When Bruce Springsteen decided in 1982 to release a collection of deeply bleak ballads he had recorded originally as demo tapes he called the record Nebraska.
A collection of brash pop songs and bleak, slightly disturbing ballads that recalls both early Suede and Butler's soul-influenced work with David McAlmont, Here Come the Tears packs a considerable punch.
For the uninitiated, Black Mirror is basically a vision of dystopia, a collection of standalone episodes that each paint a bleak picture of a reality not too dissimilar from our own except in these worlds, something is guaranteed to go horribly wrong thanks to some new technology.
"Workingman's Dead" was the bleaker of the two: a collection of songs about jobs, duty and death, topics that weren't a big part of the hippie agenda.
Mr. Gefter is also the author of "Photography After Frank" (2009), a collection of writings whose title nods to Robert Frank, whose artfully bleak and blurry images serve almost like a template for the show's aesthetic.
In a collection of grim tableaux, this has been Top Boy's bleakest yet.
This novel -- actually a collection of stories -- follows much of the author's recent fiction in its bleak detachment; the actions belong to a world of displaced people, dropouts and eccentrics who have seen India's post-independence idealism die.
Her quirkiness is perhaps too self-consciously achieved — we get a collection of whimsical recipes, including one for knitting baby socks — but the book is carried by the evocation of the country's bleak, moody beauty.
A collection of hangers on.
