A Collapse of Horses

► There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson. ◄ George Saunders ► Small masterworks of literary horror. ◄ Kirkus Reviews A stuffed bear's heart beats with the rhythm of a dead baby; Reno keeps receding to the east no matter how far you drive; and in a mine on another planet, the dust won't stop seeping in. In these stories, Brian Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary—the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know. ► There are many unnoticed contracts that govern us. We go on about our lives never knowing what they are. They are noticed only in the breach. Brian Evenson can somehow see these contracts, and his work is a large attention that charts the breakdown of the very smallest societies, the covenant of just two, three, six or seven people against the darkness, the bleakness, whatever you want to call it. What is complex here is notable; what is vivid, what is tortuous, these things are notable. I hesitate to mention them, for still more notable is the acuteness of mind that generates this sight. It is for this antihuman vision that I read Evenson, in order to see a human being in its folly as a tree or turtle might, as a stone might, with a detachment so severe that what pities us knows us perfectly, yet knows us not. ◄ Jesse Ball ► You already know Brian Evenson is one of the smartest, slipperiest, and strongest writers around. Let me add that he's also one of the funniest. I'm not talking about light-hearted humor, but that bone-deep kind that makes you laugh through the horror and the pain. A COLLAPSE OF HORSES proves, yet again, that Evenson is massively talented and a gift to readers everywhere. ◄ Victor LaValle, author of THE DEVIL IN SILVER ► Brian Evenson's collection A Collapse of Horses is equal parts Franz Kafka, J. G. Ballard, Sam Peckinpah, and George Miller's Mad Max. His apocalyptic and paranoid stories are as ontological as they are disquieting, creating a remarkable unity of effect, a timeless yet recognizably twenty-first-century flavor of unease. A genuinely brilliant and disturbing book. ◄ Paul Tremblay, author of A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS and HE LITTLE SLEEP CONTENTS 1. Black Bark (2015) 2. A Report (2013) 3. The Punish (2014) 4. A Collapse of Horses (2013) 5. Three Indignities (2010) 6. Cult (2015) 7. Seaside Town (2015) 8. The Dust (2013) 9. BearHeart™ 2014) 10. Scour (2xxx) 11. Torpor (2013) 12. Past Reno (2014) 13. Any Corpse (2015) 14. The Moans (2015) 15. The Window (2014) 16. Click (2015) 17. The Blood Drip (2014)