Blind Voices

Blind Voices by Tom Reamy

Reviewed by Peter Coleborn

“In that long-ago summer afternoon in southern Kansas, when the warm air lay like a weight, unmoving and stifling, six horse-drawn circus wagons moved ponderously on the dusty road.”

1930s Small Town America. It’s summer – it’s hot, dry and so hot. Into this town the freak show arrives, enticing residents to become voyeurs for an evening, to view the Snake Queen, the Medusa, the Minotaur, Tiny Tim, and Angel, the Magic Boy. With this kind of set up you’d expect things to go wrong – and they do. A teenage girl is raped and murdered, and further deaths soon follow.

Blind Voices will obviously draw comparisons with Ray Bradbury, especially with the latter’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. This is a compliment. Reamy has – had – a poetic voice so reminiscent of Bradbury. Reamy’s characters, from the young Finny to the older – much older – freak show host, both male and female, are alive. They feel real. Their motives feel real. The early 1930s was a time of depression, of abject poverty and Tom Reamy expertly captures this, the despair of the poor townsfolk.

Tom Reamy died in 1977 at the criminally young age of 42. Blind Voices, first published in 1978, was his only novel, following a wealth of excellent short stories. Most of these tales – if not all – were published in the collection San Diego Lightfoot Sue. He also earned the accolade from the likes of Harlan Ellison – ergo, Reamy was no mean shakes.

 

Blind Voices was recently republished by PS Publishing in a limited, slip-cased edition, which comes with a suitably apt cover by Chris Roberts. If you can afford the £50 for this edition, do go and buy a copy. Otherwise scour the web for cheaper editions – whatever you do, get and read this novel.