Review of The Nameless
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Review of The Nameless
Chad Mooney’s The Nameless is a collection of four short stories. It is prefaced by a passage from the work of Edgar Allan Poe stating that “Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.” That sets the tone for this collection. Poe’s writing was noted for its mystery, love of the macabre, and interest in cosmology. There is some of all that in this collection. All the stories are told in the first person from the point of view of a male narrator.
The title of the first story, ‘Object Permanence,’ is borrowed from developmental psychology and refers to the understanding that things continue to exist even when they are hidden from sight. The story is about ten pages long and involves a man’s obsession with his young, female neighbor. The second story in the collection is, at just short of fifty pages, by far the longest. The title, ‘Somewhere Between Screaming and Crying,’ is taken from an American heavy metal band’s song lyric. The story tells the tale of a young man who is released from the hospital after a viral attack that has robbed him of his memory. Unable to recognize his wife, his home, or his friends, he has to begin the process of putting together his life and his sense of who he is. ‘The Thirteenth Step,’ is roughly seventeen pages long. The title is a reference to the twelve-step model of addiction recovery. The narrator attends addiction recovery meetings to pick up vulnerable young women for sex. The final story, ‘Mors Indecepta,’ is the shortest in the collection, running to about five pages. The Latin title translates as ‘death is undeceivable’, and the story is a reworking of an old tale.
This is a well-written, consistent collection of stories. The author tells his tales with great skill, keeping the reader engaged and wanting to know the outcome right to the end of each one. The mystery and suspense elements of the stories were what I enjoyed most about the collection. In the process of writing, the author also explores some important themes. He examines the value of morality in a universe that seems indifferent to our fate. He poses the question of whether it is a useless social construct in a world in which there is no objective right or wrong. Readers who enjoy mulling over these kinds of metaphysical ideas will find plenty to get their teeth into here.
While I appreciated the author’s skill and enjoyed his stories up to a point, I did not warm to the book overall. What permeates through all the stories is a predatory, threatening tone that female readers, in particular, may find troubling. The picture of the world that the writer paints is one in which there is little humanity and where the male narrators have few, if any, redeeming qualities. There is a whiff of nihilism coming off the book that left this reader, at least, feeling slightly flat after reading. Other people may have a different response. If you enjoy the kind of escapism that dark tales like this offer, then this book is a good example of the genre.
The book has been professionally edited, but there are still a few errors remaining. For that reason, I have to deduct one star and can award this work three out of four stars only. The book’s themes and discussions around sex make it an adult-only read, although there is nothing too explicit here. I recommend it to readers who enjoy tales of mystery with a few dark themes thrown in.
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The Nameless
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- Urvashi Tripathi
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