How Mia Dalia’s musical horror collection rests on the novella Discordant, with a nod to Don DeLillo
Lullabies for the Lost | Review by Ben Unsworth | Black Shuck Books
Mia Dalia’s musical horror leans hard on its novella, and gets away with it.
Mia Dalia arrives on the Black Shuck Shadows list with Lullabies for the Lost, a collection that runs on music, the jazzier and punkier sort, and on the ways a good tune can pull a person somewhere they should not go. Four short stories set the table before a novella takes over the second half. In the opening quartet you get a rock star who turns an ossuary into a recording studio, a child of the Devil working on a librarian, a dissonant riff on possession, and a quieter piece about music, motherhood and a brother behind bars.
They read as sharp, brief punk bursts, though several remix devil child and cosmic horror ideas you will already know. The real weight sits in the novella Discordant, a story somewhere between Faust and a rock and roll It’s a Wonderful Life, where nostalgia does more damage than any monster. Readers who enjoy Don DeLillo will spot his shadow in it. This review of Lullabies for the Lost weighs Mia Dalia’s short fiction against that central novella, and asks one honest question the Black Shuck Shadows format raises: does the collection earn its place when the best of it is already sold on its own?
The novella ‘Discordant’ is what really makes or breaks this collection, a plot somewhere between Faust and It’s a Wonderful Life with a dash of rock ‘n’ roll. The four preluding stories entertain as punk remixes of familiar horror, if not quite thrill or scare.
Lullabies for the Lost by Mia Dalia, Review
Mia Dalia’s ‘Alakazam’ is a novella I like an awful lot, and its generally mystical dissection of hellish situation appealed to me in a way that took me by surprise. Therefore, when Steve Shaw announced the next roster of Black Shuck Shadows, I was keen to review them all, beginning with Dalia’s entry. Entitled ‘Lullabies for the Lost’, the theme is music, particularly of a jazzier, punkier variety, assembling three short stories previously published and one never-released one alongside a novella.
The previously-published short stories first!
Up first is ‘Metal Bones’, the focus of which is a man called Rex who, after a night’s amorousness with a fan of his music, wakes up and decides an ossuary (that’s a bone temple not unlike a catacomb) would be perfect as a new recording studio. And speaking as a horror fan, I have to agree – were I to design a writing room, I imagine skulls would be a core part of the aesthetic! But that’s enough about me.
For the rest of the story, Rex gets trapped in an obsession-filled tale not unlike that of William Golding’s ‘The Spire’ (a fabulous tale of cosmic horror, not that Golding ever intended it as such), with a blunt yet effective end note. The horrors themselves here are perhaps a little unwieldy, however the power behind the story is resolute and keenly hypnotic. You know quickly where the story is going, the horrors inserted fairly simply and imprecisely, but there’s something here that makes each sentence hit like a bulldozer and you see hints of both the eerie and the furious before its humble page count is over.
Next is ‘Blues for the Soul’, where a child of the Devil torments a librarian, only with ramifications far creepier and more cutting than you expect. The interaction of the character usurps the actual events within the story, which treads a fairly traditional ‘devil child’ narrative with an added twist of how the devilry entered these characters’ lives. There’s a twinge of WEAPONS, everything as disconnected as it does lead unnervingly lead back to one creepy point. It works because it aggravates something primal in you and illicit gut responses both bad and good, just treat it – to keep with the musical theme – as a remix of creepy stuff rather than something earth-shatteringly new.
With ‘The Devil’s Chord’, you also get a familiar style of story, in essence a musically dissonant iteration of THE EVIL DEAD but without any character as endearing as those played by Bruce Campbell. Honestly, none of the elements here quite clicked for me as I wanted them to; maybe this because all I could see was the filmic comparison, or maybe this is because, while likely an effective and sinister standalone tale, it comes off as a little ‘same-y’ next to the previous stories featured.
Not to say it isn’t fun, and I did whistle through it in a matter of minutes as it still had a page-turning power – it just felt at this point that a potentially powerful and unfettered premise was being treated rather reservedly.
‘B Minor’ is the story original to this collection, and the shortest here, vaguely re-treading ‘Blues for the Soul’ in that both the sadness of music and connections to motherhood are very much part of the package. Sadly, it’s a little slighter than my own personal tastes desired, although the rapport between the first-person narrator and their brother (the latter of whom is currently in prison after a night playing his music puts him in touch with his happy-go-lucky mum, with less than ideal consequences) is a nice touch.
As for the very last line, it has a kind of morose simplicity which I really wanted to work for me – but which sadly didn’t – however I imagine it’ll nevertheless land well with many other readers.
‘Discordant’, the novella taking up over half the page count, is what really makes or breaks this collection, with a plot somewhere between Faust and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but with an (un)healthy dash of rock ‘n’ roll. A lot focuses on past waywardness and the power and perils of nostalgia, with the supernatural honed by very much an effect not a cause. The characters here don’t exactly tread new ground, but you want to stay with them for the duration and there’s a razor’s edge underpinning their life that’s strangely alluring.
Worth noting though is that this novella is already available as standalone from Anuci Press; as such, I’m not fully sure if the four preluding stories totally justify buying the collection, since they’re somewhat remixes of things we know already. However if you aren’t familiar with the novella, it’s worth jumping straight to here rather than getting it on its, as especially to those who enjoy Don DeLillo will find an iteration of him here, prefaced by short, punk-tinted bursts that’ll entertain if not thrill or exactly scare.
Lullabies for the Lost by Mia Dalia
Black Shuck Shadows brings you a pocket-size sample from the best in modern horror.
Featuring:
Metal Bones
Blues for the Soul
The Devil’s Chord
B Minor
Discordant
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