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The Dark Dark
The acclaimed novelist Samantha Hunt’s first collection of stories blends the literary and the fantastic and brings us characters on the verge—girls turning into women, women turning into deer, people doubling or becoming ghosts, and more
Strange things happen all around us all the time, but is it best to acknowledge or to turn away from moments when the weird pokes its way into our ordinary lives?
In these marvelously inventive stories, Samantha Hunt imagines numerous ways in which lives might be altered by the otherworldly. An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Two strangers become lovers and find themselves somehow responsible for the resurrection of a dog. A woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but cannot help riddling that new life with lies. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the Founding Fathers of American history. A lonely woman’s fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction.
Magic intrudes. Technology betrays and disappoints. Infidelities lead us beyond the usual conflict. Our bodies change, reproduce, decay, and surprise. With her characteristic unguarded gaze and offbeat humor, Hunt has conjured stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss, and hold out the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world.
Strange things happen all around us all the time, but is it best to acknowledge or to turn away from moments when the weird pokes its way into our ordinary lives?
In these marvelously inventive stories, Samantha Hunt imagines numerous ways in which lives might be altered by the otherworldly. An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Two strangers become lovers and find themselves somehow responsible for the resurrection of a dog. A woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but cannot help riddling that new life with lies. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the Founding Fathers of American history. A lonely woman’s fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction.
Magic intrudes. Technology betrays and disappoints. Infidelities lead us beyond the usual conflict. Our bodies change, reproduce, decay, and surprise. With her characteristic unguarded gaze and offbeat humor, Hunt has conjured stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss, and hold out the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world.
241 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2017
About the author
Samantha Hunt
25 books767 followersSamantha Hunt was born in 1971 in Pound Ridge, New York, the youngest of six siblings. She was raised in a house built in 1765 which wasn't haunted in the traditional sense but was so overstuffed with books— good and bad ones— that it had the effect of haunting Hunt all the same. Her mother is a painter and her father was an editor. In 1989 Hunt moved to Vermont where she studied literature, printmaking, and geology. She got her MFA from Warren Wilson College and then, in 1999, moved to New York City. While working on her writing, she held a number of odd jobs including a stint in an envelope factory.
Samantha Hunt received a National Book Foundation award for authors under 35, for her novel, The Seas. The Invention of Everything Else was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She won the Bard Fiction Prize for 2010.
Samantha Hunt received a National Book Foundation award for authors under 35, for her novel, The Seas. The Invention of Everything Else was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She won the Bard Fiction Prize for 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 518 reviews
February 6, 2022
Posted at Heradas Review
“...voices that insist on being heard, stories that demand to be told, writers who are compelled to show us something new.” is how FSG Originals describes the books they publish, and I would absolutely describe Samantha Hunt’s writing in this way. Her stories are brutal yet beautiful, magical but grounded, sincere, horrific, and essential. Her characters have such unique perspectives on their lives and the events surrounding them; a lot of the time these were perspectives that I’d never fully considered, but instantly empathized with once exposed to them.
These are stories I obviously needed to read. Stories about women and men of all walks of life passing through stages of the fantastic and the mundane, learning about themselves and the world(s) around them. While reading this book I was reminded of that old saying about how reading someone’s book is like having a conversation with them, or getting to know them a little better. With Hunt’s writing, it felt like getting to know several different women at the same time. It’s extraordinarily powerful stuff. Seeing things from these many new perspectives was fascinating for me.
There isn’t a bad story in the bunch, but the standouts for me were: The Story Of, All Hands, Love Machine, Wampum, & The Story Of Of. Her prose is tight and expressive. She manages to say so much in so few words, and her writing often dips into the magically realistic, with postmodern sensibilities.
I think it’s past due time for me to pick up her novels, and I’m kicking myself for not paying attention when friends were telling me that I should. Oh well, better late than never!
P.S. I need to sing a few praises for this cover as well. Book designers have really been outdoing themselves this year, and this one is no exception. This cover fully subverted my pattern recognition engine by using it against itself, that is until I plopped it down on my coffee table absentmindedly and accidentally saw it from a different angle as it lay there sideways, smirking at me. Clever clever.
“...voices that insist on being heard, stories that demand to be told, writers who are compelled to show us something new.” is how FSG Originals describes the books they publish, and I would absolutely describe Samantha Hunt’s writing in this way. Her stories are brutal yet beautiful, magical but grounded, sincere, horrific, and essential. Her characters have such unique perspectives on their lives and the events surrounding them; a lot of the time these were perspectives that I’d never fully considered, but instantly empathized with once exposed to them.
These are stories I obviously needed to read. Stories about women and men of all walks of life passing through stages of the fantastic and the mundane, learning about themselves and the world(s) around them. While reading this book I was reminded of that old saying about how reading someone’s book is like having a conversation with them, or getting to know them a little better. With Hunt’s writing, it felt like getting to know several different women at the same time. It’s extraordinarily powerful stuff. Seeing things from these many new perspectives was fascinating for me.
There isn’t a bad story in the bunch, but the standouts for me were: The Story Of, All Hands, Love Machine, Wampum, & The Story Of Of. Her prose is tight and expressive. She manages to say so much in so few words, and her writing often dips into the magically realistic, with postmodern sensibilities.
I think it’s past due time for me to pick up her novels, and I’m kicking myself for not paying attention when friends were telling me that I should. Oh well, better late than never!
P.S. I need to sing a few praises for this cover as well. Book designers have really been outdoing themselves this year, and this one is no exception. This cover fully subverted my pattern recognition engine by using it against itself, that is until I plopped it down on my coffee table absentmindedly and accidentally saw it from a different angle as it lay there sideways, smirking at me. Clever clever.
August 11, 2017
A fascinating and sometimes disturbing collection of short stories. Samantha Hunt blends magical realism with more conventional literary form to showcase issues of dangerous desire, technology gone awry, and relationships that reveal secrets both sinister and important. Across these stories runs a theme of dissatisfied suburban women who transform in some way, which lends itself to interesting feminist analysis. I most appreciated how Hunt took her characters into vivid and uncomfortable emotions and experiences, as that set apart her writing from many other works that explore similar topics. I only give The Dark Dark a lower star rating because sometimes I struggled to really connect with its characters. Oftentimes, I looked forward to seeing more depth in them just as their narrative would end, which made the stories as a whole feel incomplete to me. Still, I would recommend this collection to anyone who likes magical realism and wants to feel at least a little unsettled by their next read.
January 1, 2019
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
boilerplate mission statement intro:
links to all stories read in previous years' calendars can be found at the end of these reviews, in case you are a person who likes to read stories for free:
2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2017: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
scroll down for links to this year’s stories which i will update as we go, and if you have any suggestions, send 'em my way! the only rules are: it must be available free online (links greatly appreciated), and it must be here on gr as its own thing so i can review it. thank you in advance!
DECEMBER 30
as a getting-older lady, this story had some potent, poignant and uncomfortably needling observations to poke me with. unlike the narrator, i am not a getting-older lady who has experienced motherhood, so some of the fears and preoccupations do not apply, but i once had a mother, and i can pretend as well as anyone. probably better. and as far as the disappointment, humiliation, fear, resignation, and unfairness of the world - i can relate to all of that without pretending.
not a bad story for the end of the year, whose last few dwindling days all feel like the rundown to a nervous breakdown, a prolonged 3 a.m. can’t-sleep reckoning and tallying up of the year’s wins and losses and regrets and the hopes that maybe THIS TIME the coming year will be better.
oh, and all of this is absolute perfection:
read it for yourself here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
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come to my blog!
boilerplate mission statement intro:
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a short story advent calendar. it’s not a true advent calendar since i choose all the stories myself, but what it lacks in the ‘element of surprise’ department it more than makes up for in hassle, as i try to cram even MORE reading into a life already overcrammed with impossible personal goals (live up to your potential! find meaningful work! learn to knit!) merry merry wheee!
since i am already well behind in my *regular* reviewing, when it comes to these stories, whatever i poop out as far as reflections or impressions are going to be superficial and perfunctory at best. please do not weep for the great big hole my absented, much-vaunted critical insights are gonna leave in these daily review-spaces (and your hearts); i’ll try to drop shiny insights elsewhere in other reviews, and here, i will at least drop links to where you can read the stories yourselves for free, which - let’s be honest - is gonna serve you better anyway.
HAPPY READING, BOOKNERDS!
links to all stories read in previous years' calendars can be found at the end of these reviews, in case you are a person who likes to read stories for free:
2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2017: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
scroll down for links to this year’s stories which i will update as we go, and if you have any suggestions, send 'em my way! the only rules are: it must be available free online (links greatly appreciated), and it must be here on gr as its own thing so i can review it. thank you in advance!
DECEMBER 30
When I was young, I shopped at the Army-Navy with the thought that if I bought these clothes and wore them I would prevent some beautiful young man from being killed in the garments. I’m romantic like that.
as a getting-older lady, this story had some potent, poignant and uncomfortably needling observations to poke me with. unlike the narrator, i am not a getting-older lady who has experienced motherhood, so some of the fears and preoccupations do not apply, but i once had a mother, and i can pretend as well as anyone. probably better. and as far as the disappointment, humiliation, fear, resignation, and unfairness of the world - i can relate to all of that without pretending.
not a bad story for the end of the year, whose last few dwindling days all feel like the rundown to a nervous breakdown, a prolonged 3 a.m. can’t-sleep reckoning and tallying up of the year’s wins and losses and regrets and the hopes that maybe THIS TIME the coming year will be better.
oh, and all of this is absolute perfection:
The men I know speak about sex as if their needs are more intense or deeper than women’s needs. Like their penises are on fire and they will die if they can’t extinguish the flames in some damp, tight hole. Through high school and college, I believed men when they said their desires were more intense than mine because they talked about sex so much. They developed entire industries devoted to their desire. The aches! The suffering of the boys! The shame and mutual responsibility for blue balls. The suffering of the boys. Poor boys, I thought. Poor boys, as if I were being called upon to serve in a war effort, the war against boys not getting any.
The only desire I have that compares to the way men talk about sex is my fervor for rehashing the past. I relive the exquisite pain of things that no longer exist: my father’s jean jacket, my father, Travolta’s 1977 dark beauty, how it felt to be alone in the house with my mom after my siblings left for school, the hypnotic rotations of my record-player spinning the Osmonds and Paper Lace, the particular odors of a mildewed tent in summertime. Memory as erogenous zone.
Then I realized that men think they are special because someone told them so.
Then I realized that I, too, have begun to burn lately, and, while no one wants to hear about middle-aged female sexual desire, I don’t care anymore what no one wants. There are days I ache so badly, the only remedy beyond a proper plowing would be a curved and rusty piece of metal or broken glass to gouge out my hot center from mid-inner thigh all the way up to my larynx. I’d spare my spine, brain, hands, and feet. I’m not irrational.
read it for yourself here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
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come to my blog!
January 28, 2023
Samantha Hunt's collection of short stories are as weird and disturbed as the book's title would suggest. Most of these stories borrow strong elements of absurdist fiction, with occurrences ranging from mysterious and baffling, to characters eventually living in warped space and time. While there is something to be appreciated in the lateral thinking and unorthodox ideas of these short stories, at times it seems like Hunt is unknowingly using wildly absurd twists and turns as a way to avoid resolving these tales in a more satisfactory way. The endings are often so ambiguous to the point of indifference or bewilderment.
Nonetheless, Hunt has put together an interesting collection of stories about lost or troubled women trying to navigate their way out of detachment or madness (if they can realise their own delirium). Hunt's writing also deserves credit here for the book's mostly well written narratives that create relatively vivid settings and characters which are capable of evoking unease.
Nonetheless, Hunt has put together an interesting collection of stories about lost or troubled women trying to navigate their way out of detachment or madness (if they can realise their own delirium). Hunt's writing also deserves credit here for the book's mostly well written narratives that create relatively vivid settings and characters which are capable of evoking unease.
January 31, 2023
“There is a power to her filth.”
//
A group of teenage girls make a startling pact, and we see through varying POV’s the ripple effect of their actions. How powerful they are! So influential, so underestimated.
A husband and wife take on new, hoofed forms. Do Elk need marriage counseling?
An FBI agent falls in love with the Westworld-esq robot he has built. She's so pretty, she's so perfect, "She has been programmed to not resist male advances." Infuriating and nausea-inducing and way too real.
A dog meets its end over some headlights, and to the horror of its owner, comes back again. Different but the same. And everything in suburbia is dead or dying anyway, one measly zombie dog isn’t gonna turn any heads.
An abandoned woman waits out a hurricane, maybe the floodwaters will take away all the gunk and grief of her wrecked life with it. Being a mistress isn’t quite as glamorous as everyone said it would be.
Stories that end abruptly then linger for a long time after. Stories about power and predation. Autonomy and greed. How fast we demand that girls grow up. How unfair it is, to be held responsible for the behavior of everyone around you, to be the peacekeeper and the therapist and the entertainment. And how quickly we are dismissed should we falter or fail in our playing of all these characters.
Stories about infidelity and small-town listlessness. Self-delusion and paranoia. Is she being crazy if her suspicions are proven true? Or is she still to blame for suspecting in the first place? It’s so hard to win. It's so hard for women to win.
Fractured marriages, vows left to rot roadside, obsession and anguish and the weird shit we do when we want our suffering to be witnessed. When we need someone, anyone, to see how badly this all stings, and how hard we are trying.
An eloquent and much-needed dissection of the “Good Mother.” What does that mean? How does she do it? Is she even breathing? Was any of it worth it? Hello?
Hunt has an extraordinary way of writing violence as some ever-looming thing, heard but not seen, humming just on the other side of the door. Her stories have little to no actual gore, and yet I sat on pins and needles, waiting for the Bad to happen. And that waiting was just as agonizing as any masked, chainsaw-weilding avenger. Maybe even more so, because it’s so familiar. It’s so suburban, that kind of slow-cooking fear.
A little bit Gillian Flynn, a little bit Katherine Dunn, a little bit Lisa Taddeo, a little bit Sylvia Plath.
Wicked sharp, deeply moving, felt seen (pissed and heartbroken) the whole way through.
//
A group of teenage girls make a startling pact, and we see through varying POV’s the ripple effect of their actions. How powerful they are! So influential, so underestimated.
A husband and wife take on new, hoofed forms. Do Elk need marriage counseling?
An FBI agent falls in love with the Westworld-esq robot he has built. She's so pretty, she's so perfect, "She has been programmed to not resist male advances." Infuriating and nausea-inducing and way too real.
A dog meets its end over some headlights, and to the horror of its owner, comes back again. Different but the same. And everything in suburbia is dead or dying anyway, one measly zombie dog isn’t gonna turn any heads.
An abandoned woman waits out a hurricane, maybe the floodwaters will take away all the gunk and grief of her wrecked life with it. Being a mistress isn’t quite as glamorous as everyone said it would be.
Stories that end abruptly then linger for a long time after. Stories about power and predation. Autonomy and greed. How fast we demand that girls grow up. How unfair it is, to be held responsible for the behavior of everyone around you, to be the peacekeeper and the therapist and the entertainment. And how quickly we are dismissed should we falter or fail in our playing of all these characters.
Stories about infidelity and small-town listlessness. Self-delusion and paranoia. Is she being crazy if her suspicions are proven true? Or is she still to blame for suspecting in the first place? It’s so hard to win. It's so hard for women to win.
Fractured marriages, vows left to rot roadside, obsession and anguish and the weird shit we do when we want our suffering to be witnessed. When we need someone, anyone, to see how badly this all stings, and how hard we are trying.
An eloquent and much-needed dissection of the “Good Mother.” What does that mean? How does she do it? Is she even breathing? Was any of it worth it? Hello?
Hunt has an extraordinary way of writing violence as some ever-looming thing, heard but not seen, humming just on the other side of the door. Her stories have little to no actual gore, and yet I sat on pins and needles, waiting for the Bad to happen. And that waiting was just as agonizing as any masked, chainsaw-weilding avenger. Maybe even more so, because it’s so familiar. It’s so suburban, that kind of slow-cooking fear.
A little bit Gillian Flynn, a little bit Katherine Dunn, a little bit Lisa Taddeo, a little bit Sylvia Plath.
Wicked sharp, deeply moving, felt seen (pissed and heartbroken) the whole way through.
January 29, 2018
I initially set this book of short stories aside because of a fertility theme, but decided to pick it back up in an attempt to read all the books I received in 2017 from subscriptions (and #theunreadshelfproject2018 helped.) It was also included in the long list for the Tournament of Books, but not in the shortlist.
My favorite story was "A Love Story" (which you can read or listen to the author reading on The New Yorker. I like the little zings throughout this one, about married life, and so on.
Several stories have repeat characters of Norma(s) and Ted, which I didn't notice at first.
I also loved the story Beast.
Someone else compared her to Kelly Link, and that makes sense to me. I would like to go back and read her novels. And turn the book cover sideways for a trippy realization.
My favorite story was "A Love Story" (which you can read or listen to the author reading on The New Yorker. I like the little zings throughout this one, about married life, and so on.
Several stories have repeat characters of Norma(s) and Ted, which I didn't notice at first.
I also loved the story Beast.
Someone else compared her to Kelly Link, and that makes sense to me. I would like to go back and read her novels. And turn the book cover sideways for a trippy realization.
September 9, 2017
These three short stories...
Beast
The yellow
A love story
... instantly reached my all-time short story top 20. They are wild, inventive, compelling and in between 'tongue in cheeck'- funny and 'laugh out loud'-funny.
If the other stories (ranging from average to really good) were as sublime as those three, this would've been in my top 3 books of 2017
Beast
The yellow
A love story
... instantly reached my all-time short story top 20. They are wild, inventive, compelling and in between 'tongue in cheeck'- funny and 'laugh out loud'-funny.
If the other stories (ranging from average to really good) were as sublime as those three, this would've been in my top 3 books of 2017
October 19, 2018
Gritty and real and explicit and deep and thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud-funny.
When I swim at the public pool, I wear sunglasses so I can admire the hairless chest of the nineteen-year-old lifeguard. I love it that he, a child, really, is guarding me, fiercest of warriors, a mother, strong as stinky cheese, with a ripe, moldy, melted rotten center of such intense complexity and flavor it would kill a boy of his tender age.
February 3, 2018
I had great hopes the threat of Lyme disease would revitalize our sex life. “Would you check me for ticks?” You know, and things….
October 13, 2021
One of the best short story collections I have read in a long time. Transformations, shape shifting, eerie and intoxicating. Hunt deals with weirdness that exists right under the skin of the normal.
October 20, 2017
I was very excited to read this book, but I was sorely disappointed upon finishing. The stories seem to run together and were difficult to keep straight. I don't know if there was supposed to be a running theme throughout the book other than the fact that all of the narrators seem to suffer from severe mental illness. Where I was looking for stories of the macabre, I ran into stories of schizophrenia and depression, or at least that's what I perceive them to be since there were no resolutions I could wrap my head around.
August 27, 2017
3.5 Stars.
Hunt's short story collection is full of strange, haunted characters confronting some of the darker parts of human existence—from infertility and infidelity to loneliness and mortality. In her surreal and often frightening world, the mundane becomes transformative, both literally and figuratively. Motherhood is the prominent theme, and Hunt's female characters are compellingly raw and animalistic.
It's hard not to compare The Dark Dark to Roxane Gay and Ottessa Moshfegh's recent short story collections. Ultimately I'd take Gay or Moshfegh over Hunt—their stories left a much deeper impression on me—though I still quite enjoyed this collection.
Hunt's short story collection is full of strange, haunted characters confronting some of the darker parts of human existence—from infertility and infidelity to loneliness and mortality. In her surreal and often frightening world, the mundane becomes transformative, both literally and figuratively. Motherhood is the prominent theme, and Hunt's female characters are compellingly raw and animalistic.
It's hard not to compare The Dark Dark to Roxane Gay and Ottessa Moshfegh's recent short story collections. Ultimately I'd take Gay or Moshfegh over Hunt—their stories left a much deeper impression on me—though I still quite enjoyed this collection.
January 3, 2018
I would not say I really liked all of the stories in this collection, but I want to set aside personal taste and a reader's natural want for personal connection and rate based on ambition.
Some stories read like things I have read before ("Beast" seemed like something Kelly Link might have written). For the most part, though, Samantha Hunt's stories of shifting existences explore places I've rarely, if ever, read about before: an alternate history fantasy of a love robot sent to kill the Unibomber, a serviceman on a Coast Guard ship who renders a peculiar "service" to a teenage girl willing to pay. I enjoyed reading this collection and finding not only large connective motifs (pregnancy & generation of the physical body being the most obvious) but small repeated details, like characters in two separate stories referencing the same music, or fearing Lyme disease. That seems appropriate for the way this collection plays with being itself.
The story I felt the most from was "The House Began to Pitch." It is one of the more straightforward stories in the collection (no real elements of fantasy) and it is heartbreaking. It is not as ambitious or unique as many others Hunt shares, but the circumstances of the heartbreak as plotted were just right to twist the knife in my gut a bit.
Some stories read like things I have read before ("Beast" seemed like something Kelly Link might have written). For the most part, though, Samantha Hunt's stories of shifting existences explore places I've rarely, if ever, read about before: an alternate history fantasy of a love robot sent to kill the Unibomber, a serviceman on a Coast Guard ship who renders a peculiar "service" to a teenage girl willing to pay. I enjoyed reading this collection and finding not only large connective motifs (pregnancy & generation of the physical body being the most obvious) but small repeated details, like characters in two separate stories referencing the same music, or fearing Lyme disease. That seems appropriate for the way this collection plays with being itself.
The story I felt the most from was "The House Began to Pitch." It is one of the more straightforward stories in the collection (no real elements of fantasy) and it is heartbreaking. It is not as ambitious or unique as many others Hunt shares, but the circumstances of the heartbreak as plotted were just right to twist the knife in my gut a bit.
June 24, 2017
This may just be the best short story collection of 2017. "The Story Of" and "The Story Of Of" are drafts upon drafts of the same story woven together to dramatize a character's desperation to conceive. Absolutely brilliant.
May 17, 2017
This was some Good Shit.
January 18, 2022
Sievietes ir mistērija ne tikai citiem, bet arī sev.
November 2, 2017
My experience with Samantha Hunt's The Dark Dark did a real 180. There are ten stories in this story collection. I hated the first five and was feeling quite disheartened that I hadn't enjoyed a single story in this collection I'd purchased. But then I really enjoyed the last five stories. My experience with this book kind of echoes the Rorschach blot on its cover, which when turned on its side says Dark and has the imprint of the word Dark beneath it. I certainly liked one half of the Dark more than the other half.
My thoughts on the first half of The Dark Dark: The stories go nowhere and have no point. Hunt's metaphors and similes are awkward, overdone, and don't work. That goes for the extended metaphors of the stories themselves. There's a sameness to the first five stories in the kinds of people they're about and I didn't find these characters to be interesting. I found it to be too weird and not my cup of tea.
My thoughts on the second half of The Dark Dark: The writing style vastly improves! The weirdness in the latter stories is good even when not fully explained. Hunt maintains an aura of mystery and ambiguity even as you feel the meaning of the stories in your bones. The characters are a lot more compelling, sympathetic, and well drawn. I loved the wide array of women's lives recounted in "A Love Story," with Hunt capturing slices of life very well in short little snapshots. There's a perfect example of mise en abyme in "The Story of Of." Something towards the end of the book really ties things together and gives the book a perfect symmetry. It even gave me a greater appreciation for an earlier story I didn't think I liked the first time around.
I'm glad that I own The Dark Dark because if it had been a library book I may not have finished it and gotten to the good stuff. Despite my initial misgivings, this one is worth reading. The theme of the dark laces all the stories together. Hunt takes interesting risks as a writer and sometimes they really pay off. I will definitely try more by her.
My thoughts on the first half of The Dark Dark: The stories go nowhere and have no point. Hunt's metaphors and similes are awkward, overdone, and don't work. That goes for the extended metaphors of the stories themselves. There's a sameness to the first five stories in the kinds of people they're about and I didn't find these characters to be interesting. I found it to be too weird and not my cup of tea.
My thoughts on the second half of The Dark Dark: The writing style vastly improves! The weirdness in the latter stories is good even when not fully explained. Hunt maintains an aura of mystery and ambiguity even as you feel the meaning of the stories in your bones. The characters are a lot more compelling, sympathetic, and well drawn. I loved the wide array of women's lives recounted in "A Love Story," with Hunt capturing slices of life very well in short little snapshots. There's a perfect example of mise en abyme in "The Story of Of." Something towards the end of the book really ties things together and gives the book a perfect symmetry. It even gave me a greater appreciation for an earlier story I didn't think I liked the first time around.
I'm glad that I own The Dark Dark because if it had been a library book I may not have finished it and gotten to the good stuff. Despite my initial misgivings, this one is worth reading. The theme of the dark laces all the stories together. Hunt takes interesting risks as a writer and sometimes they really pay off. I will definitely try more by her.
February 18, 2017
The stories in The Dark Dark keep getting better as the book goes on, and by the end I was spellbound. You'd be hard-pressed to find another author like Samantha Hunt. These stories explore not only the extraneous terrors (the dark night and the unknown horrors it holds), but the deep-down fears and savagery and strangeness that exist beyond our understanding. Hunt mines the depths of our subconscious inhumanity to reveal what connects us in ways we can't imagine, and in her fantastic stories lie the real and familiar. The darkest dark is not an outside entity, but our own humanity, and nobody but Hunt can illuminate the shadowy corners of the soul so well.
[Thank you to FSG for the early reader's copy!]
[Thank you to FSG for the early reader's copy!]
February 16, 2018
2.5 stars
Why do I keep reading short story collections when, on the whole, I do not care for short story collections. You must save me from myself, reading friends.
Why do I keep reading short story collections when, on the whole, I do not care for short story collections. You must save me from myself, reading friends.
October 14, 2017
I'm a little bit obsessed by Hunt's story "A Love Story," which appears in this collection. Hunt does a great reading of the story for the "New Yorker" podcast. Like the other stories in "The Dark Dark," "A Love Story" is a bit of a slow burn. Hunt starts with the recognizable--the existential struggles of everyday people, characters who can't get pregnant, women pondering their husbands' infidelities--but in "A Love Story," as with other stories in the collection, there are little slippages. It's a David Lynch approach to storytelling. There's the dark and then there's the dark dark, an alternate world, another reality. In "A Love Story" the protagonist eventually turns her husband, whom she claims to love, into a stranger, an intruder. "All Hands" begins simply enough, with a coast guard officer inspecting a cargo ship in Galveston, but then he falls overboard, and when he reappears we're not sure whether he's alive or dead. In "Cortes the Killer" a horse drowns in a frozen manmade pit behind a Wal-Mart. Hunt is too subtle, and too good, for mere weirdness. The spookiness of her stories stems from the characters' motives and desires. The motif of pregnancy and doubles or doppelgangers is threaded throughout the collection, which achieves its most Lynchian moments with the first and last stories. These stories, called "The Story Of" and "The Story of Of," respectively, are a bold experiment. They are, essentially, the same story retold, riffing off itself, recursive. The second story essentially answers the call of the first. I'm not sure I've seen this before as a framing device in a collection, and initially I wasn't sure what to think, but "The Story of Of" does eventually break enough new ground to become complete in and of itself. In the first story a character appears who is the husband's half-sister. In the second story, the husband is having an affair and the half-sister has morphed into a clone the protagonist grew in a petri dish. The story keeps telling itself in a Steno Pad discovered in an abandoned mental hospital. Here Hunt seems to be playing with some horror film cliches, modernizing them, inserting them into psychological fiction. She does it well. "The Dark Dark" is not a terribly long book, but it is filled with mysteries and complexities of the best kind from a masterful writer. Like a David Lynch film or a great album, it bears returning to.
January 19, 2020
The price of admission to this utterly amazing, profound, hilarious, haunting book of stories is infinitely repaid by simply reading the first and last entries, "The Story Of" and its moving and profound permutation, which ends the book, "The Story Of Of." Pretty much the most inventive, thought-provoking and heart-breaking writing I have read in a long time.
October 5, 2017
I won this book thru Goodreads First Reads. I liked most of the stories in this collection. As usual there are always do that I do not like or skim thru. I was expecting these to be really dark and creepy stories, they were not. Most where women working thru different tough spots in their lives.
April 15, 2017
These short stories hold a lot of meat to ponder, to extricate, to fascinate.
October 29, 2017
It must be art. I don't get it.
December 23, 2017
I'm just floored by how good this short story collection was! Samantha Hunt is such a talented writer, and the audio narrator is among the best I've listened to.
October 13, 2017
The Dark Dark is a collection of short stories by Samantha Hunt that were often weird and always a little off-kilter, some stories veering directly into George Saunders/Karen Russell territory, and other stories remaining superficially more ordinary, but with an undercurrent that hints of something else.
This was an excellent collection of stories, where each story felt completely different than the one before. The book begins and ends with two variations on the same story and were the strongest of the stories, although there wasn't a dud to be found. And while the stories stand out for how imaginative they are, Hunt never fails to make her characters fully realized individuals or to give the stories a beating heart.
This was an excellent collection of stories, where each story felt completely different than the one before. The book begins and ends with two variations on the same story and were the strongest of the stories, although there wasn't a dud to be found. And while the stories stand out for how imaginative they are, Hunt never fails to make her characters fully realized individuals or to give the stories a beating heart.
May 22, 2017
You may read online here
Opening lines:
A coyote ate a three-year-old not far from here.”
“Yeah?”
“My uncle told me.”
“Huh.”
“He said, ‘Don’t leave those babies outside again,’ as if I already had.”
“Had you?”
“Come on.” An answer less precise than no.
“Why’s he monitoring coyote activity up here?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“It’s irresistible.”
“Really?”
Opening lines:
A coyote ate a three-year-old not far from here.”
“Yeah?”
“My uncle told me.”
“Huh.”
“He said, ‘Don’t leave those babies outside again,’ as if I already had.”
“Had you?”
“Come on.” An answer less precise than no.
“Why’s he monitoring coyote activity up here?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“It’s irresistible.”
“Really?”
July 22, 2017
These stories really got under my skin. I read the first half of the book in the morning, thought about those stories all day, then finished the book at night. Wow, that last story... I need to read more of this author's work.
March 25, 2018
This was my first Samantha Hunt read, and she's a great writer. Some of the stories weren't as dark as I was expecting them to be, but I enjoyed them nevertheless. I never knew where she was going to take me, which is hard to find in an author these days.
July 23, 2017
There's so much to admire here, from story level to sentence level. This one will go on the "books to reread" shelf.
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