I am a little late posting this review of Strange Weather by Joe Hill
What I enjoyed the most was how easily Joe Hill can find terror in the everyday world. That’s the kind of horror that usually sticks with me for a long time. Each of the novellas in Strange Weather manages that very neatly.
Snapshot features a Polaroid camera, the very real horror of dementia, and a young boy facing far bigger problems than he should have to handle.
Loaded is a study on contemporary USA and its gun laws, the media, bigotry, and fear. Fiction feels uncomfortably close to truth in this one.
Aloft starts as an unrequited love story, then veers into sci-fi and Black Mirror territory. I enjoyed the change of pace.
Rain brings us back to contemporary horror, with an upgrade to the dangers posed by acid rain and cloud seeding.
In each of these stories, Joe Hill creates engaging characters facing incredible challenges in a world that feels all too familiar. This particular passage landed very hard with me, and I feel a short story of my own brewing: ‘When my mother wept, it was a manipulation. When my father cried, it was because he was drunk and feeling sorry for himself. I never felt anything except contempt when confronted with someone in tears, until the first time I saw Yolanda weeping, and it twisted my heart.’