Therapeutic Tales - R. Ostermeier

Therapeutic Tales by R. Ostermeier / ISBN 9781739733926 / 203-page paperback with flaps, published in 2023 by Broodcomb Press

From my first batch of books from Broodcomb Press, a UK publisher specializing in weird fiction and beyond: "Encompassing poetry, strange tales and experimental fiction, Broodcomb Press is a home for the writing that belongs here: disquieting truths about the region ("the peninsula") – tales both eerie and shocking – together with exploring the fantastic/everyday meaning of what it means to be human."

***

“—it was then Doktor Gaitskill asked me the question that led to this book. Are we stranger than people elsewhere?

I don’t recall my answer in detail, but in general the answer was, Yes. The peninsula was welcoming to the unusual, and there existed a fighty acceptance here of lived realities that places elsewhere would consider either unscientific or folkloric—.”

R. Ostermeier’s new collection of tales revisits peninsular folklore and history through the lens of psychotherapy, and includes the deeply unsettling Rubby and the existential dread of The Shop. Therapeutic Tales also contains the eerie novella The Ulfsson Chapel, together with Skin-and-grief, first published as part of the Doomed House of Abraxas series by Mount Abraxas Press.