You’re Only As Happy As Your Saddest Child by R. Ostermeier

R. Ostermeier, You’re Only As Happy As Your Saddest Child, Hardback 306 pp.

“The magician is led to a bare room deep in the great house, black curtains lining the walls. Miss Watts has called it the Theatre Room. By now, his trouser and jacket cuffs are sealed tight so he has no access to the tools of his trade – the spring-loaded card mounts, the picks taped to his inner forearm, the flesh-toned magnetic wristband – and Miss Watts has shown him with insistent fingers how the oral mesh fits, helping him to push it over the front of his teeth in a way that alienates him from his own mouth.
The magician disappoints the children. He knows it from the first. The situation has thrown him off his art. The heat of the room is making him sweat, irritating the elastic cuff Miss Watts insisted he tug over his head to hold the neck of his shirt closed. There is a shake to his hands now, and the children – their eyes – are without life or enjoyment.”

You’re Only As Happy… collects tales that first found a home in collections and journals elsewhere, together with three new stories and 2024’s strictly limited novella Rumsy Schoolchildren. Steeped, as ever, in peninsular folklore, these nine tales are unsettling and filled with disquiet. As ever, it might not be for you—