Title: Great Blue Heron
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
In: Black Feathers (Ellen Datlow)
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Death, Horror, Mental health
Dates read: 30th January 2019
Pace: Slow
Format: Short story
Publisher: Pegasus Books Ltd.
Year: 2017
5th sentence, 74th page: The wife is shivering, her feet are getting wet, she would like to turn back but the husband presses forward, he has something to show her.

The Wife is mourning the loss of her husband. The Wife keeps on remembering moments together and seeing a Great Blue Heron flying free. As her grief and love for the birds collide, there is no telling what will happen next.

This story had my heart racing. Something about the pace of it and the way in which it was written felt like an intense horror story. That, and the setting is based around a lake with overcast days… the perfect setting for a horror story and a horrific murder if I ever did hear one.

This is the fourth story in this series of bird-based horrors (I never knew that there was such a thing, or that it could be this TRULY scary… but I digress). And it is the second story that has an essence of grief and loss in its heart. This feeling of loss and grief is intense and the slightly broken way in which this story is told really drives this idea home. There is an almost ethereal quality to the storyline which makes it both solidly real and wispily dreamlike.

<- Something About Birds Review

The Season of the Raptors Review ->

Image source: Amazon