Dreaming At the Top of My Lungs - Amazing, Cathartic Short Stories
In the foreword of this book Israel Finn writes, "Writing stories of dread and darkness is a kind of mental inoculation against the fear of the dangers of reality." It is clear that with each story, he is giving himself a heavy dose of this inoculation and releasing a coiled beast from within himself onto the pages.
I felt like this collection of short stories started with dread, guilt, and fear, then evolved into rage, hate, and vengeance. Like a form of therapy to get these emotions out, to view them in full light, acknowledge them, and release them. These stories smack of personal experience and difficult topics like loss and domestic violence. It makes them feel very real.
There are a few stories in this collection that pertain to the alteration of time. A couple touch on being stuck in a loop in time, and not a good one. Or suddenly being in a different time and someone else knows you don't belong there. I particularly enjoyed the Sci-Fi feel to those ones.
In Sick Day Finn prods the innermost workings of anyone who has felt they don't make decisions for themselves or stand up for themselves, and are aware that much of their lives has passed them by enduring this state of submissiveness. Anyone who has let things slide, put aside their own feelings in favor of others, and didn't speak up despite any strong inner feelings can relate to this story. "When Harold thought about it, he realized that his whole life consisted of a series of compromises. He had been coerced and cajoled into every major decision he'd ever made because of his weakness."
Deadfall Lane is a sinister story that seems to remind us that even if we enact vengeance for justifiable reasons, we might not come out of it unscathed, regardless of being on the 'right' side of the matter. The idea of a person's life going from mundane to mad in a brief moment is present here too. "Funny, the things a man won't admit to himself, the things he'll go right on living with, like a stone in his shoe."
Water and War was another Sci-Fi style horror story in here that I really loved. This topic is something that people have often wondered about: what would other planets think of us if they came here? How messed up are we? It pained me with the beauty of its execution.
Ugly also made me ache. It touches on bullying and how we don't know the story of the person being bullied. This one has a similar feeling to the allegory where someone who does not appear 'good' is in disguise to perform a test of humanity (see Baucis and Philemon, Beauty and the Beast). We never know the wars people are fighting within themselves, or if they are fighting wars on the behalf of others, beneath their exterior. Lesson: Always be kind.
An exceptional experience. Each story is cathartic, although some may make you release tears instead of your anger. The skin will be pulled back from your callused emotions, leaving them raw and sensitive. You will walk away feeling like a newborn, so take this chance to do things better this time around.
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