Sunday, September 07, 2008

Book Review: Ghosts of Yesterday by Jack Cady

reviewed by Gary A. Braunbeck

Ghosts of Yesterday by Jack Cady
Night Shade Books, 2003
ISBN: 1892389487
hardcover


Ghosts of Yesterday coverEarly in 2003, Night Shade Books released a stellar collection of 12 short stories and essays from the superb (and now deceased, sadly) Jack Cady that any serious readers of fantasy or horror should have on their shelves.

Ghosts of Yesterday is the best single-author collection I've read in five years. It's composed of 30,000 words of entirely new fiction, plus pieces that hadn't been in collections before.

Ghosts contains one of the best short stories I've ever read in any genre, "The Lady With The Blind Dog." The story -- like the collection itself -- is by turns thoughtful, sad, frightening, tragic, and, in the end, majestically chilling. You'd also do well to pay close attention to the essay "On Writing The Ghost Story" and the novella "The Time That Time Forgot."

Cady knows how to do it right, and makes the work produced by most of us look like high-school level attempts at Lit-rah-chure. Get it and read it. Do it now. The man's memory deserves nothing less from us.