Review: Every Body Tells a Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2014
Horror writing brothers Evans and Adam Light team up for The Corpus Corruptum, a decidedly quirky and gruesomely enjoyable collection of short stories, all of which have to do with the human body, in whole or in parts. The stories are:Way Out of Here (Adam): A man hears a voice coming from inside his body, which turns out to be someone quite unexpected who winds up taking him to a very strange world.Gertrude (Evans): A short, short story in which a man claims he has a twin named Gertrude living inside his body.Vengeance by the Foot (Adam): A man's amputated foot comes back to do him harm.Nose Hears (Evans): Another short, short story, in which a man hears two distinct voices coming from his nose.The Package (Evans): Santa Claus is worried because his, ahem, package keeps shrinking, but he may be in luck when he finds another man willing to sell his soul to Santa, under the mistaken impression he's actually dealing with Satan.All of these are told with the Light brothers' typical dark humor, but the actual amount of horror in each story varies. Nose Hears and The Package, two of Evans' stories, are played pretty much completely for laughs, with Nose Hears being essentially an extended setup for a terrific punch line. On the other hand, Adam's two stories stress the horror elements considerably more.Many short story collections have one or two duds mixed in with the good stuff. However, all of the stories in this collection are entertaining. Overall, the collection is not quite at the level of the Light brothers' best work. Only the first story, Way Out of Here, is truly superior. Still, a collection of four good stories and one wickedly clever one is much better than you'll usually find available for the Kindle.I do have my one usual caveat about short stories. This collection contains three short (15-20 page) stories and two short, short (approximately five page) stories, and some readers may not want to pay much money for what's essentially a long novelette worth of material. (Admittedly, I got this book for free, so price was not an issue for me). However, if the Lights' quirky mix of humor and horror appeals to you, this collection offers five stylistically different stories, which make for five different types of enjoyable reading experiences.