Reality and other stories
(Book)

Lanchester follows his dystopian novel, The Wall (2019), with eight gothic tales in which he continues to play with genre forms. Like Jennifer Egan in The Keep (2006), Lanchester explores the spectral nature of the digital world. The stories constantly allude to gothic classics by Poe, Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Henry James, and are often set in typical gothic locations--a secluded country house in "Signal," Romania in "Coffin Liquor," and a prison in "Which of These Would You Like?" But Lanchester uses gothic tropes and settings to explore contemporary concerns. "Cold Call" explores the ubiquity of connectivity, and in "We Happy Few," academic pontificating about social media becomes a wonderfully provocative exploration of what is real. The finest tale of the collection is the title story, "Reality," a twist on Sartre's No Exit in which a reality TV show is the setting for a gloriously haunting depiction of the psychological effects of constantly being viewed.