Mr. Gaunt (etc.) is the first collection of short stories by John Langan, tales that as you may assume from the book’s full title, are macabre in tone. Mr. Langan’s primary advantage is a literate writing style that might be called Neo-Victorian. There are smatterings of grue, but on the whole the stories owe as much to authors like Henry James–who actually figures into a few tales in an indirect fashion–as Stephen King.
Like King, Langan’s stories often revolve around authors and academics; one assumes many of the details are semi-autobiographical. This is especially true of Tutorial (probably my favorite story), which centers on an aspiring writer who is tired of his creative writing instructors telling him to abandon his baroque writing style, one rather close to Langan’s own. Although the stories are generally grim in tone, they often exhibit a puckish and nicely dry sense of humor, as in the first story which actually features Langan and his fiancee as characters in the tale’s framing device, the classic situation of a group being told a ghost (mummy, actually) story.
The book contains five longish short stories, which range from classic horror to sci-fi; again, I prefer the former, but the latter are good too. There is also a section of fairly extensive notes on each story in the back of the book, which given the style of the author’s writing, seems more fitting (and probably interesting; I haven’t read them yet) than such a thing would be in other books. Anyway, if you enjoy horror and prefer it well written, you might enjoy the book as much as I did. I look forward to Mr. Langan’s future work.
