Review: Jitters by Chris Harmon

Sampling from the truly strange world of Chris Harmon’s imagination, Jitters is an aptly named spook-fest of tales from a promising young writer.

A scary series of gritty snapshots and long-form stories, this is a collection that feels like it could be read around a campfire. From zombies in the basement and ravenous tigers to dangerously depressed wizards and cannibalistic substitute teachers, these fast-moving stories take childhood fears and blow them into extraordinary and entertaining proportions.

The frustrations, irritations, stressors, and paranoid delusions of teenagers are on proud display, along with a dastardly catalog of axe murderers, aliens, terrifying ice sculptures, sinister bus drivers, annoying little sisters, and more. While many of the stories have a matter-of-fact cadence and reliable twist endings, there are also clever contemporary nuggets in this work of Gen-Z horror.

Some of the pieces dig deep into mature or complex themes, which may not be what you expect from this sort of horror-heavy, jump-scare collection. The opening story tackles unaddressed anger issues and misdirected emotions, underneath the guise of a horror movie come to life for two young siblings. “The New Teacher” may have a child-gobbling monster as the central villain, but the truly evil parts of the story relate to bullying, negative self-talk, fat shaming, and verbal abuse.

“The Very Scary Game” reads like Jumanji with a spooky twist, but it’s also an allegorical exploration of growing up, and the pain of leaving innocence behind. Certain stories land better than others – “Aliens in My Backyard” doesn’t seem to have much of a take-home lesson, and the plot leaps around in disjointed chunks, ending with the main character wanting to cash in on his adventure. There are also some surprisingly graphic sequences of language and violence that may raise the eyebrows of certain readers, especially parents.

While this dark carnival of stories might be entertaining for YA readers, the quality of the writing is still lacking in some places, even with a younger target audience. The narration tends to be very declarative, with choppy sentences that fail to build tension through creative syntax or original descriptions. In a collection of spooky tales, there needs to be a growing atmosphere of tension or terror, and the storytelling doesn’t always hit the mark. There is also a tendency to tell, rather than show, particularly when it comes to characters experiencing heightened emotions.

From a purely editorial standpoint, there are also quite a few sloppy grammatical and formatting errors that should have been caught by even a cursory proofread. Tense and character inconsistencies are also present, and capitalization is relied on too heavily for accenting emotion. The bones of a strong collection are here, and the writer’s passion for storytelling is manifest, but an experienced editor could do wonders for the prose.

Those pieces of critique aside, as a young author boldly curating his first short story collection, this is an impressive achievement, and hopefully just the beginning of a much longer career.