Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels Floating Staircase, Snow, The Ascent, and several others. Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi’s dark fiction has gained acceptance among readers of all genres. He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay where he is at work on his next book.
A Shrill Keening by Ronald Malfi
A Shrill Keening opens with a first person narrator telling us about the books in his hospital room, and expanding from there to tell us about the hospital’s library and librarian. It is only when he notes that the list of requested books he hands to the librarian is written in crayon that the reader realizes the nature of the hospital: it is a mental institution. But the reader must also wonder: why is a mental institution catering to a patient’s request for books by and about H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe?
The nature of the narrator’s malady becomes evident when he states that he does not know which part of his life is real and which part he is dreaming. His therapist attempts — poorly — to convince him that his particular form of solipsism, in which he imagines that the therapist blinks out of existence as soon as they part; but the narrator conti... Read More
