Review: Lush, chillingly sensual, a feast of a short story collection
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 5, 2012
I'm not a fan of horror but I am a fan of lush, sensual description that puts the 'art' in art direction. In Desert Rain, Robb Grindstaff sets the stage with such exquisite attention to detail that we cannot help but succumb to the sound, the sight, the scents. The character, a woman, can count the number of rains on her fingers, the index finger missing and we soon enough learn why. We also learn that she can shoot left-handed ... and that adds pungency and dread as the sweet aroma of rain masks a stench that never leaves.We wait with her on that porch, on that homemade bit of furniture, and the sound of its uneven nature, the thump-kathump-thump, echoes in our mind's eye as we seek to know what she knows. Someone, something approaches, as he/it has since her time began, since Raymond made his claim on her body and wrapped her soul in a hideous vapor, the most foul of stenches.It is this most singular sense, the smell, the odor, of evil that controls all -- what passes for a life and the threat that Raymond would consummate their wedding night.But she is strong, this one, patient, practicing left-handed, picking her target, knowing she'd--at the end--have only one chance.It is not the crunch of bone we hear but the sound of rain and the scents of hardpacked desert floor yielding a fragrance of revenge.I am not a fan of horror ... but I am a fan of Robb Grindstaff.The other stories are equally compelling, equally lush, equally evocative in style. Clearly Desert Rain is my favorite, but merely a first among equals.