All the Hidden Places by Cadwell Turnbull

Eighteen stories. Unseen places that lie just within, beneath, beyond our reality.

A father and daughter traverse postapocalyptic America seeking safe haven and the truth about why the world ended. Three siblings write intimate letters as their society slips ever deeper into dystopia. On an island where locals use cooperative AI to survive hurricanes, a journalist returns home to cover their story and reconnect with her past. A wayward god sets out to find the source of all gods. But can they survive to tell the tale? After a whimsical attempt to teleport proves successful, a couple finds that their conflicting feelings about the event are threatening their marriage. In a world where multiple souls can inhabit the same body, a recovering addict confronts his family about a terrible secret. A monster who lives on human blood finds her undoing in the loneliness she carries within her heart.

In his debut collection, acclaimed novelist Cadwell Turnbull takes readers across an omniverse of monsters, gods, and people, all trying to make peace with the parts of themselves they don't want others to see. Until they are forced to face all their hidden places.

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Eighteen stories about the strange places just beyond the edge of what we understand.

✶ PRE-READING ✶

Short story collections are always a bit of a gamble. Even when the stories share a theme or atmosphere, you're inevitably going to connect with some more strongly than others.

All the Hidden Places particularly appealed to me because of its range. These are speculative stories that move between fantasy, science fiction, dystopia and the downright strange, all connected by the idea of things existing just beyond what we can see or understand.

✶ POST-READING ✶

As I thought... there is an impressive amount of variety here.

Eighteen stories is a lot of opportunities to do something different, and Turnbull takes them. There are monsters and gods, post-apocalyptic journeys, strange technologies, altered realities, family secrets and people trying to understand the worlds - and sometimes the bodies - they find themselves inhabiting.

Writing a short story well is difficult. There isn't much space to establish a world, introduce characters, create a conflict and then leave the reader somewhere satisfying, and I was impressed by how often these stories manage to do exactly that.

It surprised me by... how much I came to appreciate the stories that didn't explain themselves.

There were definitely pieces where I found myself thinking, wait, what exactly happened there? And occasionally I would have liked a little more clarity.

But ultimately, I think that uncertainty works in the collection's favour.

These are stories about things that exist just beyond the edges of our understanding. Giving us a neat explanation for every strange event would sometimes make them less interesting. Speculative fiction doesn't always need to tell us exactly how something works; sometimes it's more satisfying to simply accept that this is the reality we're visiting and see what the characters do with it.

Taken together, the stories create a wonderfully varied collection about people confronting the parts of themselves and their worlds that they'd rather keep hidden.

I wouldn't rush to read it again immediately - I think I'd want to let some of these stories settle first - but I can absolutely see myself picking it up again in the future.

✦ RECOMMENDATIONS ✦

Book Recommendation: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, for another collection where speculative ideas become a way of exploring much more human fears and experiences.

TV or Movie Recommendation: Black Mirror. The stories vary considerably, but there's a similar interest in taking one strange idea and using it to expose something uncomfortable about people.

✧ VIBE CHECK ✧

A colour palette: midnight blue, bruised purple, smoky grey and the occasional impossible flash of colour.

A soundtrack: ambient electronic music with distant voices and sounds that you can't quite identify.

A season: late autumn, when the familiar world is still there but somehow feels slightly altered.

A mood: uncanny, curious, melancholy and quietly unsettling.

A scent: damp earth, old paper and rain coming through an open window.

A texture: the feeling of reaching into a dark cupboard and finding something you don't remember putting there.

Final Thoughts

All the Hidden Places publishes on the 1st of September. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.