A Natural History of Hell: Stories (Paperback)

Staff Reviews

Because I am as capracious, superstitious, and conceited in my reading habits as any other book lover
worthy of the name, I like it best when I come upon an author who has just written a shatteringly good
first book. It gives me a feeling like I've discovered someone special in a world of crank turners and
people everyone already knows are special. When I find myself reading a new book by an author with a
body of work that is already respectably large- more than two and less than twenty is my general rule of
thumb for defining such respectability as I write this; any less would constitute a discovery and any more
would constitute either an epic career in letters or indicate, as the protagonist poetess in one of the stories
included in the collection currently being reviewed puts so eloquently, “'The man's pen has dysentery'”- I
feel obligated to then go back an read everything said author has done in the past if I like the book or to
wonder bitterly how the producers of dreck remain so often and so well employed if I don't. Either thing
can be a chore or a pleasure. Either thing can be and most often is both at the same time.
Will it be a chore and a pleasure to go back and read the work Jeffery Ford produced before “A Natural
History of Hell?” I do not know, but, based on the fine quality of the stories in the collection, I doubt it.
Some things are pure pleasure. Some things, even if we tell ourselves they are for our intelectual
betterment and the expansion of our literary acumen, transcend work and soar to the heights of fun.
Reading “A Natural History of Hell” is, in short, transcendent and a hell of a lot of fun. Indeed, the stories
collected here more often soar than not. My favorite story in the collection involves a swindling Victorian
industrialist whose comeuppance is visited upon him by fairies, but all are highly entertaining. One even
takes place in my home state of Ohio and it is yet another proof that New England isn't the only most
haunted place in America. There are a great many ghosts on the Great Planes, it seems. And why
shouldn't there be? We've got the room, after all, and I welcome Jimmy Tooth of Ford's story “The
Thyme Fiend” to the fraternity of specters that haunt the corners of my vision on dark and stormy nights.
Thank you to the author and to Small Beer Press for all the good work. I must now read all of Jeffery
Ford's books that I can find. I look forward to the task. Once you've read “A Natural History of Hell” and
thoroughly enjoy it, as I did and I hope you will, dear reader, I just bet you'll have the same task to look
forward to too. Have fun.