Boo(k) Week: Your Guide to Spooky Reads with Peter Counter

Picks by Peter Counter

Five Spooky CanLit Reads for Dark Times

We live in planet-sized oven set to broil, animated with global conflict and live-streamed genocide, ruled by a billionaire class dead set on replacing humans with algorithms. Life is scary enough, some say, why would I spend my free time making myself uncomfortable? But it’s exactly in times like these that horror literature is most powerful. It might sound counterintuitive, to treat the unbearable anxiety and agony of everyday life with art designed to unsettle and disturb readers, but tales of terror can guide us through the wasteland of modern life. Through biting satire or unsettling commentary, through grotesque transformation or the catharsis of a collective scream, these five nightmarish books from Canadian independent publishers will help you through this most dire of spooky seasons.

Dead Writers by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe,
Cassidy McFadzean, Naben Ruthnum (Invisible Publishing)

Horror is all around us, not only on our social media feeds and TV screens. It’s in the food we eat and the rooms we sleep in; it’s on our vacations and lurking in our favourite bars. The four novellas collected in Dead Writers drag horror from the realm of fantasy right into our everyday reality, trading spectacle for the uncanny, the atrocious, and the sublime. The ghastly aftermath of a controversial authors’ death, a plague tale set in a residential school, a European getaway tainted with vampire vibes, repeat encounters with a demon—the horrors in this cursed tome barely feel fictional. They live in our world—searingly relevant, chilling, and atmospheric—demonstrating that the difference between a bad time and a nightmare is simply a matter of perspective.

The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan (ECW Press)

Horror fights back against the cruelty we’re forced to accept. Sometimes life can feel like a wicked game—high stakes and unwinnable. Speculative fiction can do its part to level the playing field, especially when elements of horror give it fangs. That’s what you get with The Marigold, Andrew F. Sullivan’s biting satirical eulogy for a rotted-out Toronto. A dystopian epic that shines life in Canada’s largest city through a dark prism, the book presents the familiar horrors of underregulated development and a gig-economy verging on modern slavery as they coalesce around the sentient mold that’s wormed its way into the titular high rise. In the two years since its publication, punctuated by techno-authoritarianism and a housing crisis that just won’t quit, The Marigold has proven to be a 350-page premonition that gives the finger to the monsters who engineer modern suffering.

Grey Dog by Elliott Gish (ECW Press)

Horror gives us perspective. Things can always be worse. But try telling that to teachers entering the job market, facing unprecedented class sizes, AI-powered plagiarism, and what feels like perpetually looming strike action. Before you go on wishing for the bygone days of pre-internet schooling, you’d do well to read Elliott Gish’s Grey Dog. Gish’s debut novel is a horror epistolary narrated by a 19th century schoolteacher who moves to a small town and finds all the normal stresses of teaching amplified by an eldritch presence in the surrounding wilderness that keeps leaving her bloody gifts. Her subsequent descent into animistic madness is enough to make anyone grateful for even the worst teaching assignments. Sure, students might be using a homework machine to write their essays, but at least you aren’t being groomed by cosmic forces for unsavoury ends.

Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris (Stelliform Press)

Horror can keep us grounded. It’s tempting to run away from your problems when times get tough, and speculative fiction is full of escapism to placate that desire. But it’s important to remember that even when you are hiding from your demons, the clock keeps ticking, and you keep changing. Tiffany Morris’ swampcore novella Green Fuse Burning—about an artist who heads out to the wet wilderness on a retreat only to encounter transformative horrors beyond imagination—is a vibrant illustration of how terrible reclusion can really be. A creature feature told with the vibrancy of a modern myth, Green Fuse Burning provides a welcome warning that no matter how far you flee, some nightmares are inescapable.

Queer Little Nightmares edited by Daniel Zomparelli, David Ly
(Arsenal Pulp Press)

Horror can be empowering. That’s a big part of why the genre’s been embraced so enthusiastically by marginalized communities. Those who are demonized by heteronormative ruling classes see themselves in horror, not as the human victims, but as the outsider monsters, framed to seem abhorrent in their natural state. Queer Little Nightmares is an anthology of poems and short stories that celebrates all the monstrousness that gives normies night terrors. From werewolves and hypersexed Ouija sessions, to parasitic doppelgangers, to Pennywise the dancing clown, the kaiju Ghidorah, and an invisible vampire baby—these tales of pain, hunger, humour, and love, penned by a veritable monster mash of 2SLGBTQIA+ authors, serve as a reminder that we don’t have to scream alone. When the world turns against us, we can come together and wail in solidary, ecstasy, and defiance. Read horror. Be monstrous. Love each other.

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PETER COUNTER is a culture critic writing about television, video games, film, music, mental illness, horror, and technology. He is the author of Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays and his non-fiction has appeared in the Walrus, All Lit Up, Motherboard, Art of the Title, Electric Literature, and the anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. He lives in Kingston, ON. Find more of his writing at peterbcounter.com and everythingisscary.com.

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Thanks to Peter for this terrifyingly good slate of horror books. A reminder that you can order any of these books through All Lit Up, or press the “Shop Local” button to discover them at your local independent bookstore.

Keep up with more spooky book recommendations here, and stay tuned for picks from tomorrow’s recommender, Premee Mohamed.