Book Review: I SPIT MYSELF OUT REVIEW BY TRACY FAHEY

I SPIT MYSELF OUT REVIEW BY TRACY FAHEY

5/4/2022

Tracy Fahey - I Spit Myself Out review

Having previously read and enjoyed Fahey’s The Unheimlich Manoeuvre (and the ‘bonus tracks’ collection Unheimlich Manoeuvres In The Dark), I was eager to get my hands on her most recent collection from Sinister Horror Press.

It did not disappoint.

I Spit Myself Out is a collection of stories with strong thematic resonances; the collection ‘writes the Gothic self’, as the brilliant introduction has it. Recurring themes are aging, mortality, hauntings both internal and external, and self alienation. Not every story carries every element, but threads of these concerns are woven throughout the collection. These stories are also unapologetically told from a woman’s perspective, though as a man currently trying to make sense of middle age, I found many of the stories powerfully resonant and relevant.

It’s also part of why this review has taken so unforgivably long to produce; the stories carry a powerful emotional weight, and I frequently found myself needing to take a break to digest what I’d just read. Fahey has a distinct voice, gently but insistently poetic, and an enviable talent for building tension or describing a downward spiral; taken together, this creates a collection of considerable emotional weight and depth.

Despite the thematic commonalities, there’s also considerable variety here; I’ll Be Your Mirror, for example, deploys an interwoven flashback narrative alongside a tale about object obsession to deliver a powerful double emotional blow ending, The Wrong Ones goes in tight for a claustrophobic slice of rural secrets forced to the surface, Becoming tackles aging and a growing sense of alienation from one's own body in a narrative I’m still thinking about several months later… over and over again, Fahey matches literary technique and prose style to best serve the story she’s trying to tell.

I Spit Myself Out is a fiercely intelligent, emotionally dense collection of short horror that, for me, pulls off the extraordinary trick of rendering the deeply personal such that it has a universal resonance; by interrogating these themes fearlessly, Fahey has crafted a collection of stories that have lingered long in the mind and heart. It’s a deeply impressive achievement, and it’s been an honor to spend time in and with the narratives Fahey has presented.

KP
2/2/22

I Spit Myself Out
by Tracy Fahey

Eighteen unsettling narratives map the female experience from puberty to menopause.

I Spit Myself Out is a collection of female-voiced stories exploring the terror that lurks beneath the surface of the skin.

In this collection, an Anatomical Venus opens to display her organs, clients of a mysterious clinic disappear one by one, a police investigation reveals family secrets, revenge is inked in the skin, and bodies pulsate in the throes of illness, childbirth and religious ritual.

Disturbing and provoking in equal turns, I Spit Myself Out reinvents the body as a breeding ground of terrors that resurface inexorably in the present.