Gateways to Abomination

In the second piece of this collection, "when i was a boy - a broadcast," there are a pair of sentences that for me set the tone for this work and all of Bartlett's following works: "Maybe I didn't see these things. Maybe I dreamed them, or maybe I misremembered them." Together they are an epigrammatic statement of Bartlett's project.This is not traditional horror and that is why it is good. It reads as a fever dream of fragmentary, conflicting, impossible, and unreliable narratives, suffused with riotous and surreal imagery and a gruesome inventiveness. The varied storytelling structures and questioning and confusing of memory are very much of a piece with what is nowadays referred to as post-modern; however, that post-modernity is not a goal in and of itself – rather, it serves as a grotesque tool to amplify the horror by simultaneously obscuring and revealing a plot whose hinted definitiveness and deliberateness stand in stark awful contrast to the haze in which they are cloaked. The writing does this repeatedly, to the point where the technique itself is as much an object of horror as the things it depicts.The plot emerges in various chunks of congealed precipitate floating atop this nightmare solution, particularly becoming clear in the pieces that most resemble traditional short stories, such as "the gathering in the deep wood" and "the investigator" - both masterful tales of terror in their own right, but also both signaling clues to a very definite and utterly nefarious storyline that underlies this collection and Bartlett's other Leeds/WXXT works. The pleasure comes in not completely knowing this plot but trusting that it is there, trying to ascertain its outlines, and getting lost in the stories in the process.

I feel a little bad giving this two stars, since Bartlett’s cleverness and raw talent as a writer are so clearly evident, but on the other hand–look at all those 5 star reviews.For the first 30 minutes or so I spent with this book my impression was not at all a negative one. I was taken by the author’s writing style and what seemed to me the products of a singular imagination. While both his prose and ability to conjure up uniquely bizarre and horrific scenarios held steady throughout the book, I found I was getting diminishing returns well before the midway point. The problem is that this book is essentially plotless. It is not a short story collection, it is not a novel, but a loosely tied together collection of vignettes meant to resemble a novel. There is nothing inherently wrong with telling a story this way, but it did not work for me here.All of the disgusting, horrifying, insane, or simply weird little stories that make up this book soon acquired a feeling of monotony and dullness. This is because the whole book is made up of such sequences with nothing to give us even a little bit of relief from the madness. Imagine if the entirety of the show Twin Peaks was made up of Agent Cooper’s dream sequences. That is pretty much what you have here. All of the weirdness, none of the things that make for a tantalizing story. The end result for me was boredom, quite the opposite of the effect I imagine the author was going for.

I have a weird relationship with horror in general, and horror fiction in particular. Too often I'm not interested in most offerings; I'm not much for monsters, especially vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc., but I'm also not much for stories, in the usual sense. When horror is explained it loses not only the horror, but my interest. It can still be fun if done well but, to me, it's a distinct thing separate from what I would consider horror. For example, I quite enjoy the movie EVENT HORIZON, but it's not scary and I don't consider it horror, while TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME horrifies and unsettles me in deep ways.GATEWAYS TO ABOMINATION doesn't explain much. Instead, we are given flashes of things that happen, in prose that is well done without being indulgent. Where Lovecraft will go on and on describing about how we should find something disturbing, Mr. Bartlett knows that describing worms as writhing limbless pigs is all that's needed.The book is mysterious, intriguing, and just flat out fun. It's not a huge commitment, either. It's not like you're being asked to commit to 1000+ pages of dense writing that requires hard work and research in order to suss out what's happening. Everything you need to know is there in 145 pages of plain English, and the things you don't need to know are what make it horror.If you'd ask "what's the point?" after reading a book featuring an evil radio station run by a witch cult, I wonder why you would have bothered in the first place. If you take exception to the fact that it's not explicitly stated why the evil occultists are doing evil occult things, I wonder where your imagination is. But, if you'd like to be unsettled and bewildered, this is the book for you.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I did the last Bartlett book I read. Not because this is better than its follow up book, I would say the follow up is arguably better. However, going into this I was more prepared for what Bartlett was doing stylistically. I was initially offput when I read my first book by Bartlett, as these collections are not so much short stories as they are loosely connected vignettes. The use of language is lush and varied, albeit in the most disturbing of ways. So long as you enter into it not looking for a narrative, but instead allow yourself to just enjoy the horrifying tapestry being woven before your eyes, I think you’ll enjoy yourself.I would not even necessarily categorize this as weird fiction...while there’s little in the way of explanations for the events described, these vignettes are less straight forward than a weird tale. The focus truly is on mood, tone, and describing a particular moment(s) sensororily, not on telling a story.

Wow.This is a relatively short book, but manages to pack in a lot of disturbing imagery. There are recurring characters and themes of witchcraft and decay, all emanating from the local radio station WXXT if you're unlucky enough to find the right place on the dial. More than once I felt like I needed a shower after setting the book aside, but was too afraid of what might spray from the showerhead in place of water.Matthew M Bartlett's work is uniquely involving and he's created a wonderfully disturbing local mythology here. It put me in mind of how I felt reading Laird Barron's earlier stories for the first time, which is obviously a compliment.I'll definitely be checking out Mr Bartlett's other books soon. After a suitable period of psychic convalescence of course.

Gateways To Abomination is a deeply unsettling collection of short stories all set in the New England town of Leeds. Some of the stories here are almost self-contained narratives, whilst others are vignettes adding atmosphere and depth to the setting. And the setting really is key to this book. Leeds is a place of devilry, strange crimes, fetid secrets. The corruption is in the air-literally, as in story after story Bartlett’s protagonists stumble across the strange, infectious voices of WXXT, a local Leeds radio station…The power of the book is thus one that builds cumulatively as you read; unlike most short story collections this is one that demands to be read from front to back rather than cherry picking if you want to get the full effect. Reoccurring imagery, characters and themes link the stories together but Bartlett cannily ensures things don’t dovetail together too neatly. The gaps and caesuras, the static between the voices on the airwaves, do just as much to build the dread as what is present and audible.Bartlett’s narrative voice is matter of fact as he presents his horrors, which makes their ambiguity all the more effective. There’s some disturbingly effective imagery here but this is no gore-fest, it’s more restrained and frightening than that.A fine horror book then: weird, distinctive, creepy and darkly humorous. If you want to tune in to Gateways To Abomination you can do so here

This is not a collection of short stories. It's a fractured, discombobulating novel. And I loved every minute of it. This is a rule-breaking book. Weird things happening to weird people in weird places. Bartlett doesn't offer much in the way of footholds. This isn't Stephen King's ordinary people facing extraordinary events. And it isn't extraordinary people attempting to navigate the ordinary (a la Dennis Etchison, Steve Rasnic Tem etc). On the whole, this kind of fiction tends to flounder and fail, largely because it attracts a particular kind of writer: the lazy individual who wants to get the horror imagery that's bouncing around their head out onto the page but lacks the skill and discipline to do it effectively, and independent horror is littered with such writings. Bartlett, however, has skill and discipline to spare. It may be horribly misshapen, but his writing has a spine. It might not even be a human spine, but it's there and it's doing an admirable job of keeping everything painfully aloft. It's probably a lazy comparison but I'm going to make it anyway: Bartlett's work reminds me of David Lynch (or even William Blake) in that it's impossible to know precisely what's going on (overall and, often, at any given moment) but as a reader you have no doubt that the author knows exactly what he's doing and why. A great, great book.

I purchased this book as it came up through Amazon as a Recommended Purchase based on previous purchases. A great read, full of grotesque images and hallucinatory visions centered around a fictional radio station. It reminded me of a beat poet writing horror if that makes sense.The only thing that I would hesitate about is that I like books that have some form of conclusion.I felt this book didn't really end in any way. The closing chapter was, as usual, brilliant, but didn't seem to wrap things up. Having said that, there's another book about the same radio station so I might just have to pick that up as well. Also, I could easily be missing the point of the book!

If you wisely choose to purchase this linked collection of vignettes, I promise you that by the end of the first one, you'll be altogether deeply unsettled, mightily impressed, and hooked. Other reviewers have said it and it's true; there are moments when you dread turning the page. Horrific, hallucinatory, deeply weird, haunting and repulsive. What more could you want?ps. When you're done, do yourself a favour and read 'The Wizard of OK' by Scott Nicolay, to be found in the excellent Lovecraftian anthology, 'Resonator' from Martian Migraine Press - that story made me feel like I was going mad...Amen (iä!)