Looking at the World with Broken Glass in My Eye

“With Looking at the World with Broken Glass in My Eye, Mark Justice has given us a genuine gift; by turns funny, horrifying, heartbreaking, and just plain weird, this is a real showcase collection, and a feast for readers. You never know from one tale to the next what he’s going to hit you with, and it’s that very unpredictability that makes this book so much more than the mere sum of its often-brilliant parts. Justice has a keen and unflinching eye for the telling details of human (and un-human) behavior, and a poet’s economy with words. There is not a wasted syllable to be found between these covers, and at times I felt as if I were being given a writing lesson. I cannot imagine anyone reading powerhouse stories such as “Black Wings” and the hands-down masterpiece “Father’s Day” without feeling envious that they didn’t write them. I expected this collection to be good; I didn’t expect it to knock my socks off and leave me so wrung out. This is what short fiction should be but too often isn’t. If you don’t get this collection, your life is going to be all the poorer for it — and I’ve never said that about a book before.” — Gary A. Braunbeck, winner of the Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award, and author of To Each Their Darkness and A Cracked and Broken Path