My Two Cents (Book Review): PREPARE THE COFFIN by Cassandra O'Sullivan Sachar

"Prepare the Coffin: Tales of the Macabre" is a collection of dark vignettes featuring the lives and untimely deaths of various people from the idyllic town of Blackthorn, Pennsylvania. The book opens with an introduction to one of Blackthorn's more noteworthy residents, Death Herself, and sets the stage for the colorful cast of characters who follow, and all the grim, gruesome, and grisly ways in which they ultimately meet their respective demises.

Though each story is brief, Sachar does a fantastic job of fully developing each and every one, so that by the time the ax falls (or one of any number of creative, strange, and violent death scenarios), the reader is fully immersed and invested. We may not always like these unlucky folks, but we get to know them well nonetheless.

I've read and enjoyed longer works by Sachar, but she really seems in her element with short pieces like this. Each vignette is well-crafted and well-paced, and each is completely different from the other. In her afterword, she explains not all of these were originally written to be part of this compilation, which is surprising because they all fit together perfectly, as if crafted to complement each other, and come together in a cohesive whole.

My favorites were:

1. "Deserted," in which an over-eager American tourist finds herself stranded in the Egyptian desert, on her own against extreme elements, when her camel tour of the Great Pyramids goes horribly awry.

2. "Your Eyes," in which a jilted lover devises a ghoulish way to keep her beloved with her all the time.

3. "Thou Shalt Not Covet," which I thought was the best of the bunch, about a conniving young woman who plots to steal her roommate's boyfriend. Her plan goes off without a hitch, at least until her roommate, a practicing witch, discovers the ruse and plots her revenge.

4. "Overboard," in which a gullible young college student realizes her professor, who is also her lover, is neither the man she wants him to be, nor the one she deserves.

While there were a few gory moments, Sachar's greatest skill is building a creeping, ongoing sense of dread, which pervades every story in her collection. From out of the gate, you know things aren't going to end well for each of the main characters to whom we're introduced, but Sachar is skilled and inventive enough to make the trip to the end worth the read. This was dark, twisted fun. Definitely recommended!

"Prepare the Coffin: Tales of the Macabre" is available here.