Adrian Van Young beckons readers further into the shifting borderlands of the Gothic and uncanny in his second collection, Midnight Self. Space colonists menaced by a grotesque alien creature adapt a grim charter to ensure their survival. An exhausted new mother makes an uneasy discovery when her baby monitor' s signal gets crossed with another. An heiress imprisoned in a labyrinth of her own making is forced into an obliterating confrontation with grief. A carnivorous car lot tube man terrorizes a gang of transphobic bullies. An army nurse discovers that war' s terrors still hound her in new, chilling forms. Written in the tradition of Angela Carter, George Saunders and Mariana Enriquez, Midnight Self explores the dissociation of being human and the humanity of being monstrous.
