DIVINE IN ESSENCE

Age-old acts of violence are monstrously reimagined in a transgressive set of stories that aims to haunt its readers.

Paisley’s collection is a short, sharp shock, coming in at just under 200 pages in length. It’s carved into three sections, each containing three stories, followed by one standalone novella. The sections—“Divine,” “In,” and “Essence”—have a central theme, examined in wicked ways. The prologue, “Abandon All Ye Who Enter,” primes the reader for the horrors ahead, which feature worlds that live in the “sensorium” and “imaginarium.” The former is “contemptuous of time,” and the physical and emotional pain that the characters endure is immediate and ongoing—and reactivated once read. The latter “entangles time.” These warnings act as a theme for the collection: “Suffering transmutes to ecstasy.” The first section, “Divine,” examines the paths and outcomes of familial violence, best exemplified by “The Great Event,” which acts as a twisted creation story, drawing from ancient Greek mythology into a dubiously spiritual present. “In” examines the relationship between the living and the dead and features a standout story, “The Metaphor of the Lakes,” in which a ghostly Gracie diarizes her small world with creativity and heart toward a devastating conclusion. Finally, “Essence” examines the overlap of violence and pleasure and a longing for freedom. “Mary Alice in the Mirror” is a highlight, with one of the collection’s arguably brighter endings, telling a tale of two children trying to liberate a woman trapped behind glass. The final novella, “The Life of Cherry,” charts mythic maternal violence in an attempt to converge various themes that previous stories raise.

Over the course of this collection, Paisley’s heightened, lyrical prose and occult-ish imagery strengthen the tales’ self-contained worlds; they are especially successful in works that have a strong emotional core. “In” contains the strongest stories in the book, innovatively exploring the limitations between the living and the dead. One of its tales, “Nancy & Her Man,” in which a woman visits a long-deceased companion to treat him to an annual day out, will linger with readers long after it’s over. “Fever Visions” is an equally haunting work in which a child experiences her mother’s sickness in Blakean detail: “I saw a great many human bodies that were misformed and bent into hideous…shapes, and they were operating strange, ancient-looking machines.” The aforementioned “The Metaphor of the Lakes” employs notably vivid prose as its protagonist discovers her fate: “As soon as my feet touched beyond the threshold, I found myself, along with my brother, in a vast wintry field, its snowy expanses so blindingly white that they were actually a kind of blue.” However, although several of the stories here strive to balance the elevated supernatural ideas introduced in the prologue, they also get bogged down by their accounts of the baser impulses of humanity, which the author paints in broad, violent strokes that may turn the stomachs of even the most seasoned readers of the horror genre.

Paisley’s tales shine when they take a sensitive approach to psychological horror, but readers may find that some scenes feel excessive.