Nothing But Blackened Teeth

Wow, I did not enjoy this novella at all. (At least it was short.) I understand that horror tends to deal somewhat in tropes and cliches. In fact, that's why I like the genre; I like seeing how authors can take familiar material and make it new. This novella - from my perspective - took the worst cliches from the genre and did nothing interesting with them. Five rich and/or beautiful 20-somethings (so-called "best friends" who have all previously slept with each other and/or loathe each other) go to a remote haunted house and then get haunted? At this piont, even having the characters coment on the cliche is a cliche (and these cohracters spend a lot of time doing the "horror movie meta-commentary" thing.) Really, the biggest issue for me was the writing - which, I suspect, is also why it got nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, if others. Some people think that cramming at least one metaphor or similae into every sentence is literary; I disagree, and thought this novella was completley over-written. I found the constant barrage of literary flourishes unhelpful, sometimes baffling, and just generally bogging down the story - although on the other hand, maybe some of the over-writing helped mask the lack of plot or scary scenes. Even for a story written in the grand tradition of "5 friends in a haunted house," the chracters were incredibly, mystifylngly two-dimensional and odious. Why the five of them would have been in that house together made no sense. Their relationships were inexplicable, their reactions to each other and their situation were bizarre, and the dialogue unbelievable. I kept reading to see if there was some kind of crazy plot twist that would make the story pay off, but there wasn't.