A review by ctgt
Hair Side, Flesh Side by Helen Marshall
4.0
Another wonderful collection of stories that I can't really call horror but more fantastic with occassional horrific moments scattered throughout. One of my weird fiction websites ran an interview with Marshall that really spurred my interest in her work, so I guess if I had to categorize this collection it would fall in to the weird genre. I enjoyed how Marshall was able to create these strange, almost outlandish situations but put normal everyday people in the settings to see how they would react. I could picture myself in some of these stories.
As with most collections there were a few stories that didn't resonate with me but I will highlight some that I thought were brilliant.
Blessed-In these days where kids(and adults) seem to get caught up in the idea of needing all the latest/best of...everything, this was a heart wrenching story with a gut punch ending, of a young girl caught between her divorced parents as they give her presents of The Blessed for her birthday.
Her dad bounced her on his shoulders and then heaved her off again so she landed gently on the ground, and she stood tip-toed until she could see over the top of the crate. Chloe fingered the straw shyly, not daring to touch it yet, not daring to stroke the soft leathery skin.
“For your birthday, kiddo,” he said in a warm, excited voice. “You’re almost seven, and we wanted you to have this—”
“Lucia of Syracuse,” her mum interrupted. He gave her a look, but it was an affectionate look, one that showed he didn’t mind much. “Died 304. A real, genuine martyr.”
Sandition-Probably my favorite story about the unfinished Jane Austen book and just how the rest of the text was discovered.
Something caught her eye, a smallish discoloured lump on the side of her neck, no bigger than a dime. She squinted, touched it with a finger. The skin was dried out, rough, but the space itself was numb, as if all the nerve endings had been disconnected. She shook her head, tried scratching it with a nail. A queer sensation ran through her body, as if the area was simultaneously hypersensitive and blanked out with Novocain.
Pieces of Broken Things-How one man deals with his wife leaving him after twelve years of marriage
Love, she said, love was messy and incomprehensible and she, almost forty now, almost the big four-zero, didn’t want messy and incomprehensible. She had, she told him a little bashfully, replaced her heart with the only thing she could get to fit— a tiny clock the pawn shop owner had handy. She showed it to David. She undid the front of her cream silk blouse, and David got a glimpse of a little ormolu face with two prim hands nestled in the little hollow between her breasts.
He decides to dig a hole and bury her things because they bring him too much pain
When he looked at the hole, he felt a little of the love shudder out of him. It was just a tiny bit of love, but it flopped in the dirt by his feet for a moment like a fish. His heart slowed, just a few beats, but it slowed.
In the High Places of the World-How the incidents surrounding Soledad's birth shaped the rest of her life
A fact: during Soledad’s birth, a dove crashed into large, glass window of the delivery room of the Hospital do Coração de Messejana, snapping its neck instantly. They had thought the baby dead in the womb, and her mother, grey-faced with the pain of pushing, saw only the flurry of feathers, saw it slantwise through eyes that had long since ceased to register details.....
The doctor in charge saw the bird, and in that moment his eyes flicked away from the trembling mound of flesh of the mother. He was not an inattentive man, but his eyes slipped for that brief moment, and so he was startled when he turned back to realize that he now held in his hands a wailing girl.
A higly enjoyable collection for those who like stories that are a bit off the beaten path.
8/10
As with most collections there were a few stories that didn't resonate with me but I will highlight some that I thought were brilliant.
Blessed-In these days where kids(and adults) seem to get caught up in the idea of needing all the latest/best of...everything, this was a heart wrenching story with a gut punch ending, of a young girl caught between her divorced parents as they give her presents of The Blessed for her birthday.
Her dad bounced her on his shoulders and then heaved her off again so she landed gently on the ground, and she stood tip-toed until she could see over the top of the crate. Chloe fingered the straw shyly, not daring to touch it yet, not daring to stroke the soft leathery skin.
“For your birthday, kiddo,” he said in a warm, excited voice. “You’re almost seven, and we wanted you to have this—”
“Lucia of Syracuse,” her mum interrupted. He gave her a look, but it was an affectionate look, one that showed he didn’t mind much. “Died 304. A real, genuine martyr.”
Sandition-Probably my favorite story about the unfinished Jane Austen book and just how the rest of the text was discovered.
Something caught her eye, a smallish discoloured lump on the side of her neck, no bigger than a dime. She squinted, touched it with a finger. The skin was dried out, rough, but the space itself was numb, as if all the nerve endings had been disconnected. She shook her head, tried scratching it with a nail. A queer sensation ran through her body, as if the area was simultaneously hypersensitive and blanked out with Novocain.
Pieces of Broken Things-How one man deals with his wife leaving him after twelve years of marriage
Love, she said, love was messy and incomprehensible and she, almost forty now, almost the big four-zero, didn’t want messy and incomprehensible. She had, she told him a little bashfully, replaced her heart with the only thing she could get to fit— a tiny clock the pawn shop owner had handy. She showed it to David. She undid the front of her cream silk blouse, and David got a glimpse of a little ormolu face with two prim hands nestled in the little hollow between her breasts.
He decides to dig a hole and bury her things because they bring him too much pain
When he looked at the hole, he felt a little of the love shudder out of him. It was just a tiny bit of love, but it flopped in the dirt by his feet for a moment like a fish. His heart slowed, just a few beats, but it slowed.
In the High Places of the World-How the incidents surrounding Soledad's birth shaped the rest of her life
A fact: during Soledad’s birth, a dove crashed into large, glass window of the delivery room of the Hospital do Coração de Messejana, snapping its neck instantly. They had thought the baby dead in the womb, and her mother, grey-faced with the pain of pushing, saw only the flurry of feathers, saw it slantwise through eyes that had long since ceased to register details.....
The doctor in charge saw the bird, and in that moment his eyes flicked away from the trembling mound of flesh of the mother. He was not an inattentive man, but his eyes slipped for that brief moment, and so he was startled when he turned back to realize that he now held in his hands a wailing girl.
A higly enjoyable collection for those who like stories that are a bit off the beaten path.
8/10