 I stumbled upon award-winning author Georgina Bruce’s first collection, This House of Wounds thanks to multiple recommendations from the Twitter horror community, and I fell in love with her style and voice after reading the very first sentence. She temped me inside her gingerbread house of horrors where I was both deceived by the beautiful cover art and enthralled by the dark stories within. I adored it. As one of my very favourite collections of 2019, it was challenging act to follow. I was delighted to find that her novella, Honeybones, did not disappoint in the slightest. Distortion and unpredictability are two of Bruce’s finest talents as a writer here, and she is indeed an exceptional writer. Elements of the story are revealed slowly, piece by piece, teasing us and misleading us, as if the narrator were dancing the Seven Veils. The protagonist, Anna Carrow, is gripped by mental illness and bullied mercilessly at school. As if that weren’t enough, her mother, Sarah, has emotionally abandoned her and is rarely physically present, and her stepfather, Tom, is a manipulative, abusive narcissist. Yet Bruce manages to side-step any usual horror tropes, while deftly intertwining them into the bones of the story. Monsters, madwomen, freaky dolls and magic spells — all of these are essential to the plot, but rarely in ways you might expect. This is a multi-layered gothic fairytale, where fantasy and reality blur and meld, creating a complex world of mirrors that appear to reflect everything but the actual truth. Honeybones reminded me of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, albeit an R-rated, raw and violent version, where the predatory Goblin King is exposed for what he really is: a toxic, misogynistic, abuser. The frequent romanticism of such terrible characters has always been a great source of annoyance for me, and Honeybones breaks that mould with gusto. Bruce takes us back to how it felt to be young and uncertain about the opposite sex, and the confusion that surrounded our budding desires. She reaches into that immature, inexperienced teenaged part of us that had none or very little knowledge of what real love could be. Or should be. Where every morsel of praise and admiration given to us by those we yearned for, was a feast that we could dine on for weeks. She pulls at our insecurities and makes us examine our own behaviours. Our relationships with our parents and friends. What woman doesn’t have a story of a terrible ex or an ill-advised paramour? Especially with an older man. That desperate need, that deep desire, is what Bruce pulls us along with, even though we know it is wrong. Ultimately, as many fairytales are, this is a story about power. About finding and regaining that power, and understanding who we truly are. Anna asserts and remakes herself, finally peeling back the layers of uncertainty, finding her own truth amongst the lies. As the dynamic shifts and Anna finds her voice — literally — the ending reaches a towering crescendo as she steps out of her own shadow and her patriarchal demons are dispatched and overcome. In Honeybones, Bruce reminds us that words can be as powerful as weapons, and we should take great care which ones we let inside our heads. Read if you like: Dark, layered, gothic fairy tales voiced by strong, female leads. Stories steeped in metaphor and retribution. Delicious, poetic prose and powerful, vibrant imagery. Similar notable works: Girls Made Of Snow And Glass by Melissa Bashardoust Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones The Sleeper And The Spindle by Neil Gaiman The Book Of Lost Things by John Connolly The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter Transformations by Anne Sexton Review by Tabatha Wood  Tabatha Wood lives in New Zealand and writes weird, dark fiction and uplifting poetry. Despite her obsession with the strange and unusual, she considers herself mostly harmless. A former English teacher and library manager, Tabatha now teaches from home while writing in her spare time. She released her debut collection, “Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange” in March 2019. Since then she has had short stories published in a number of antipodean horror magazines. Tabatha is the lead editor in a team of twelve for the “Black Dogs, Black Tales” anthology. The collection aims to raise money and awareness for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and will be published by ’Things In The Well Press’ in May 2020. You can read more of her writing on her website https://tabathawood.com and her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tlwood.wordweaver/   THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR BOOK REVIEWSComments are closed.
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