Manyebook

Death and The Flower

Death and the Flower is a collection of six short stories centered on the themes of family and peril. The title is derived from a Keith Jarrett album of the same name.

Setting a precarious tone reminiscent more of The Spirit of the Beehive than his own mold-busting Ring trilogy, Death and the Flower may be horror-master Koji Suzuki’s most personal offering in English yet. Skirting genre expectations — even as revised by the author — and thus often overseen, all six of the tales herein are available in English for the first time.

In the longest of the stories, “Beyond the Darkness,” a couple with a baby daughter realizes that saving up and moving into a brand-new apartment does not mean that they have shaken off a vicious prank-caller. In “Disposable Diapers and a Race Replica,” a sporty father who is barely making ends meet by tutoring comes by some verities in exchange for a brush with death. In “Key West,” a young girl on a tourist trip with her daddy sees things recede that shouldn’t.

Common to the stories is a resilient affirmation of the place of family in our quest to wrest meaning from the maws of an unkind world. Predating the horror-themed collection Dark Water, whose title story inspired major motion pictures on both sides of the Pacific, Death and the Flower was Koji Suzuki’s first book of short stories.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 224
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781934287002
  • Genres
  • horror, fiction, japan
  • Release date
  • 2014