2 out of 4 stars
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Bloody Gullets by Michael Golvach
In this bloody collection of short stories, the whole oeuvre of crime is on display for the more horrifically-inclined individuals. From a hyper-religious serial killer to a Kesey-esque exploration of modern cultural madness, this collection tightly weaves together stories of varying lengths to create a collection that attempts to explore the human psyche and shifting perspectives. This is Bloody Gullets.
Structurally the collection is very strong, with themes of identity and its various modes of destruction seamlessly binding stories such as ‘Small Deaths’ and ‘Broken Metre’ with their focus on the individual and their inner worlds, to a much broader stroke encompassing ‘Infection is the Game’, to create a compact exploration of the duality between individual and society where reality constantly seems to shift. The constant “rebirth” of Marcus Freeman (consisting mainly of forgetting most of his life whenever he sleeps) in ‘Small Deaths’ has him searching constantly for an identity -- a life -- which he can mould into, while the suicidal yearnings of Frank Karrol reveals the destructive impulse to destroy one’s identity when its vicissitudes become too much to bear. This is given palpable proportions in ‘Infection is the Game’ in which residents of a mental hospital mysteriously begin to decapitate themselves in a fury against the inanity of modern life.
That said, most of the stories are weak. The ones above are arguably the strongest with distinctive characters and fresh plots, but the same cannot be said of them all. While the nuanced protagonist in ‘Infection is the Game’ vivifies the already original plot and palpable atmosphere, other stories seem flat and characterless, such as ‘Infamous G’ in which a (presumably) paranoid schizophrenic believes he is a god. The premise is cliché and the characters are lifeless, though the warped perception of the character is handled with some care and complements the surrealism of the later ‘Infection’ nicely. This surrealism is ultimately one of a few styles incorporated into the collection with some stories having a very strong romantic bent and others being very slasher-oriented. The former can be found in ‘Four Leaf Clover’, for example, where we meet a forensic photographer trapped in a grim fantasy of his own creation and the loveless reality becomes too much to bear. The range is certainly commendable but the execution is patchy.
Some of the stories do seem a little out of place, however. In ‘Dead Men’ (a series of three short stories) we meet a lawyer abusing his power to commit a series of murders and in ‘No Women, No Children’ the protagonist is instead a police officer who uses his ethically inscribed position to murder innocent bystanders. While these stories fit nicely together, they don’t complement the others or expand upon the themes in any significant way other than perhaps to explore the nuances of power and its effect upon the perception of the character. The exploration is a shallow one, however, and doesn’t add any great depth or nuance to the collection. The writer seems to do well with the more personal narratives as his more action-oriented ones feel cheap and clichéd. The ending of ‘Four Leaf Clover’, for example, seemed needlessly contrived and sensational, whereas simply ending the story with the character continuing to live in his fantasy world would have given it much more edge, realism and variety.
In summary, I think there is a lot of potential here but unfortunately the quality across the collection is inconsistent. While certain stories shine – such as ‘Infection is the Game’, ‘Small Deaths’ and ‘Four Leaf Clover’ – others feel unoriginal and flat. Characters, plot and structure in many of them leave a lot to be reworked and the dialogue is usually characterless and occasionally stilted. However, the collection is thematically impressive with most stories complementing each other nicely and adding some nuance, but others do feel out of place and could have been replaced with more suitable ones. The book was formatted nicely and there were no grammatical/spelling errors, so top marks for editing. Because of all the issues, however, I can only award this book 2 out of 4 stars.
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Bloody Gullets
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