Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances (Emotional Body Horror)
I met Dr. Elsby while at an underground lit con this September, and decided to delve into her most recent collection. I always feel bad being at such things, initially. You know, when people wonder why you don’t buy their shit, but to be totally honest I usually don’t unless I like the cover. I need that art to speak something to me, I don’t care how good the contents are. If I don’t see a vision in the art, I judge. Now, Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances, the doctor had sitting there, but somehow I missed the totally awesome cover with her battered face on it, requested the raw image, and then used that for the main page header, all in an effort to finally review this damn thing that she was kind of enough to send me in the mail gratis.
“It’s hard to tell which part of my body exceeding the maximum height of an object one can run over in a Corolla and have it come out the other side. Whether it was my pelvis, my ribcage or perhaps just my skull that refused to be entirely squashed by the three-thousand-pound vehicle such that it and I both continued down Montreal Road, some of us in pieces, some of us still acclimatizing to what was happening, what had happened to us, what one of us was doing to the other, the horrific realization that sometimes what one intends to do isn’t entirely what happens…I know that when they decide on a way to lift the car to minimize the damage to my organs, there’s still too much on the road to put back together…”
Red Flags hits hardest on the front end. The main chunk is new stories by Elsby at a little less than half; the rest includes out-of-print chapbooks, some cool background info, and unpublished work. Let’s start there. I appreciate experiencing an author’s growth, and since it’s unlikely you’d have access to any of it without Red Flags, this should be considered in my scoring. But when I say front end, I mean it. Elsby evolved over the years, from her days as a starry-eyed graduate student who had yet to see the poison of academia, which by now has passed her blood/brain barrier if this is what comes out of it. There’s simply no comparison between the writer she is now and what she was before. In the selection of stories that serve as the primary bulk, you’ll find Elsby in all of her detailed, body-horror glory, with a touch of deep, emotional longing. The reader is given an obtuse look into personal tragedy and pain in the most horrifying of ways. A hallmark of her style, in my opinion, is the wonderful sense of staging. Deep thoughts of someone pinned under a car, a man wanting a super-powered dick, or my personal favorite of a girl cradling the recently decapitated head of her lover’s ex like a Renaissance statue cut by an insane hand. The back end of Red Flags should be considered for what it is, background. It would not have served Red Flags well to start with it, but by themselves they’re merely enjoyable for the growth in skill they show after you’ve read the opening tales. Elsby is a true word magician, and for the starting segments alone Red Flags is worth more than a single read.
Charlene Elsby Official Instagram
Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls
Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances (2024)
Charlene Elsby
House of Vlad
Cover Art: Percy Hearst
4.3 / 5
