Doug Brown returns with Gladfind and Other Monsters, a second collection that proves his debut was no accident.
If My Bohemian Baptism announced an important new voice, this volume confirms it. Brown’s fiction ranges from whimsical to wistful, from absurd to unsettling. Brown nods to Greek tragedy, winks at Roman satire, and ventures—without apology—into the grotesque. The result is something critics have begun to call “New England Gothic”—fiction that reveals the strangeness lurking beneath the quaint ordinary.
Brown has a gift for exposing the hidden fault lines in everyday lives. His monsters are not always fanged or spectral. Often they are anxieties, compromises, appetites, ideologies—forces that distort vision and warp desire. With bracing, tactile prose, he decodes the dysfunctional psychology that drives us all. These stories are deftly paced and emotionally fearless. They will move you-to laughter, to tears, to an uneasy actuality. Brown leads his readers through weird landscapes that feel uncannily familiar. By the end, you may find that the strangest terrain was your own.
Quirky, original, and most of all—fun. Doug Brown’s second collection, Gladfind and Other Monsters, features lyrical writing that is almost tactile in its intensity. Sit back, buckle up, and enjoy!
—Terry Shaw, author, The Way Life Should Be; and publisher, Howling Hills Publishing