Introduction by Laird Barron.
Death and pleasure. Freud's Todestrieb, his statement that
''libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous, and
it fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent
outwards... The instinct is then called the destructive instinct, the
instinct for mastery, or the will to power.'' Few authors have spun
stories of Thanatos and Eros as skillfully and powerfully as Livia
Llewellyn.
In his introduction to this volume, Laird Barron writes
''Scant difference exists between exquisite pleasure and pain.'' An
orphan girl with a mind for anthracite falls into the hands of a cult
worshipping an entombed god. In the Pacific Northwest, evergreens lull
prepubescent girls into their trunks to serve as wombs. A suburban
housewife troubled by her present encounters the sixteen year-old girl
she ached to touch in her dreams. These ten stories promise to indulge a reader's sensibilities, their fears and desires.
Contents:
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Love, Sex, and the Heat Death of the Universe by Laird Barron
- Horses
- At the Edge of Ellensburg
- Teslated Salihan Evergreen
- The Engine of Desire
- Jetsam
- The Four Hundred Thousand
- Brimstone Orange
- Take Your Daughter to Work
- Omphalos
- Her Deepness
- About the Author
