81 Nightmares

by Mark William Lindberg

Immerse yourself in the dreamlife of Jay as they navigate hospital hallways and forest paths, process traumatic events and unearth buried memories, as they confront a nemesis that emerges out of their unrelenting stream of nightmares, a disgusting horror they can only call "the monstrosity."

Emerging queer author Mark William Lindberg presents a unique debut novel that walks us into the dark depths of a sleeping psyche.

Genres: Transgender

136 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 27, 2015

About the author

Mark William Lindberg is a queer author, artist, performer, and educator living with a man and a dog in Queens, NY.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not happy. I scream at it. I scream. I don’t want to look at it but it’s too disgusting too fascinating, I can’t look away, I just scream while I look.


Some weeks ago, I read this interview with the author, and, wow, this kinda made me want to read all his books. I'm going to break rules. I'm going to try new things. I'm going to approach my work with an open mind and an open heart, and I'd love a reader who can do the same!


I just woke up from 81 Nightmares and phew… I’m dazed. Just like after a nightmare, I barely know what I dreamed, only some parts stay in focus, and I’m glad it’s over. The magician wags a finger at me as if to say no no no, don’t relax just yet, it isn’t over.

81 Nightmares consists of 82 chapters, dreams, each different, yet connected, telling a nightmare. I make a turn another turn another turn, I drive aimlessly drive in circles looking around town.


:) You might not guess right, but I do recommend this book. It’s extraordinary, and if you’re a reader with an open mind and an open heart, you might want to check it out. I’d say that Mark’s other book, Queer on a Bench is a better starting point into his work, though, because it’s easier, kinder.

Everything in the dream has a source.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his first novel Mark William Lindberg creates a terrifying world of nightmares in eighty-one chapters, each building upon a cyclical and structurally complicated foundation of fear and drastic confounding imagery. The piece seems to arise from a bedrock of binary identities - the sun and the moon, the living and dead, the male and the female - and explodes it into a gory pile of meat strewn down hospital hallways, through dark forest floors, and vaporized in the obliteration of society, its structure, and its interpretation.

There are two incredibly impressive aspects of this work...

One is the quick and brutal imagery of the piece, hammering the reader in a David Lynch nightmare of flickering lights, ominous figures, empty hallways, and the terrifying line between safety and murder. Each chapter opens another door of terror, and we are taken on a walking tour of his settings to see and experience the nightmares in much the way that fully immersive theater pieces like ART/Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More pull you through a gory room-to-room nightmare. We are pulled through the empty hallways of Lindberg’s piece to see stifling image after image after image flicker past us. We might not feel as if we are in danger, and yet we would like nothing more than to run for our lives and hold our loved ones close. Sometimes we can’t as we realize we have been pulled in to experience a feedback loop of terror and gore.

The second, and perhaps the most difficult to pull off as well as it was, is Lindberg’s prose. It hammers through a stream of consciousness that allows us to experience the narrator’s eighty-one dreams. Lindberg breaks down the fourth wall at least once a chapter by clear-cutting through grammar that might stand in the way or breaking us through the narrative floor altogether and immediately falling into the next room of his making without notice.

Lindberg also manages to make some incredibly deep statements about gender, relationships, sexuality, and family - some of which are clearly symbolized through the horror, confusion, meat, and body parts of our narrator’s dreams. It is progressive horror, and leaves many of the books in the dust that are grouped in the queer-horror genre.

81 Nightmares is an incredible Grand Guinol of terrifying images that has been masterfully executed in a gory slim volume by a very promising first time writer. Extremely interested to keep an eye on his career.

[Antonella · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
Original idea, and that's why I rounded up. Still, the result wasn't convincing for me. The violent attack on the narrator Jay comes back again and again, this is disturbing, and this effect is sought by the author, but in the end it is too repetitive.