Intervals of Horrible Sanity | |||||
Michelle Scalise | |||||
Medium Rare Books Publishing, 183 pages | |||||
A review by Lisa DuMond
"Three Floors Down We Cleanse The Soul" forces readers to inhabit the dismal world of Rebel, a relative who is manipulated -- in the
way that only those who supposedly love you can -- to care for a human vegetable, a lump of flesh that should have died long ago,
but his heart has not gotten the message to stop beating. In between stomach-churning duties in the sick room, she shares the
house with her uncle's mentally unstable family and a deadweight of secrets and lies that ensnares all who enter. But, the most
closely-held secrets are too powerful to contain and, when they slip out, the devastation is total. Rebel's voice is a twisted
lullaby, haunting the reader long after the particulars of the story are lost to memory.
Quick, sharp shocks await in many of the selections -- deceptively brief, but packing a full load of unpleasant
surprises. "The Night Around Me Falling," "Just Someone Her Mother Might Know," and "Where Death Sends Here" are a trio that
Rod Serling would probably have jumped on in an instant. Shocks of a more scandalous bent lay their horror out in sexual
obsessions and acts that manage to leave "normal" paraphilias far behind. "Wages of Faith" and "Blunting the Fine Point of
Pain" represent these particular horrors and earn my extremely rare NC-17 rating which hasn't cropped up in quite awhile.
More than the plots in this collection make it one of the truly great books of 2003; Scalise has a gift for creating
unforgettable characters. Seth Taylor, Cynthi James, Redmond, and Sister Theresa -- all saddled with burdens too heavy for
any to carry more than a few staggering steps. The solutions they find and how much they believe they can bear say more
about their nature than any standard method of description could ever provide. Weak, kind, disturbed, or luckless, they
shoulder the weight of Scalise's stories, even as it grinds them down, the unwanted obligation that haunts them.
Haunting. Rarely does one word so perfectly describe an author's work. But, most authors are not Michelle Scalise. And
the emotional impact of short stories and poems is seldom as intense as in Intervals of Horrible Sanity. Scalise
brings to life -- or death -- a level that is sometimes too painful to look at directly, but which we have always
suspected, when we have allowed ourselves to conceive, before we pushed such thoughts away. Far, far away.
In between reviews, articles, and interviews, Lisa DuMond writes science fiction, horror, dark realism, and humour. DARKERS, her first novel, was published in August 2000 by Hard Shell Word Factory. She is a contributing editor at SF Site and for BLACK GATE magazine. Lisa has also written for BOOKPAGE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Science Fiction Weekly, and SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE. You can check out Lisa and her work at her website hikeeba!. |
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