Novella Review: Death Leaves and Echo

It’s funny, one of the first Charles de Lint books I ever purchased (my wife had read most of them years before me, but did it by using our public library), was pretty much an accident.

Café Purgatorium is a collection of three horror novellas by Dana Anderson, Ray Garton, and Mr. de Lint, which I originally picked up as I’m a fan of horror short-story collections. It then sat on my “To Be Read” shelf for years while I moved through other titles and it was only when looking through Charles de Lint’s website when I saw the cover and thought “Hey, don’t I already own this?” and tracked it down.

The novella begins with a terrifying concept; what if you woke up one morning and found you were no longer together with your spouse? And worse, what if you although you remembered your entire relationship, it appears as if they never existed at all?

The story had a really creepy “Twilight Zone” meets Phillip K. Dick sort of feel to it, and although I won’t give spoilers, it was definitely worth a look. As I’ve found with his other entries into the horror field, Charles de Lint can deliver the creepy just as effectively as he can the awe and wonder that exists in his fantasy fiction.