Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings is a novella from an Australian author whose short fiction I have previously enjoyed. She is, perhaps, most well-known for her artwork, including book covers such as the one for Flyaway, among others.

In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers—a note that makes question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure.

A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles.

In these pages Jennings assures you that gothic delights, uncanny family horror, and strange, unsettling prose can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun.

Going through the tags for this review, I couldn't not include "Australian gothic". This book is a tangle of fairytales brought by settlers into the unique Australian landscape, all of them twisted and variously creepy. Flyaway is, above all, a story composed of many other stories, told as flashbacks or asides. The layers are slowly peeled back as our unreliable narrator, Bettina Scott, slowly learns more of her recent past and starts to realise what she's forgotten.

The fact that part of the story is told as Bettina's memories unfurl means that we come at the main story — for lack of a better term, I mean the story most important to Bettina — from an oblique angle. We know something strange has happened, but the pieces don't come together until very close to the end. But in the meantime, Jennings keeps the reader entertained and/or horrified with the extra stories peppered throughout the narrative.

I recommend Flyaway to readers who like weird narratives and who don't mind feeling creeped out by the bush or western Queensland. I think non-Australian readers will also find much to connect with in this book, since a lot of the fairytales are recognisably based on European folklore, despite the strong presence of the Australian landscape in the book.

4 / 5 stars

First published: July 2020, Tor.com
Series: No, I don't think so
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

In the Skin of a Monster by Kathryn Barker

In the Skin of a Monster by Kathryn Barker was this year's YA Aurealis Award-winning novel, which is the main reason I picked it up. It also helped that I happened to see it at the library, otherwise it probably would've remained on my "meaning to get around to reading" list for a while longer.

What if your identical twin sister was a murderer? Does that make you a monster too? A profound, intense, heartbreaking fantasy that tackles issues of fate versus free will, and whether you can ever truly know someone.

Caught in a dreamscape, mistaken for a killer ... will Alice find a way home?

Three years ago, Alice's identical twin sister took a gun to school and killed seven innocent kids; now Alice wears the same face as a monster. She's struggling with her identity, and with life in the small Australian town where everyone was touched by the tragedy. Just as Alice thinks things can't get much worse, she encounters her sister on a deserted highway. But all is not what it seems, and Alice soon discovers that she has stepped into a different reality, a dream world, where she's trapped with the nightmares of everyone in the community. Here Alice is forced to confront the true impact of everything that happened the day her twin sister took a gun to school ... and to reveal her own secret to the boy who hates her most.

In the Skin of a Monster was not quite the book I thought it would be. From the blurb (and the opening) we learn that Alice's twin sister took a gun to school, three years ago, and killed a bunch of kids. I thought the story would be about Alice coming to terms with the fact that she looks like her sister and that other people see her sister when they look at her. That stuff was in the book, but it was the backstory, not the main plot.

The plot was about Alice being transported to a world of dreams and nightmares, literally, where she encounters dreamt up versions of people she knows or knew in the real world and has to avoid being killed by various nightmare versions. The story is told in alternating chapters from Alice's point of view and Lux's, one of the people who's always lived in the dream/nightmare world. When the story first switched to Lux's perspective, I was a bit thrown because I hadn't been expecting it and because I didn't understand where it was going. As I read more, though, things fell into place and I realised what kind of story this really was.

Barker uses the nightmare/dream world to interesting effect, showing us — through the informative filter of Alice — all the different versions of the twin with the gun that people have been dreaming about (including, for example, the two movie versions who look nothing like her).

Alice's sections are told in second person, as if she's speaking to her twin while relating the events of the story. This, combined with how the other characters talk to Alice (and the fact that no one in the dream/nightmare world knows anyones real names), has the effect of never telling the reader the name of the twin and adding to the, well, unspeakable-ness of what she did.

I enjoyed reading In the Skin of the Monster, especially once I got a proper feel for what sort of book it is. I would classify it as horror — not thriller, which is sort of what the school shooting aspect initially suggested to me — but its not so horrific as to be unsuitable for its YA audience. Also, Barker does a surprisingly good job of taking an event we might associate as more of an USian occurrence and making it work as the background for a story with a very Australian setting. I would recommend this book to fans of YA fantasy and horror. It was not difficult to read but, as you can probably guess from the subject matter, it wasn't what I would call a cheerful read. That said, it also could have been much darker than it was. I can see why it won the Aurealis Award.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2015, Allen & Unwin
Series: No
Format read: Paperback *gasp*
Source: Local library
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

Last Year, When We Were Young by Andrew J McKiernan

Last Year, When We Were Young by Andrew J McKiernan is the author's first short story collection and, indeed, his first solo book. I should note up front that, once upon a time, the author and I were in the same writing critique group. What this mainly means is that I'd seen early drafts of a few stories, a long time ago, and had very vague memories of them. But I thought I should disclose that up front.

There was a decent variety of stories in Last Year, When We Were Young, with most of them tending towards the horror side of the spec fic triangle. (Spec fic is a triangle now. Or maybe a triangular Venn Diagram, but I digress.) Some were more contemplative and serious, while others were more... gory. One was even science fiction. Looking over the table of contents again, most of the stories have very good titles.

I found I most enjoyed the more contemplative stories. My favourites were "The Memory of Water", "White Lines, White Crosses" and the titular "Last Year, When We Were Young", although the latter is perhaps less contemplative per se. The former two stories deal with loss and death in a poignant way.

Actually, I liked most of the stories in this collection. My least favourite tended to be the most gruesome, which is reflective of my horror preferences more generally. And although I am using the term horror to describe the collection as a whole, I'm not sure the three circus-based stories (for lack of a more accurate phrase) count as horror. Certainly not "Calliope: A Steam Romance" nor "The Dumbshow". "All the Clowns in Clowntown" is perhaps more borderline since it definitely has a well executed feeling of dread to it, but on the other hand, it's about clowns. I suspect coulrophobiacs may disagree with me on that point.

I also liked "The Haunting that Jack Built" — in part for the name — and "The Desert Song", both of which were set in rural Australia and both of which had fairly traditional horror elements. I liked the Australian angle and difference between the Australia of the past and the Australia of a not-so-nice future. I also liked "The Message", which packed a powerful punch, nonetheless.

All in all, this was a pretty solid collection and I would recommend it to horror fans and fans of dark speculative fiction. With a few exceptions, there was nothing too extremely horrific in the stories and I think most of them would be enjoyed by a fairly broad audience.

~

The Memory of Water — A story I found difficult to put down. Siblings remember their departed parents.

White Lines, White Crosses — A teenaged boy and his family move from Sydney to a country town that is eerily obsessed with hooning. It was a disturbing story with a creeping sense of foreboding.

Calliope: A Steam Romance — A patent clerk is captivated by a woman playing a calliope (a steam-powered musical instrument). True steampunk set in Sydney, even more steampunky when we learn that the woman is actually an intelligent automaton. Also, points for many physicist/scientist shout-outs.

Love Death — A young man brings his new wife to a necromancer, hoping to get her back. I may be a bad person, but I found the circumstances around her death pretty (blackly) funny.

The Message — You know when you read a genre book and you know you're reading a genre book but the characters in it don't know they're in a genre book? This story made me think about that phenomenon. A woman takes a job answering a mysterious phone. Obviously, it's far from an ordinary phone and certain aspects of the past resurface...

All the Clowns in Clowntown — Surprisingly epic for a short story. In this world clowning isn’t just something someone does, it’s who they are. The clowns have clustered together in Clowntown, living their lives, until one day <cue ominous music> the circus comes to town.

Daivadana — a disturbing tale of a diplomat (sort of) who gets caught up in an old Tajik religion. Pretty gruesome at times.

The Dumbshow — Another story in the same universe as "All the Clowns in Clowntown", set (I think) shortly after the events of the previous story. It's much less eerie and, being shorter, a more straightforward story. Honestly not sure how it would stand on its own without the earlier background.

The Final Degustation of Doctor Ernest Blenheim — A little hard to get past the self-cannibalism. And honestly once past that it was still a weird story. As far as revulsion goes, I think it did improve as it went along.

Torch Song — The speculative element sneaks up on you in this one, but I quite liked it. A shot tale, good punch. Title very apt.

The Wanderer in the Darkness — Sci-fi horror, so it automatically put me in mind of Alien. My only issue with it was a character leaving an airlock without his helmet and then not dying. Oh well.

A Prayer for Lazarus — I think I read part of this before, possibly an earlier version. Anyway, creepy story told from a young girl's point of view about her mother's descent into a form of zombie-ism.

The Haunting that Jack Built — I quite liked this story. Set in a rural, small town in the Australian 1950s, Jack builds a house while the townspeople can't help but notice women disappearing when they come to visit him. (I think I'd read at least part of this story before.)

They Don’t Know That We Know What They Know — A weird story with a fitting title. Reminded me a little of "Daivadana", although it's actually pretty different in the details. A seer interrogating the dead body of a young terrorist.

The Desert Song — A sort of zombie story, set in rural future post-something bad Australia. I liked it and the ideas in it but I found it a little inconsistent.

Last Year, When We Were Young — One of my favourite stories in the collection. And it's a great title, which works well for the collection as a whole. A speed ageing plague has infected humanity and the concept is taken to its horrifying conclusion.

4 / 5 stars

First published: May 2014, Satalyte Publishing
Series: No
Format read: ePub
Source: review copy courtesy of the author
Disclaimer: although the author is a friend, I have endeavoured to give an unbiased review
Challenges: Aussie Horror Reading Challenge

The Dreaming (Volume 1) by Queenie Chan

The Dreaming by Queenie Chan is almost the first manga I've read. I say almost because I did read Red String online a few years ago (and then bought a couple of paper volumes) but I never got to the end because I lost track of it once I was up to date with the online pages. Anyway, The Dreaming is quite different, being both horror and Australian.

When twin sisters Amber and Jeanie are accepted into an exclusive Australian boarding school, their future looks bright. But the school's halls harbor a terrible secret: students have been known to wander into the surrounding bushlands and vanish...without a trace! No one knows where they went--or why. But as Amber and Jeanie are about to learn, the key to the school's dark past may lie in the world of their dreams...

I am by no means an expert on art but, to me, the art style was nice and added to the story. (People wanting to judge for themselves can see examples on Chan's website and this Asia Education Foundation page.) Especially some of the creepier images (pages? scenes?) definitely added to the vibe of the story. Especially the ones that sort of jumped out at me.

As for the story, this is Volume 1 of 3 so it was only the first part of the story, the set up for the overall story arc. The story is narrated from Jeanie's point of view and begins with the girls arriving at their new school, very isolated in the Middle of Nowhere, NSW. It's a co-ed school, which I thought was odd, especially since there's only one boy who appears briefly in this volume. (But presumably he or some other boy will be back at some point in Volumes 2 or 3, otherwise I don't see why it wouldn't just be a girls' school. This was the only thing that bothered me.)

The horror set-up in this volume includes a terrifying vice principal with a strong aversion to twins — to the extent that the girls have to pretend to be ordinary siblings born a year apart — a mysterious room, girls historically disappearing in the bush, and strange dreams. And, as I began to suspect once I was about half-way through, it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. I suspect reading the omnibus version of this would be better, but Volume 1 was all that the bookshop had. I've discovered that the paper versions are non-trivial to get a hold of outside of the US (shipping costs more than the book/s), but I will be buying the remaining volumes on the iPad via Comixology, so stay tuned!

Not strictly part of the story, but the "Introducing Australia" page at the end was comedy gold.

I enjoyed this start to a horror story. I am definitely going to read the remaining two parts, because, as I've said, the story is just not complete. I highly recommend it to fans of horror and manga, especially readers interesting in either in an Australian setting. I'm not usually much of a fan of comics (longer than webcomics, anyway) or graphic novels because I prefer words to pictures and experience existential angst over which I should be paying attention to, but this worked for me. I would urge others who don't usually read manga to give it a shot (and it's not as though it's a long read).

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2005, TokyoPop
Series: The Dreaming Volume 1 of 3 (one continuous story)
Format read: Paper!
Source: Robinsons Bookshop (bricks and mortar, well... wood and... glass?)
Challenges: Aussie Horror Reading Challenge, Australian Women Writers Challenge

Path of Night by Dirk Flinthart

Path of Night by Dirk Flinthart is the author's longest published work (ie first novel) to date. I'm sure I've read some of his short stories before, but apparently not since I started reviewing here. Blurb:

Michael Devlin is the first of a new breed. The way things are going, he may also be the last.

Being infected with an unknown disease is bad. Waking up on a slab in a morgue wearing nothing but a toe-tag is worse, even if it comes with a strange array of new abilities.

Medical student Michael Devlin is in trouble. With his flatmates murdered and an international cabal of legendary man-monsters on his trail, Devlin's got nowhere to hide. His only allies are a hot-tempered Sydney cop and a mysterious monster-hunter who may be setting Devlin up for the kill. If he's going to survive, Devlin will have to embrace his new powers and confront his hunters. But can he hold onto his humanity when he walks the Path of Night?

Path of Night follows Devlin, a med student with bad luck. After being murdered and coming back from the dead, he discovers that a) he needs to eat a lot of food now, b) he has super senses and super speed and c) a bunch of people are trying to kill him. His side of the story is very much centred about not dying and getting through the day.

The other point of view character is Jen, a Sydney cop who starts out investigating the homicide Devlin was caught up in. From her point of view we see a bit of police internal politics, some investigation and then, well, then the story catches up with Devlin and everything gets a bit crazy.

The pacing in this novel is brilliant. It's not a short read, but even though it took me a while to get through (because life etc) it was sufficiently well-paced that it felt like it would be a quick read. It wasn't all action all the time, but there was never a dull moment. I felt I always wanted to know what happened next, even when the point of view switched away from Devlin and Jen to the characters on the other side of the equation.

This is the first book in a series, and I have to admit I wasn't sure how it would play out, in terms of setting up the next book, until I got to the end. It didn't really feel like a book one, and I say that in the best possible way. I wasn't sure who would survive or in what form the series would continue (until the end when the premise of the next book was seemingly set up).

I also loved that it was set in Sydney. Living overseas as I am for the time being, I have been really appreciating books with Australian settings. Particularly ones which feel authentic, as Path of Night does (occasional references to "sidewalks" notwithstanding). I kind of want to take a tour of those tunnels next time I'm in Sydney. I wouldn't have known they existed otherwise. The tourism bureau should pay Flinthart a commission. ;-)

Path of Night was an excellent read and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next book and anything else I see of the author's. I highly recommend it to fans of urban fantasy and contemporary horror, especially the more action-filled variety. Readers looking for an Australian setting (or a non-US setting, heh) are also advised to give Path of Night a shot.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: October 2013, FableCroft Publishing
Series: yes. Night Beast book 1 of ?
Format read: eARC
Source: The lovely publisher
Challenges: Aussie Horror Reading Challenge

Aussie Horror Reading Challenge, Round-up One

It's only April and it seems I have already completed the Australian Horror Reading Challenge I set myself. A large part of the reason is that I was only aiming for a minimum of five books. I was concerned that I would have difficulty tracking them down, but apparently I needn't have worried.

This post is just a summary of what I've read so far. I plan to write down more interesting thoughts I'm having on the genre as I learn more about it. My brain is a bit goopy at the moment though and I figured more posts is better than fewer.

The books I've read with excerpts from my reviews are below. Surprisingly, three of the five are collections of short fiction, not something I particularly planned. And not that there's anything wrong with short stories, but it's interesting to note how many more horror short stories there are out there by Australians, compared with novels (see my recent Aurealis stats post). I hope to read more novels in the future (not at the expense of short stories, hopefully). I also notice this list is entirely made up of female authors, again, not entirely intentionally (although the AWW Challenge did contribute). I do have some male-authored stuff lined up, so that probably won't be the case the next time I write a round-up.

After the Darkness by Honey Brown (review)

Although the book is called After the Darkness, it's really about how hard it is to leave the darkness behind. ... It's also about how darkness is often contagious, touching on the way in which abuse victims often go on to re-enact their trauma as a way of coming to terms with it. And the hopelessness that comes with fearing for your life. And having to relate to people in a life you have to pretend is normal.

Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren (review) — one of the Twelve Planets, containing three short stories and a novella.

"Mountain" — The mountain and its ghosts hold many secrets, which they don't always share with passers by.

"Creek" is about quaking women who drowned in creeks. They claw their way through Australia's shallow creekbeds and call out, demanding to know what happened to their loved-ones.

"Road" is a tale about an older couple who [are] quite used to injured people running up to their house and asking to use their phone ... and they always lay out a wreath for the accident victims.

"Sky" — The protagonist, Zed, is not very likeable at all (he is, in fact, a rapist — you've been warned). From when we first meet him as a child, seen through his school-teacher's eyes, to the main action when he finds himself in Sky, I didn't relate to Zed at all, but kept reading because I wanted to know what happened next.

Ishtar edited by Amanda Pillar and KV Taylor (review) — A collection of three novellas about the goddess Ishtar, in the past, present and future.

"The Five Loves of Ishtar" by Kaaron Warren is a story spanning thousands of years in the Mesopotamian region. Told from the perspectives of a series of Ishtar's washerwomen — each the daughter of Ishtar's previous washerwoman — it focuses partly on the men in Ishtar's life and partly on life generally at that time.

"And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living" by Deborah Biancotti follows Adreienne, a detective given an unusual set of homicides to investigate. Of course we know the supernatural origins of the bodies — since Ishtar has to show up at some point — but it was still a compelling story. I enjoyed watching Adreienne slowly uncover the truth.

"The Sleeping and the Dead" by Cat Sparks — My favourite aspect of this story was all the allusions to earlier events, particularly to Ishtar's roots. It relies on knowledge of the previous stories more than one would expect from an ordinary collection, but in this context it works beautifully.

Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott (review)

McDermott made me think about the relationship between the mundane and the horrifying. One doesn't have to peel back many layers to find unpleasantness in the sisters' lives, but McDermott keeps peeling until all they're left with is reality (or some facsimile thereof) and each other.

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton (review) — a collection, as the title implies.

Overall, I was very impressed with Anderton's worldbuilding in all the stories. Each story read like a glimpse into a complete and carefully constructed world. Just because the stories are short, Anderton in no way skimped on the thought put into them. Even for the stories set in some approximation of the modern world, careful details made them stand out.

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton is, as the title suggests, a collection of short stories. For those of you who've read Debris and/or Suited, these stories were very different in tone, surprising me a little with just how macabre they were.

Overall, I was very impressed with Anderton's worldbuilding in all the stories. Each story read like a glimpse into a complete and carefully constructed world. Just because the stories are short, Anderton in no way skimped on the thought put into them. Even for the stories set in some approximation of the modern world, careful details made them stand out.

I've included some thoughts on each story below, but I'm afraid they're not as coherent as I'd like them to be. Each story blew me away and, quite frankly, I think we're lucky I managed to say anything coherent at all, immediately after reading.

Anderton's stories in this collection can be loosely grouped into three categories: macabre fantasy world stories, macabre more-or-less real world stories, and macabre post-technological science-flavoured stories. (There may be a common thread running through them.) All the stories involve dead things and/or death, and often constructions from dead things. My favourite of the bunch, "Sanaa's Army", falls into the latter category and has my favourite cat of the bunch in them.

I've said, repeatedly, that the stories are macabre and deal with death, but I didn't find it to be in a depressing way. Well, OK, some of them were a bit depressing. But generally, there were many stories about life coming out of death. Or art or solace or something else constructive.

The more futuristic stories generally dealt with the struggle to live on in a world become more hostile. "Mah Song" deifies the vestiges of advanced technology in a world that's all but forgotten how it works. These stories brought to mind Arthur C Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Anderton takes it a step further at times, calling one of the AIs in "Out Hunting For Teeth" the Witch and her cyborg constructs Spells. (That was another of my favourite stories, in part for the ending.)

Ultimately, I was glad I didn't have a cat watching me while I read I really enjoyed this collection. Not all the stories were the kind of thing I would usually read, but it was mostly those which I ended up enjoying most. I'm not at all surprised that two of the stories have picked up award nominations and I wouldn't be surprised to see the collection itself shortlisted for next year's awards.

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is being launched at Conflux in Canberra on April 26, but in the meantime, you can pre-order a copy from the publisher here. I highly recommend this collection to spec fic fans who like their fantasy dark or who might want to venture out of their comfort zone and become a little more acquainted with dead things. But really, if any of the above or below piqued you're interest, I urge you to give it a go; it really is an excellent collection.

~

Some very brief reactions/descriptions of each story which I jotted down immediately after reading it:

The Bone Chime Song — (Ditmar shortlisted) Eerie, well imagined. A complete world glimpsed through a short story.

Mah Song — Cyborg technology, a future world where computers are alive and revered as gods and people depend on them for food and heeling. The main character desperate to take her brother's place as cyborg sacrifice. Technology mixed with mysticism.

Shadow of Drought — Nothing like the first two stories. A story of modern rural teenagers in a horror movie scenario who are aware of the fact.

Sanaa's Army — (Aurealis and Ditmar shortlisted) Another set in the real world. Another about bones, in a different way to "The Bone Chime Song", but not that different. Interesting that these two should be the Ditmar shortlisted stories.

From the Dry Heat to the Sea — A strange story of drought, of industrial poison, of water, of being an outsider.

Always a Price — Short, contemporary, magic and a cat.

Out Hunting for Teeth — Not what I expected from the title, although making things our of human remains comes up again. A science fiction story of the "sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic" variety, somewhat literally.

Death Masque — Eternity in an afterlife or a final death? This is the choice a grieving father makes for his son.

Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden — Floating gardens in a desert. This is another story that particularly impressed me with its worldbuilding.

A Memory Trapped In Light — Another post technological world with scraps if technology left behind. A girl protecting her younger sister from dystopian forces.

Trail of Dead — Zombies, the ones who fight them and the one who summoned them.

Fence Lines — Post-apocalyptic, but that wasn't the point. A sugarcane plantation as a safe outpost, guarded by ghosts.

Tied to the Waste — Post-apocalyptic, making things out of dead things. Cats.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: April 2013, Fablecroft
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher
Challenges:  Australian Women Writers Challenge, Australian Horror Reading Challenge

Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott

Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott is the author's second novel and has been shortlisted for a pile of awards this year, despite having only been released last December. It's picked up shortlistings for Aurealis Horror Novel, Ditmar Best Novel and Australian Shadows Award Novel. Reading it, the award nominations are hardly a mystery. The blurb is short and sweet:

Two sisters. One wish. Unimaginable consequences.

Not all fairytales are for children.

Perfections is about two sisters, Antoinette and Jacqueline, who live in Melbourne. The story opens with Jacqueline going off to Brisbane for work shortly after Antoinette's boyfriend dumped her. They don't have much in common other than a shared childhood and a mother. The story follows their separate issues as their lives become increasingly entwined.

Perfections isn't what I think of as psychologically-scarred for life horror (a la Slights) but there is a distinct creepiness to it and there were definitely a few disturbing bits. (Not enough to keep me up at night, but your mileage may vary.) For a large chunk of the book I thought it could be classed as the horror version of magical realism but it got a bit too... much towards the end for such a tentative label.

McDermott made me think about the relationship between the mundane and the horrifying. One doesn't have to peel back many layers to find unpleasantness in the sisters' lives, but McDermott keeps peeling until all they're left with is reality (or some facsimile thereof) and each other.

As I write this, I realise that going into Perfections I had little idea of what the book was actually about, beyond that there were two sisters. None of the reviews I read prior to picking it up (via AWW, one, two, three) reveal the instigating event near the start that kicks off the plot. Which strikes me as odd because it's not what I'd usually consider a spoiler. But I suppose I'll jump on the bandwagon; leave a comment if you want to know.

Perfections was an enjoyable read. McDermott is a skilled writer and uses a few different stylistic tools in some chapters to great effect. I definitely want to pick up her other novel, Madigan Mine, and will be keeping an eye on what she writes in the future. I recommend Perfections to fans of horror and speculative fiction generally. I suspect there's much in there to appeal to a fan of dark contemporary fiction as well (it's not that similar to After the Darkness, but if you enjoyed that book and you don't usually read genre fiction, I'd suggest giving Perfections a shot).

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: December 2012, Xoum
Series: No.
Format read: eBook on iThings
Source: Purchased from iBooks (publisher page)
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge, Australian Horror Reading Challenge

Salvage by Jason Nahrung

Salvage is a novella by Jason Nahrung, put out by Twelfth Planet Press, and the first longer work of his I've read (I think I've read a short story before, just don't ask me which one).

Salvage is set on an island near Brisbane, where a couple take their first holiday after a miscarriage. Melanie is the main character and the story primarily follows her continuing journey in coming to terms with the miscarriage, the coldness that has crept into their marriage since, and her husband, Richard's, distraction with work.

While on the island, she meets Helena, a somewhat mysterious waif, with a medical condition that prevents her from fully enjoying their surroundings. She is also holidaying there with her husband. The two women strike up a friendship, but it turns out to be not entirely what Melanie expected.

I liked Melanie as a character but I'm not sure I'd want to be friends with any of the other characters in real life. Richard, while not positioned as an antagonistic character per se, was central to some of Melanie's issues. I'm not sure that I would have put up with him as much as Melanie did.

I found Salvage to be quite dark. I'm inclined to classify it as the horror version of magical realism. The fantastical elements didn't come to the fore until near the end and would have surprised me if I hadn't been expecting them (since Twelfth Planet Press do primarily publish speculative fiction). The publisher is categorising it as "Australian Gothic" which I think is fairly apt. As far as the horror element goes, there was a bit of ickiness and a bit of violence, but nothing which is likely to give me (most people?) nightmares.

I recommend Salvage to people after a quick, dark read. (It's definitely not a cheery story.) I think people who are into contemporary/mainstream/whatever-you-want-to-call-it books would also enjoy Salvage as, like I said, the fantastical elements are relatively minor. I'll certainly be on the look out for more books/stories from Jason Nahrung.

4 / 5 stars

Published: June 2012, Twelfth Planet Press
Format read: Paperback
Source: Publisher giveaway due to minor printing error (which it took me a while to locate)