The Measure of Sorrow

Praise for The Measure of Sorrow“An active, lucid, melancholy voice, telling us tales of the natural unnatural world—J. Ashley-Smith’s The Measure of Sorrow is half love, half fear, and all wonder.”—Kathe Koja, author of Dark Factory and The Cipher“The impeccable and haunting stories in The Measure of Sorrow are filled with longing, frailty, and a most human sense of awe in the face of their horrors.”—Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts“The Measure of Sorrow could not bear a better title. This collection plumbs the depths of our darkest emotional states—grief, shame, madness, terror—and renders them with exquisite sensitivity and candor. There is both strength and vulnerability in these tales, and in the characters that find their way through them (or not), laced with a surreal strain of cosmic horror that J. Ashley-Smith truly makes his own. They are sure to linger with you for quite a while, these stories. If you’re lucky, they may even leave a scar.”—Kirstyn McDermott, author of Hard Places“J. Ashley-Smith writes stories like five course meals: rich, complex, satisfying. In his work, betrayal, grief, and sorrow bleed into and blend with situations ominous and surreal. There are echoes of Kafka, here, and Aickman, too, but the achievement is all J. Ashley-Smith’s. The Measure of Sorrow gives measure of his talent, and that is considerable.”—John Langan, author of Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies“The exquisiteness and gentleness with which J. Ashley-Smith swathes his darkest stories, entangled in the cornerstones of serrated humanity, leave you fact checking everything you thought you believed. The theme story ‘The Measure of Sorrow’ is literary horror that taps on angst—a father’s craving for his dead wife and pining to assuage his son’s lostness—to spill out the guts of a luminescent magnetar in animated doom. The juxtaposition of opalescence and gloom in deeply-etched longing and need echo in ink until you forget, and forget, that what you’re reading is horror, until—too late—it masticates you alive. For lovers of elegant literary horror.”—Eugen Bacon, World Fantasy Finalist and award-winning author of Danged Black Thing, Mage of Fools and Chasing Whispers“The soil of these stories is sown with the salt of night-sweat and grief-tears, and what it grows is resplendent in weird, wonderful riches. Bring home The Measure of Sorrow, let it take root in the grounds you walk alone, and cherish the bittersweet fruits of its seductive terrors for years to come.”—Matthew R. Davis, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Midnight in the Chapel of Love“The Measure of Sorrow is a beautiful, deeply unsettling collection that explores the horror and the mystery of what it is to be human. Heartbreaking at times and raw, these stories always feel immensely true, no matter how fantastical they seem. Ashley-Smith has a talent for creating worlds that are hauntingly familiar, echoes of our own edged with a darkness that we can only hope isn’t real.”—Joanne Anderton, author of The Art of Broken Things(Starred review) “The debut collection from Ashley-Smith (Ariadne, I Love You) proves that he can pack just as much of a punch in short horror fiction as in his Shirley Jackson Award–winning longer work. . . . For lovers of voicey, elegant prose that lingers for days in the corners of the mind, this is highly recommended.”—Publishers Weekly Magazine“Readers who are comfortable with ambiguity will enjoy these finely crafted, Australia-set short stories.”—Booklist Magazine“The Measure of Sorrow is beautiful in a way unique to J Ashley-Smith, who is capable of turning doom and glumness into the kind of entrancing text that you read and would jump off a cliff, if it weren’t so pretty . . . alive with touch, sound, smell, taste, and a throbbing of the looming otherworld at the edge of your vision . . . For lovers of elegant literary horror.”—Aurealis MagazinePraise for The Attic Tragedy“Ashley-Smith debuts with a gorgeous, melancholy coming-of-age novella about girlhood and ghosts. . . . This eerie, ethereal tale marks Ashley-Smith as a writer to watch.”—Publishers Weekly“A beautifully written book about desire, pain, and loss, haunted by glimmerings of the supernatural. The Attic Tragedy manages to do more by intimation and suggestion with its fifty-three pages than most novels manage to accomplish over their several hundred.”—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World“J.Ashley-Smith doesn’t put a foot wrong in this chilling, devastating story. The Attic Tragedy is hard to read in the best possible way.”—Kaaron Warren, award-winning author ofInto Bones Like Oil and Tide of Stone“J. Ashley-Smith’s stunning The Attic Tragedy follows the friendship between two young outcasts, Sylvie and George, as they navigate the treacherous years of high school and after. With piercing, clear-eyed sympathy, Ashley-Smith depicts a relationship centered on the secrets of the living and the dead. Sylvie knows and voices the histories of the spirits attached to the objects in her father’s antique shop; George wrestles with the emotions raging within her and which find their outlet on her skin. Acutely observed, frequently surprising, this is fiction of the highest order.”—John Langan, author of Children of the Fangand Other Genealogies “Lyrical and melancholy, The Attic Tragedy is a dark and poignant study of what it means to love and to be loved, to lose and to be lost. Ashley-Smith conjures a compelling, haunting tale that will stay with you like a ghost long after the last page is read.”—Alan Baxter, award-winning author of Devouring Darkand Served Cold“The Attic Tragedy is full of heart and darkness, both endearing and terrifying. These pages open like a raw wound. You don’t read this story. It bleeds into you, and it leaves a scar on the way in.”—Sarah Read, Bram Stoker Award-winning author ofThe Bone Weaver’s Orchard and Out of Water“J. Ashley-Smith proves himself an elemental writer of great talent. Emotions are bushfires. Foggy mountains shadow streets where violence festers. Dust, the microbes of otherness, settle over empty rooms that are never as empty as you think they are. . . . A moody, melancholic read