Dark Play by Tim Cooke an Enigmatic World of Mystery

Dark Play by Tim Cooke

Dark Play by Tim Cooke, a Book Review by Benjamin Kurt Unsworth

Creepiness abounds in every story, turning fairly simply narratives into edgy attacks on your psyche: from a witch that would be at home in a Grimm fairy-tale to the many angles where ordinary danger can be found, from sinister visitors at their hillside home to Nia’s own brand of scariness which getting under the skin if not all the way into your veins.

Tim Cooke’s latest collection, ‘Dark Play’ published by Salò Press, packs a lot into its humble 74 pages. Detailing the darker areas of the life of an unnamed father and his daughter, Nia, whose house is a cottage on the side of a hill and a good distance away from civilisation, this collection not only sits in the weird fiction category, it swims and lathers itself in it. And if you’re a lover of simpler, sharper weird fiction in the spirit of Arthur Machen’s ‘The Chronicle of Clemendy’, Stephen King’s ‘Children of the Corn, or John L. Probert’s ‘How Grim Was My Valley’, this is very much your kind of book.

Cooke offers up 6 stories for the reader, each separated by small, one page inserts, and each beginning anew after the events of the previous story, but where the seeds of the weirdness and the character’s quirks relentlessly pervade. Creepiness abounds in every story, turning fairly simply narratives into edgy attacks on your psyche: from a witch that would be at home in a Grimm fairy-tale to the many angles where ordinary danger can be found, from sinister visitors at their hillside home to Nia’s own brand of scariness which getting under the skin if not all the way into your veins.

The standout story however is ‘Repetitions’, where Nia and her father’s plight to save an injured wren leads to a subtle and piercing slice of emotion. It’s a story packed with atmosphere, the kind worthy of Stephen King given both he and Cooke seem to share a predilection for turning children (and their curiosity) into weapons of pure, psychological spookiness. And of all the cliffhangered endings, ‘Repetitions’ isn’t where it’s punchiest but it’s where the build-up seems to click with definite ease.

‘Dark Play’ then is a collection that’s worth your time. One that you might have to read multiple times to see all the layers that Cooke is manipulating as it’s easy to miss the more poignant plucks of the heartstrings, yet that’s also one of its greatest assets since that consideration and skill bleeds through onto almost every page. For all that it may not be the most bombastic collection or the most grandiloquent display of weirdness, as a short, sharp rise in your adrenaline or a reason to keep one extra light on at night, it’s certainly one of the better entries.

Dark Play by Tim Cooke

Dark Play by Tim Cooke

Dark Play is a collection of short stories about a father and daughter living in an isolated farmhouse on the side of a mountain. The daughter has developed an intense form of imaginative play that seems to connect her to the surrounding landscape, a place with a history of hardship and violence, where the past leaks into the present.

Tim Cooke’s stories bleed originality. They are eye-opening, distinctive and often absurd, and they continue to surprise and delight. – Lucie McKnight Hardy

Tim Cooke writes exemplary and thrilling modern weird. His stories of things half-glimpsed, of bad memories painfully resurfacing, leave an indelible and disturbing mark. – Gary Budden

74pp


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  • Benjamin Kurt Unsworth

    Currently studying Latin, Ancient Greek, and Ancient Classical History at Newcastle University (because his obsessive love of Doctor Who and horror films wasn’t nerdy enough), Ben writes short stories and reviews for various outlets, drinks copious cups of tea, loves knitting, and buys far too many waistcoats and velvet jackets.

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