[Midwest Book Review January 2010]
The Garden
James Dorr
Damnation Books
P.O. Box 3931, Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998
9781615720149 $6.99 www.damnationbooks.com
James Dorr’s novella, The Garden, was one of the first offerings at Damnation Press, and the publisher Kim Richards was wise to grab this talent. Dorr, a master at short fiction, has two collections of his work out, Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance (2001) and Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret (2007), both released by Dark Regions Press. But that is just the icing on the cake for this prolific writer. He has had nearly 350 short stories published in prestigious magazines such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Fantastic Stories, New Mystery, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Wisdom, Future Orbits, Tomorrow, and The Children of Cthulhu, as well as magazines in the UK and France. And, he’s had both fiction and poetry listed in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror many times since 1991.
His The Garden begins as an innocent tale of a biochemistry grad student, Steven Kerridge, off on a hike to find a place to write his thesis without distraction. When he stumbles upon Alma Sharp, the daughter of a legendary invertebrate zoologist, on whose work Steven is basing his own thesis, he decides to stay and help Alma tend her lush garden. Steven finds that the local townsfolk are wary of Alma and her plenty, amid their own dying fields. As Steven and Alma work closely together to solve the problems of the blighted countryside, they invariably fall in love and discover more than they ever wanted to know about each other.
The Garden is science fiction and horror at its classic best. This novella explores the morality of biochemistry and experimentation with DNA while it is set in a deceptively idyllic, rustic New England landscape, reminiscent of Hawthorne and Poe. The result is a creepy moral tale that will leave readers sleeping with a light on long after the last page is turned.
I’m hoping that Damnation Press will pick up more of James Dorr’s work. Readers will be so glad they did.
