A haunting collection of short fiction from the bestselling author of “The Pallbearers Club,” “A Head Full of Ghosts,” and “The Cabin at the End of the World.”
Paul Tremblay has won widespread acclaim for illuminating the dark horrors of the mind in novels and stories that push the boundaries of storytelling itself. The fifteen pieces in this brilliant collection, “The Beast You Are,” are all monsters of a kind, ready to loudly (and lovingly) smash through your head and into your heart. In "The Dead Thing," a middle-schooler struggles to deal with the aftermath of her parents' substance addictions and split. One day, her little brother claims he found a shoebox with "the dead thing" inside. He won't show it to her and he won't let the box out of his sight. In "The Last Conversation," a person wakes in a sterile, white room and begins to receive instructions via intercom from a woman named Anne. When they are finally allowed to leave the room to complete a task, what they find is as shocking as it is heartbreaking. The title novella, "The Beast You Are," is a mini epic in which the destinies and secrets of a village, a dog, and a cat are intertwined with a giant monster that returns to wreak havoc every thirty years. A masterpiece of literary horror and psychological suspense, “The Beast You Are” is a fearlessly imagined collection from one of the most electrifying and innovative writers working today.
An ensemble of 10 narrators deftly captures the unsettling, creepy, or horror-filled nature of 15 thought-provoking works in several genres by Tremblay. A gravelly-voiced Graham Halstead remembers touring his first crush's haunted house, Jorjeana Marie becomes a mean girl who erases the chalk marks that lead an old man home, and Ewan Chung channels the intense pain of grief that never heals. Helen
