Black Static

In the current issue of the magazine (#82/83) I review Gary McMahon's short story collection This Isn't Anywhere You Know, which contained five stories I chose not to discuss as I'd already reviewed them previously.

For the sake of completeness, I've decided to post my reviews of those stories as they originally appeared.

From my Black Static #35 review of Shadows Edge edited by Simon Strantzas:-

The protagonist of 'The Old Church' by Gary McMahon finds himself drawn into a strange ritual when he goes to a christening with his wife, the story taking normal, everyday events and cleverly twisting them out of true, so that everything is distorted as if seen through the lens of a nightmare.

From my Black Static #51 review of Sharkpunk edited by Jonathan Green:-

'Silent Waters, Running Deep' has many of the traits of a typical Gary McMahon story, insofar as there is such a thing. There's a protagonist whose warped personal psychology drives the narrative, which is centred on the relationship between a social worker and his client, a man who thinks that he is being hunted down by an imaginary shark. Atmosphere is everything, with the world viewed from an angle that is slightly off kilter, one where nothing quite adds up and minatory impressions of madness slowly coagulate until the true horror is revealed in all its repellent glory.

From my Black Static #47 review of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories edited by Mark Morris:-

Gary McMahon's 'Dull Fire' features the relationship between two damaged people, each a victim of parental abuse, and a surprise plot development involving the ghosts of their abusers. There's a feel of sadness mixed with outrage running through the story, and underlying it all an adherence to the lies that enable us to cope with tragedy, both the things done to us and the things we do in search of justice, revenge, closure of any kind.

From my Black Static #31 review of 13: Tales of Dark Fiction edited by Adam Bradley:-

Things immediately perk up with Gary McMahon's ironically titled 'Dirty Story', the tale of Harry who works on a building site and simply can't get his hands clean in the evening, his OCD behaviour playing counterpoint to the way in which he screws up his private life, the revelation of something in his past which he can't shake free of, McMahon's careful prose building up a slow burn picture of a man in self-torment.

My Black Static #49 review of the chapbook There's a Bluebird in My Heart:-

Gary McMahon's latest work THERE'S A BLUEBIRD IN MY HEART is a novelette set in a world torn apart by the attacks of monsters, though few people have actually seen them and lived to tell the tale, and many believe that the monsters are a lie created by those in charge to keep the populace docile. Bill is a typical McMahon protagonist - he's lost his wife and child to the monsters, works on a building site, spends his money on booze and gets into fist fights, or has casual sex with landlady Tracy. Discovery of a dead body changes everything for Bill, as he sees a glowing bluebird emerge from the corpse. It's a moment of epiphany and first step on a spiritual journey to self-knowledge.

McMahon does his usual excellent job of portraying a shop soiled anti-hero in the figure of Bill, someone broken by the circumstances of his life, with the memory of a good man that once might have been lurking in the corners of the narrative. We are saddened by what he has become, but understand all too well his reasons, the losses that are the sum of his being. The backdrop is the most interesting aspect of the story, a world in which the monsters are real, though at the same time creatures of urban legend, seen only by those they kill. McMahon cleverly reverses the usual polarity of this kind of story, with the revelation of the bluebirds offering proof that the monsters exist, and one assumes that the birds are meant to represent the human soul, the things which are best in us, which is why Bill's own bluebird is so remote. At the same time, there is the possibility that Bill has finally gone mad, and what he sees is simply a deathbed fantasy of consolation.