What do a blogger selling hate culture, an ominous refrigerated U-Haul, a mysterious iPhone e-mail and a bunch of "googly eyes" have in common?
This book, that's what. A collection of short stories, For Those With Eyes to See spans the spectrum of the bizarre, worrisome and horrifying. While a lot of similar anthologies suffer from obvious "weak points," stories that either don't fit the overall tone or that are somehow inferior to the others, Blackford's collection seems to suffer from no such weakness; each tale serves as a quick read, often with an O. Henry punch at the end, and keeps you hungry for more without feeling incomplete. Each piece has something to recommend it, whether it be the eventual fate of the almost-too-nice crafter who just wanted some eyes for her stuffed animals in the titular tale or the sudden reversal and light of hope found in 'Now for the Sunbeams.'
The language is clear and well-written, having a knack for finding just the right word without needless excursions to the thesaurus or dictionary. (the singular exception being 'All in Your Head' and it's use of otolaryngological... but given the context and the way it's used, we'll give that one a pass.) The characters are entertaining and well fleshed out given the truncated word count, and each of them are entertaining in their own way (my favorite being Paul Whirlpool from 'That's When You Know You're Doing Something Right'), with a unique voice and feel to them that sometimes evades short fiction.
If you have a taste for the weird, miss the days when short fiction was common and collections were the norm (especially those who enjoyed Barker's In The Flesh or King's Night Shift) then this book is probably worth a look. If you don't feel like reading it in order (which you should, because they're all great and I thought the order of placement was part of the fun), I at the very least advise you to check out 'That's When You Know You're Doing Something Right,' 'Such A Good Idea,' and 'Monday Morning,' which were my personal favorites.
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