominy Clements, is another unusual tale, it is a well written, spooky tale, with an image of a wierd woman who thows balls at trucks, that is really unnerving. However I'm not sure I really got the what the story was about.

 

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"The events described are weird and disturbing,..." (Black Static #25 - TTA Press) 

 

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This starts in a fairly standard way, with an easy-to-follow lineal narrative. Mr Clements takes a couple of horror cliches from our collective comfort zone, then turns everything on its head. I had to read this twice to figure out what happened, and I'm still not sure. A confusing, but satisfying read.

 

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“The Useless” is Dominy Clements’ totally unconventional contribution to this anthology. It’s brutally short and it succeeds, with charming simplicity, in confusing the hell out of you whilst leaving you on the lingering verge of understanding.

 

Any further reviews after 20 Jan 12 will appear in the comments below.

My own views: http://horroranthology.wordpress.com/editors-story-by-story-commentary/

 

 

“Can you recall the lasting effect of the most deeply disturbing collection of horror stories you’ve ever encountered? The narratives join hands…” — From THE USELESS by Dominy Clements

 

 

Labels: dominy clements, HA of HA, Horror anthology of Horror anthologies

posted by Weirdmonger  # 12:46 PM

Comments:

Also in the meta-fictional category are Dominy Clements’s ‘The Useless’, an atmospheric, creepy and effective borderline-surreal story about an inept lecturer and his impatient wife on a road-trip who get stranded in a village where the citizens are obsessed with reading from some mysterious and dangerous books;

# posted by  Weirdmonger : 7:52 AM

 

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