A Trick of the Shadow – R. Ostermeier
A Trick of the Shadow by R. Ostermeier / ISBN 9781999629823 / 193-page paperback with flaps, published in 2020 by Broodcomb Press, 2nd edition
From my first batch of books from Broodcomb Press, a UK publisher specializing in weird fiction and beyond: “Encompassing poetry, strange tales and experimental fiction, Broodcomb Press is a home for the writing that belongs here: disquieting truths about the region (“the peninsula”) – tales both eerie and shocking – together with exploring the fantastic/everyday meaning of what it means to be human.”
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R. Ostermeier lives and works on the peninsula. This first collection of strange tales draws predominantly on the region’s folklore and history, yet also includes first-hand accounts of contemporary disquiet.
A Trick of the Shadow contains the extraordinarily unnerving ‘Object’ and the disturbing, Arthur Machen-inspired ‘A Tantony Pig’, as well as the novella ‘Bird-hags’, which in all truth might not be for you.
“A Trick of the Shadow […] is a set of disconcerting and bleak stories, all set on the mysterious ‘peninsula’. These are compelling and disquieting tales, with an eerie surrealism running through. ‘A Tantony Pig’ explicitly evokes [Arthur] Machen, though all play on those themes he returned to again and again throughout his life […] of the dark glamour of weird rites, and the corruption of innocence […] the story builds to a moment of Machenesque dread and ecstasy.” – Timothy J. Jarvis, Faunus: Journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen
