Find Far From Streets Drafted By Michael Griffin Shown As Textbook

home run from Michael Griffin, His story "Diamond Dust" was one of my favorites in THE GRIMSCRIBE'S PUPPETS, the Thomas Ligotti tribute anthology that won a Shirley Jackson Award last year.
In FAR FROM STREETS, Griffin shows the same insight into troubled personal relationships and high strangeness, but switches the industrial setting of "Diamond Dust" for the primal woods of his native Pacific Northwest.


As FAR FROM STREETS progresses, the unexplained looms larger and larger, The narrative becomes hazier, and a sense of notrightness becomes pervasive, Reading this in bed late last night, I started to get that subtly anxious, confused waking nightmare feeling that usually comes to me with reading the aforementioned Ligotti.
That doesn't happen for me very often,

Like the best weird fiction, FAR FROM STREETS grounds the Otherness in a solid bedrock of believability, with characters who seem like actual people with relatable problems, and vivid descriptions of the wilderness and suburbs where much of the story takes place.
Griffin is as adept at writing passages of daily domestic life as he is at bringing down the hammer of cosmic horror, and the dynamic and dialog between the two main characters reminded me of Nathan Ballingrud at times.
Other parts of the story caused thoughts of Laird Barron and Richard Gavin to burble up though my brain.
This is all high praise, as those are three authors I both enjoy and highly respect,

All that said, I feel like I need to read the book again to fully pick up on everything that happens.
To his credit, Griffin does not spell everything out, and I finished the book with a few questions that a reread might answer.
Or maybe not. That is one of the attractions of this kind of story to me, the ambiguity and uncertainty, Just like life itself.

If you have read and enjoyed any of the other authors I mentioned above, there is an very good chance will like this book.
FAR FROM STREETS is already sold out, but I'm sure it will be included in Griffin's first collection, a book I hope to see sooner than later.
Read by ACRL Member of the Week John Glover, Learn more about John on the sitelinkACRL Insider blog, One of the meatier novellas from Dunhams Manor Press imprint of Dynatox Ministries is Mike Griffin's Far From Streets.
The back cover compares the books to Von Trier's Antichrist and Blackwood's The Willows, both of which are apt.
The novella focuses on a married couple who inherit a large piece of land rather deep in the wilderness.
The wife would rather sell it and move into an even nicer suburban home, but the husband sees the inheritance as an escape, a chance to build a cabin and cut himself off from theworld.
They attempt a compromise, the husband builds a cabin, and reality itself seems to unravel, Griffin excels at writing personal relationships, The joys, the strains, the beauty and the ugliness are all shown in great detail, The book is about obsession and relationships as much as it's about the difference between suburbia and the wilderness, and manages to be far more than just a surreal creepout fest because of this.
Griffin becomes more and more impressive, and this is my favorite work of his to date, Modern life constricts. The swarming city, homogenous suburbs, Overscheduled lives accumulate layers of obligation, We add more, more of what we think life should contain, until we can't stand it all, The clutter of life starts grinding us away, We dream of escape, a simpler life among open spaces, Forests and rivers. Mountain wilderness.

Reverence for nature balances against the terror of isolation, Mutual dependency leads to resentment, Our fondest dreams drag us toward places that threaten our very survival, When the last remaining tether is cut, time spins away, We no longer recognize ourselves in the mirror, Our surroundings become strange. The end comes rushing.

Far From Streets combines influences such as Von Trier's Antichrist and Blackwood's "The Willows" into a confrontational psychodrama of craving and repulsion, emotional drift and dislocation, set deep in the Cascade Mountain forests of Oregon.
I received Mike Griffin's latest novella in the mail tonight and TRAMPLED through it, He writes like Laird Barron mashedup with John Langan, Weird, good, undeniably approachable and enjoyable, Griffin's strengths are having the surreal and strange grounded in real human emotions and experiences and explaining heady philosophical ideas in language that manages to be both elegant and understandable I, personally, do not have a lot of patience for stuff that goes over my head and, I admit, most things go over my head.
Both of those traits are used to great effect in Far From Streets, but I have to admit this one didn't sing to me the way Griffin's work usually does.


It seems

like there's a pretty even divide in the story between the part with the weird stuff and the part without the weird stuff and it's pretty much half way through the book.
While the first part that is character building drama is good and necessary, as a matter of personal taste I would have liked the supernatural stuff to start bleeding into real life earlier.
I think having all the supernatural stuff hit at once actually its lessened the impact, I could tell it was supposed to be meaningful, but it didn't FEEL meaningful,

I also wonder if the story wouldn't have benefited from seeing more of it from Carolyn's point of view, as we are firmly with Dane for the entire ride.


Griffin portrays the haziness of time that descends on the couple in the forest perfectly and the reader is as completely disoriented by what is going on as the characters because of it.
And when things to badly, they go BADLY and it makes the reader quite uncomfortable,

If you're a weird fiction fan, you should know Michael Griffin by now, If you're not a weird fiction fan, look him up, but start with with his collection Lure Of The Devouring Light.
That is a better place to start, for my money “We cant spend our lives in between, ”


Married couple Dane and Carolyn take the road less travelled, losing track of life and, with Griffins measured, precise presentation, the sway of Time, splitting the seams that connect modern convenience with personal happiness and even sanity.
Danes quest for a simpler life wrought in the bones and atavistic at heart disintegrates for both of them into a harrowing nightmare of decay and malaise, all within a house in the woods, and the surrounding mysteries of a forest as much a character in the tale as Dane and Carolyn.
Psychological devastation has never been as subtle, . .


Michael Griffins Far From Streets is ast century modern classic of the Weird, a tale Im sure would meet with Algernon Blackwoods approval.
Griffin is putting together a collection as I type this, I cannot wait to read it!


John Claude Smith Librarian Note:There is than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name, .