BOOK REVIEW: ALL THE FABULOUS BEASTS BY PRIYA SHARMA

by laura mauro 

I’ve been a fan of Priya Sharma’s work since I first read her story “The Sunflower Seed Man”, which appeared in Black Static #37 back in 2013, and so when her debut collection was announced by Michael Kelly at Undertow it instantly rocketed to the top of my ‘must read’ list. Undertow Publications have become somewhat notorious for producing beautiful books, and “All the Fabulous Beasts” is no exception – the accompanying artwork is the perfect complement to Sharma’s darkly beautiful prose, and great attention to detail has clearly been paid to the placement of each story, both in terms of typesetting and chronology.

Opening tale “The Crow Palace” is the perfect introduction to Sharma’s unique style; a story about the secrets we keep, and the stories we tell ourselves to justify our behaviour. More importantly, though, it turns notions of normativity and belonging on their head, deftly sidestepping expectations. “Rag and Bone” is an early favourite, a Mieville-esque sideways squint at a sanguinary city that looks a bit like Liverpool, in which a pound of flesh is viable currency; there is a heart at the core of this story, beneath the gore; this story truly showcases Sharma’s unique ability to imbue strange, dark narratives with authentic emotion.

“The Anatomist’s Mnemonic” is our first glimpse of pure horror, charting the consequences of fixation and obsession with an ending that might have been clichéd in less skilled hands (no pun intended). I had the privilege of hearing “Egg” read aloud at Fantasycon a few years ago, and it has lost none of its magic. A beautifully dark fairytale, “Egg” explores the unconditional love between mother and child, and, like “The Crow Palace”, asks us to consider the nature of imperfection; an important question in a time where society is beginning to open to the notion that to be born disabled is not necessarily to be born ‘less than’. The ending is triumphant, and utterly sublime, and here again Sharma’s ability to mix the uncanny and the emotional takes centre stage. “The Sunflower Seed Man” is wire-taut throughout, another brilliantly crafted piece of horror, followed by “The Ballad of Boomtown”, a slightly longer story in which regret takes centre stage, a litany of bad choices and terrible, inescapable consequences set against a well-realised backdrop of economic decline.

“The Show” casts a wry wink in the direction of Derek Acorah et al, while “Pearls” revisits classical mythology in a story thematically reminiscent of Gaiman’s American Gods, except that the female characters are more deftly drawn. And then to “The Absent Shade”, which is perhaps my favourite story in the book. An almost Shakespearean tragedy, “The Absent Shade” follows Thomas, the neglected son of wealthy Hong Kong Chinese parents, and a woman named Umbra, the family’s Filipina domestic servant. The narrative leaps masterfully back and forth in time, charting Thomas’s lonely, empty future and the terrible decision that led him there. “The Absent Shade” paints a world cast in perpetual shadow, in which the wealthy abuse their privilege, and the abandoned cling to scraps of warmth, and retribution, even at its most righteous, feels very much like damnation. A masterpiece of storytelling.

“Small Town Stories” brings us closer to home, a love letter of sorts to small lives in small places, and the unexpected depths that lurk beneath mundane surfaces. “Fish Skins” recalls folkloric accounts of selkies, mermaids and swan maidens, prying gently at the brutality inherent in old tales of shapeshifters and taking a softer road. At its heart, it’s about love, both of the shapeshifting women of myth and legend, and of the sea from which they so often originate. “The Rising Tide” too invokes the sea, but in drastically different circumstances; in this story women do not originate from the sea, but are taken by it, drowning on dry land. The hospital drama underpinning the story is clearly informed by Sharma’s own medical background, and is all the more effective for its authenticity, sacrificing neither fact nor feeling in its portrayal of the profession – often a difficult balance to strike.
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“The Englishman” is a short, strangely sweet tale which straddles British and Indian culture, weaving Hindu lore and English history in a story about how we shape our identity, and about rebirth. “The Nature of Bees” and “A Son of the Sea” explore hybridity in very different ways; the latter is a particularly strong story which, like “The Absent Shade”, considers the ways in which we are shaped by our past, but comes with a sharp dose of very effective body horror which may make male readers shudder. Closing tale, the titular “Fabulous Beasts”, is perhaps the best known of Sharma’s stories, and for good reason; it’s a visceral gutpunch which charts the messy dissolution of a family, and a young girl’s escape from an abusive patriarch. To say more would spoil what makes this story so special, so I will simply say that this is the perfect way to close a book of uncommonly good stories; Sharma paints pictures with prose, and every story has multiple layers which leave food for thought long after you’ve finished reading. Priya Sharma’s star is on the rise, and I can think of no better ambassador to the British horror scene.

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