Read This: Phantom Constellations

Phantom Constellations, Daniel Braum’s recent collection, is a stellar exploration of grief, doubt, and loss seen through the lens of the weird. Braum is a master of subtle and unsettling storytelling. His stories here are full of wistfulness, regret, and nostalgia, of common experiences laced with ghosts and faulty memories, of the unknowable and inexplicable pieces of our lives. He takes us from the haunted western desert to the sacred jungles of Belize to the familiar, complicated suburban streets of Brooklyn and Long Island. The strangeness floats just beneath the surface, emerging as his characters try to make sense of things, and steers their decisions to places they never thought they would have to go.

It is resonant stuff, wonderfully told.

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My favorites from the fourteen stories in the collection are:

“Above the Buried City” –a detective is haunted by the woman he loved, the man who killed her, and the ancient, bloody past they both worked to unearth.  

“A Loch Ness Monster Under the Light of the Southern Cross” –a chance encounter opens up old family wounds and brings back monsters long consigned to legend.   

“Tiki Bar at the Edge of Forever” –teenagers on the cusp of graduation make dangerous choices and keep life-altering secrets.  

“Phantom Constellations” –the bittersweet struggles of a a man facing down addiction, regret, and the memories of those he has betrayed.  

“The Exorcist’s Red-Haired Daughter” –a very weird, very tight take on the idea of ‘you can’t go home again’.  

“The Ghost With My Father’s Coin”–a sweet, surreal trip through the narrator’s memories that revisits characters we have met in other tales.

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This is a contemplative collection, focused on troubled interior lives as much as bloody external horrors, disturbing and sad in equal measure. So if you like your monsters strange, intimate, and quiet, Braum’s Phantom Constellations is one to read. 

I recommend it highly.