Tag Archives: Tales of the Talisman

March 19, 2014

Nicholas Grabowsky: The Norman Rockwell of White Trash

By downwarden

Nicholas Grabowsky: The Norman Rockwell of White Trash

Nicholas Grabowsky:The Norman Rockwell of White Trash

Red Wet Dirt reviewed by Tales of the Talisman Magazine

Red Wet Drt

Nicholas Grabowsky

Published by Black Bed Sheet Books

ISBN 978-0982253007

392 Pages

$16.95

If you like Joe R. Lansdale, best known as the author of Bubba Ho-Tep and writing arguably, the strangest horror stories.on the market today, you’ll love Nicholas Grabowsky. Grabowsky is known to diehard fans of the Halloween film franchise for

writing the novel adaptation of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. In his anthology,Red Wet Dirt, we get a better sense of his style and imagination. You’re in for a ride.

Red Wet Dirt has nearly every writing format:

novellas, short stories, poems, random thoughts, experimental fiction, and a screenplay. Grabowsky sometimes overdoes it with run-on sentences and many of his narrative scenes would have been more intriguing if they were allowed to play out with dialogue and further descriptions. These critiques, however, don’t outweigh his palpable passion and unpredictability.

You’ll never experience Christmas the same way again after reading his short story, “Yuletide Thing,” which involves sunbathing next to a beating heart. In another short story, “Freeway Reaper,” Grabowsky gives us an excellent theory as to why we have all been stuck in. traffic only to see no source for the delay. The novella, “Father’s Keeper,” exemplifies Grabowsky’s talents as he is able to effortlessly insert history without drowning out the actual story. In it, a ghost from an ancient civilization tells his tale through a psychic medium about the collapse of his society due to an undead plague-carrier and an overconfident king. His third short story, “Looks Like a Rat to Me,” is the strongest of his anthology. Its creepiness makes Stephen King’s “Graveyard Shift” look like the mice inCinderella. The screenplay, “Cutting Edges,” has a villain I promise you won’t see coming.

Grabowsky’s finest aptitude is his ability to set the scene around him. He not only gives you a visual, but also audio, smell, and temperature. He also creates characters who are appalling, but oddly appealing at the same time. He is the Norman Rockwell of white trash.

— Dan Graffeo

From TALES OF THE TALISMAN Volume 4, Issue 2

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