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.
- Author
- Kōji Suzuki, Maya Robinson, Camellia Nieh
- Format
- hardcover
- Pages
- 224
- Publisher
- Vertical
- Language
- english
- ISBN
- 9781934287002
- Genres
- horror, fiction, japan
- Release date
- 2014
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