Invisible Fences
Invisible Fences
by Norman Prentiss
Cemetery Dance Publications
Coming 2008
Do you see the point of the story, Nathan? We all cut parts of ourselves away, but we never lose them. Things stay with us—souvenirs with memories attached. We can't always choose what to keep, what to throw away.
Nathan’s parents devised cautionary tales for him and his sister—gruesome stories about predatory cars racing along the “Big Street” at one end of their neighborhood, or dope fiends lurking in the woods behind their house and ready to plunge hypodermics into the skin of foolish young trespassers. These stories served their purpose during Nathan’s gullible childhood, essentially constructing an invisible fence around the yard and keeping the boy close to home where he’d be safe.
Such barriers are not so easy to discard in later life. As an adult, Nathan no longer believes his parents’ stories, and yet they still confine him. He lives cautiously, avoiding serious relationships, avoiding risk. But despite his efforts, something from his parents’ cautionary tales threatens to creep beneath that invisible border…and the enclosed yard might not be as safe and secure as it always seemed…
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A sample of one of Keith Minnion's internal illustrations from Invisible Fences. |
Photo: David Niall Wilson |
Reviews
“Cemetery Dance's short novel program yields another gem with this sobering story about the imaginary barriers of fear we place around our life circumstances as we grow up… Carefully crafted prose… a lucid reflection on life's inevitable burden of fear and fractured memory.”
—Booklist
“Beautiful, creepy, and haunting. A dark literary gem from an exciting new voice in the horror field.”
—Douglas Clegg, New York Times bestselling author
“I read Invisible Fences in one sitting while waiting for a power outage to end: I had a flashlight parked on my shoulder and when, a few hours later, I was finished reading, the flashlight was all but dead, the power outage was still underway, and I was smiling. Norman Prentiss’s first book is wonderfully engaging, beautifully written, refreshingly surprising and completely unputdownable. If you were once a child, if you have secrets you’ve never told anyone (perhaps even yourself), or, hell, even if you don’t have such truly secret secrets, and if you value writing that’s crisp and confident and, often, brilliant, you will also be pulled into Invisible Fences—power outage or not.”
—T.M. Wright, author of A Manhattan Ghost Story and The Eyes of the Carp
“Norman Prentiss writes with subtle power. He resonates well with the quiet horror of Charles Grant, and the nostalgic terror of Bradbury."
—Thomas F. Monteleone, author of Stoker-award winning Fearful Symmetries and The Blood of the Lamb
“Beautifully composed and rich in symbolism, Invisible Fences leaves
the reader considering the boundaries—safe and not so safe—that we
impose upon ourselves…and on others. Prentiss's story will be
talked about for years."
—Tim Lebbon, author of Fallen and Bar None
“With Invisible Fences, Norman Prentiss has created a poignant, heartbreaking and deeply unsettling story about the most terrifying ghost of them all: memory. It’s a startlingly effective and intelligently written novella that forces us to look at the many ways in which we favor self-deception as a means of avoiding the ugly truth about ourselves, and also perfectly illustrates the sad and inevitable divide that time opens between children and adults. A wonderful piece of work from an immensely talented author.”
—Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Currency of Souls, Midlisters, and The Turtle Boy
“Eerie, haunting, tragic, poignant—Invisible Fences is all of this and more. Simply put, Norman Prentiss has written one of the best novellas I’ve read in a long, long time. A fantastic debut.”
—James Newman, author of Midnight Rain, The Wicked, and Animosity
“For a first time out of the gate performance, this book is remarkable… I would suggest that when this short book comes out from Cemetery Dance this year, you grab a copy—maybe grab two and put one away. I will almost guarantee you’ll be seeing a lot more by Mr. Prentiss in the years to come, and it’s always nice to get in on a good thing from the beginning.”
—David Niall Wilson, Macabre Ink Reviews
“Norman Prentiss is a multi-faceted writer and Invisible Fences is a multi-faceted work of fiction. Part nostalgic coming of age saga, part ghost story, part psychological puzzle, part metaphorical fantasy…I sincerely believe that it will be one of the most talked about—and critically praised—books in the horror field.”
—Mark Sieber, Horror Drive-In
“Prentiss handles a story that could have been melodramatic or slight
and instead infuses it with a quiet dignity and an admirable style. If
you're missing the work of the late Charles E. Grant, you'll find what
you're looking for here.”
—Richard Dansky, The Green Man Review
