https://blackstaffpress.com/the-black-dreams-9781780733289
Stories by:
Jo Baker, Jan Carson, Reggie Chamberlain-King, Aislinn Clarke, Emma Devlin, Moira Donaldson, Michelle Gallen, Carlo Gebler, John Patrick Higgins, Ian McDonald, Bernie McGill, Gerard McKeown, Ian Sansom, Sam Thompson.
This is the strangest, mind-boggling, challenging collection of stories (all in a good way!) I have read, so good in fact that I felt compelled to read them in one sitting. In fact, it is obvious when you think about it that the backdrop link to all of the stories is strange, mind-boggling, challenging Northern Ireland. As a Belfast kid, I get this.
Although they reside under the Black Dreams umbrella, each storyteller has taken the central theme of strangeness and let creativity and imagination rip. Characters look within, rummaging through emotions and memories, look out and sense things only they can sense, explore the past, consider what will be, sometimes dreaming impossible dreams and coming to profound conclusions about the value of their lives and the lives of others, the history of their surroundings and the shifting power of the landscape.
It is difficult to pick a favourite and I won't. Readers will have to decide for themselves. Of the fourteen stories, there was only one I didn't care for, and I won't reveal that one either.
The Black Dreams is an excellent collection of stories by gifted writers unafraid to loosen the reins and take us on a gallop down twisty, turny roads. It is quite a ride!
Indeed, creativity and imagination unleashed.
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