Phantasy Moste Grotesk
by Felicity Dowker
Review 1
Corpulent Insanity Press (2009)
Chapbook, limited edition of 26 copies
Reviewed by Simon Petrie, Feb 2009
Felicity Dowker is a young Australian horror writer who, barely a year after first sending off her first work of short fiction, is already heralding the release of her first book. Phantasy Moste Grotesk is the inaugural offering from US small press publisher Corpulent Insanity’s line in limited-edition chapbooks, with an accent on the weird, the horrific, and (it seems) the downright blood-spattered.
I should, before cutting to the meat of this review, acknowledge that Dowker is a member of both the Specusphere reviewing team and the Andromeda Spaceways publishing co-op, both affiliations I also hold myself. But I believe it’s crucial to review any item impartially, and I’ll strive to do my best on that score.
Phantasy is a short work, its business done within thirty-odd pages. I’d judge it to be technically a novelette, but it may be merely a longish short story. Be that as it may, it’s fairly brutal stuff.
The story opens with a knock on the door. Josh expects a pizza delivery, but instead it’s a mysterious black-eyed boy, who insists that Josh let him in, to avert an unnamed disaster. Josh, instead, sends the kid packing; but, unnerved, places a pleading call to his long-suffering ex-lover Erin, who agrees to check in.
My expertise in the horror genre is limited, but it seems to me the most obvious parallel with earlier work would be Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. There’s a great deal of Bradbury’s carnival-and-calliope ambiance to Phantasy, though the horror here has, I think, a harder and more visceral edge. I’d also say that, where Dowker’s evocation of the ruined relationship between Josh and Erin is razor-sharp and haunting, her exploration of the Grand Guignol nightmare in which the pair become enmeshed is not uniformly successful. This, I think, is a matter of the macabre being laid out too plainly for the reader’s eyes. While the story certainly succeeds in presenting some intentionally grotesque images, these are sometimes too hastily introduced, and too hurriedly packed away, to be truly resonating. Nonetheless, Josh emerges as a memorably troubled (and troubling) individual, with a past that Dowker takes her time in dissecting. Ultimately, the story’s strength derives not from the dark carnival theatrics, but from the pervading sense of loss and harm that quietly pads along behind Josh and Erin while they walk into whatever fate awaits them.
Review 2
Corpulent Insanity Press (2009)
Chapbook, limited edition of 26 copies
Reviewed by Paul Mannering, Mar 2009
There is a richness to Felcity Dowker's prose, a richness and a deeply unsettling wrongness. It's like biting into a Belgian Chocolate only to have a pus-filled cyst squirt into your mouth instead of creamed praline. And if that image upsets you, then you aren't the intended audience for Phantasy Moste Grotesk.
Dowker does not linger with long build-ups to the freakiness in her story. She hits you with it in the first paragraph. It's a wonderful way to get the reader's attention. You spend the next few pages so rattled by how it started that your nerves are overly hyped for the more casual pace of the follow up.
When The Black Eyed Kid shows up at Josh Tarnell's door he brings with him a prelude to the horror to come. As a protagonist Josh is not likeable, in fact he lets us know very quickly that he is a pathetic, deeply disturbed and altogether unpleasant individual. His ex-girlfriend is no more likeable. They have secrets, some shared with each other but others are as shocking to them as they are to us. We cannot help but take macabre delight in having these unpleasant details revealed for the first time as this story advances in a steady, well-paced progression from unsettling to utterly grotesque.
Descriptive images and the poetry of good prose are generally well-used. Where passages could be overly wrought, Dowker stops just short of blowing it and instead develops her characters; by presenting a few horror clichés as being from their perception.
Scared shitless by the Black Eyed Kid's threats and warnings, Josh summons his one-time, and apparently masochistic, girlfriend Erin and they go for a walk. They find a circus and then go on a journey through a bizarre freak show. Carnivals and freak shows are a staple part of most horror writer's portfolio; though this incarnation manages to avoid many of the standard clichés.
I was reminded of John Everson's Needles and Sins where various incarnations of hell and suffering are presented. Like Everson, Dowker uses visceral horror to drive the shocks home, the difference here is that Dowker does not give us a morality tale, and there is no deserved damnation. The events are more coincidental and yet nicely brought together in an ending that is both disturbing and satisfying at the same time.
Phantasy Moste Grotesk is a limited edition publication from Corpulent Insanity Press which should be sought after by all fans of strongly written original horror fiction.
