Deadpan writing, thought it was going nowhere, but it turned out to be a wonderful horror story. I think this story stands on its own, and “The Hole” maybe an expansion of it, as David says.

This is a very poorly written story. The major problem is that for a story that wants to be a kind of horror story, there is no horror at all. Oghi suffers terrible injuries as a result of the crash, which cause physical pain and severe limitations in what he is capable of doing without assistance. That is a terrible circumstance to be in, but is not itself really something that counts as “horror”. There is no suspense, not even any indication that his health will get any worse as a result. Oghi is taken care of a caretaker who is rude and disrespectful and a mother-in-law who hates him. And that’s it. The end. Whop-de-doo.
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Well, there is one more thing, but this just makes the story ridiculous more than scary. The mother-in-law is digging a very large hole among the holes in the garden. It seems to be suggested that this hole is one she will use to bury Oghi. Ok, but this is absurd. There is no way that she could realistically expect to be able to kill Oghi, dispose of his body in the yard, and get away with it. If Oghi were some random hitchhiker she had picked up, then sure, it might work. But this is Oghi’s home and many people know he is there and know he is physically unable to leave it on his own. So how would she ever be able to explain his sudden disappearance? It seems ridiculous. And if she doesn’t care about being caught, then the hole is pointless.
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The revelation of the hole also seems very tacked on at the end, so if it even provides some horror (which it didn’t for me – I laughed), it leaves the first 95% of the story as dull with nothing much going on. We also get tacked on to the end the gimmicky “plot twist” as Oghi reveals that he crashed intentionally. What makes this no better than a wasted cliche is two-fold. First, we were already told that it was his fault, so changing the situation from him being at fault because he was careless or reckless to he was at fault because he wanted to kill them both changes little. It certainly is not needed to explain why the mother-in-law is so angry – him being at fault due to carelessness is enough to explain that. Second, Oghi claims that she knows what happened in the car, but this is ridiculous. She has no magic powers to see inside the car and know the crash was intentional and, as mentioned, it is not needed to explain her behaviour.
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I don’t wan to even get into the terrible cliche of the title – “Caring For Plants” … Oghi is like a potted plant after the accident … yes … how ……. clever.
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The author interview mentions the novel Misery for comparison, but that just points out everything that this story is not. When I was reading this story I was reminded of Minette Walter’s short novel, The Cellar. It is a story that, in part, is about someone taking care of a family member who is an invalid and the horror that results. It is infinitely better than this story was. I am not tempted at all to read The Hole. I’d much rather read The Cellar again. Or if I want to read something new I might try What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? There are a few books that this story brings to mind, and it loses out by comparison every time.

I didn’t notice Ken, but agree. I wonder if it’s a technical necessity of some sort. Trevor???

Hey David–As usual forcefully expressed and thoughtful viewpoint: “This is a poorly written story…wants to be a horror story but no horror….”
That’s a grabber!
I may have missed your point, but wonder if applying a premise predetermining what constitutes a horror or suspense story is to miss the deeper beguilement I believe this author achieved by enclosing the reader in this sealed environment that can only be described as “horrific”–heck, I was sweating it out with the character–while planting speculative clues as to causation and ultimate outcome.
I’m obviously not a literary critic and lack your context for comparison (“The Cellar”) but question respectfully if caution shouldn’t be exercised before bracketing an author’s work in a theoretical subjective argument–what it should be and did it meet this standard, ie. “this is a poorly written story”–then what it is, and the voice in which it was written (that clearly I found compelling).
That said, your personal viewpoint well taken.

Denis, for starters, I have no idea what you mean by “a theoretical subjective argument”, so I can’t respond to that, but I can say something about your earlier comments. When you talk about “predetermining what constitutes a horror or suspense story” it sounds like you think there is some checklist I have in mind that the story does not tick off enough boxes. But there is nothing in my comment that should suggest this. You have a tendency to assume that people are using preconceptions when being critical of stories. This is not the case.
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The author makes it clear in the interview that this is mean to be a horror story and specifically cites Misery as a point of comparison, so I don’t think I’m doing any presuming by thinking this is the kind of story it is supposed to be. After that, for a story to be a horror story it needs to have some frightening things happen or there to be the threat that something frightening might happen to the character or characters. This is not me forcing some definition of my making on the story. It is just the most general and (I would have thought) obvious description of what it means to horrify.
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In this story Oghi’s situation is terrible as a result of the accident, but to merely describe his miserable condition as a result of the accident is not horror. It might make you feel sorry for him (although even that is mitigated by the accident being his fault and him having caused a death due to what we think at first is just carelessness). But that is not horror. And merely describing a miserable state after an accident is not really a story at all. So what is there to this? The caretaker is rude. Ok. No horror there, is there? I can’t imagine how anyone would think that there is. His mother-in-law hates him. Again, this is bad, but not horror. Until we get to the absurd and laughable hole-digging, she is not presented as a threat other than as someone who is angry at him and so not very nice.
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I would suggest that if any reader while reading most of the story was wondering in anticipation what the mother-in-law might do to Oghi that this is more the anticipation the reader generates based on the hope, if not the promise, that this is supposed t be a horror story. The text itself never gives us any reason to think this is the case, again, until we get to the ridiculous hole business.
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Denis, you seem to like everything you read and want to dismiss anyone who is critical of a story as having preconceptions or applying rigid standards of analysis like some sort of story checklist. This comes up over and over in your comments. Perhaps if you read comments as generously as you read stories you might see that I have not invoked any such thing. I just read stories and react to them as you do. When they are dull because no impending danger is even hinted at for most of the story, then that’s what I say. Nothing happens and we get little more than a description of Oghi’s condition as a result of the crash. That’s not much of a story, horror or otherwise.
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If you would like to expound on what parts of the story you found interesting and why, whether any of it seemed to be scary or to invite the reader to anticipate something horrible might happen to Oghi, then that would be worth hearing. But short of that, I see little value in the story.

The art of fiction is tell more than the words indicate, not less. If, as it seems, this is part of a larger work, I would have appreciated a heads up, rather than reading through it seeking something that was never included.

Also, on a brighter note, I absolutely loved this writing:

“There were fewer photographs of Oghi and his wife than there were of people unrelated to them: foreign women who looked beautiful but headstrong. When he had asked his wife about them, she’d got excited and explained who the women in the pictures were. One was a writer who had committed suicide; another was a dancer who had died of some disease. A cosmetics model, a famous journalist. Some of the women Oghi recognized and others he didn’t. He figured out right away what they had in common. They were all successful women – women who had succeeded to the point of having influence on a perfect stranger.”

Yes, and the line you quote, provocative, yet hauntingly elusive.

Thank you Dennis for your thoughtful feedback to my posts!