The Lost Memories of Freddy Frehling by James Newman
In Your Face Books (January 2020)
32 pages; $0.99 e-book
Reviewed by Sadie “Mother Horror”Hartmann
It’s tricky to review a short story of just thirty-two pages. My primary objectives here are to make readers aware of this title, and to praise the work of James Newman.
The Lost Memories of Freddy Frehling is a story about the feelings adult children have for their parents.
When we’re young, we all see our parents through the same lens of immaturity due to our inexperience with the world and the context of our dependency on them for everything. As we grow and begin to gain our independence in various ways, our relationship with our parents is in a constant state of evolution and transition. Ultimately, we all face the same fate: Caring for our ailing parents and assuming the awkward role reversal where they become dependent on us.
James Newman tackles this season of life with an emotional tenderness that I have come to love about his writing. But this isn’t some sad, sappy contemporary story for a women’s knitting circle. The tale of Freddy Frehling is told by one of the industry’s best character-driven horror writers. It’s unique, imaginative, and memorable; proving that in the hands of a talented storyteller, thirty-two pages is all that’s needed to make that leap from the page straight into the reader’s heart. It’s Newman’s superpower.
