Recidivist

    (La Mano, 2005)
™ and ©2005 Zak Sally La Mano

Esoteric in its execution, yet thoroughly comprehensible, Zak Sally’s tiny hardcover is an excellent piece of creepy. For all its bizarre, often unexplained situations, there remain personalities recognizable from our daily lives.

There’s a beautiful streak of heartlessness running through the characters in these stories, who leave the people depending on them adrift. Sally is good at putting fear and revulsion into his readers, and then swapping it for awfully human sadness. Amid these stories of prisoners, patients and poetry, the spookiest tale is “The Great Healing,” a haunting plea for return that should move anyone who’s ever cared for another human being.

— Brendan McGinley
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