cover image Lovecraft's Pillow and Other Strange Stories

Lovecraft's Pillow and Other Strange Stories

Kenneth W. Faig Jr. Hippocampus (www.hippocampuspress.com), $20 trade paper (236p) ISBN 978-1-61498-063-6

Admirers of Faig's scholarly writings (The Unknown Lovecraft, etc.) will best appreciate this story collection, whose most successful entries are his "Tales of the Lovecraft Collectors." In an introduction that serves as a clever framing device, Faig describes the (fictional) David Parkes Boynton, a Fall River, Mass., resident personally acquainted with Lovecraft through his mother, who was a schoolmate of HPL's younger aunt, Annie Gamwell, in Providence, R.I. At his death at age 59 in 1956, Boynton left behind a manuscript concerning his encounters with seven collectors of Lovecraft's work. The first involves British expat Maj. Geoffrey Hopkinton-Smith, who retired to Mexico, where he developed so sinister a reputation that Boynton was warned against visiting him. While the action may be predictable, Faig does a decent job of emulating a typical Lovecraft na%C3%AFve narrator. Later tales in the series intriguingly hint at an occult explanation for the murders of Lizzie Borden's parents%E2%80%94and for the crimes of Jack the Ripper. The title story, inspired by a story idea from Stephen King, recounts the effects of sleeping on the pillow that Lovecraft actually slept on, though the denouement is unlikely to surprise veteran genre readers. In a preface, Faig provides welcome background information on the genesis of each selection. (Aug.)