Figurehead

I don't usually do reviews, but as a change of pace I just read this excellent compilation of short stories by Carly Holmes, an author based in West Wales.

Here's my effort at lit crit:

'Figurehead is a superior collection of short tales and poems, full of intellectual and emotional honesty, often not for the faint-hearted. Carly Holmes writes with a savage eloquence that grips the reader’s attention and refuses to let go. As another reviewer noted, there is an earthy sensuality to Holmes’s writing; one can almost sense the stale, hungover atmosphere of booze, cigarettes, bad sex and endless disappointment hanging over the more character-orientated stories. Blood, dirt and semen drip from every page, though Holmes is too skilful a writer to deal in mere shock or exploitation. Each one of these tales is carefully constructed and imbued with a fierce intelligence.

Holmes also has a keen grasp of horror, expressed in more traditional spiritual forms (Ghost Story, Three for a Girl) and the starkly physical (They Tell Me). Ghost Story in particular is a brilliant rewriting of the age-old ‘lonely cottage in a forest’ trope, most famously exploited onscreen in The Blair Witch Project. The author is a master of generating and prolonging tension, and possesses an apparently bottomless sack of nouns; the forest is described as a ‘gnarl of woodland’, for instance, conjuring the image of ancient wilderness, full of mystery and hidden evil. Holmes’s invention in this respect, the ability to avoid clichés and describe the humdrum with vivid clarity, puts fellow authors to shame. They Tell Me is a downright horrific account of a defenceless woman’s ordeal in a mental hospital, slowly ripped to pieces by her doctors in a vain effort to uncover the source of her ‘insanity’. Their brutal methods are described in vivid detail, both repellent and intoxicating.

 Holmes also writes with a deft touch and a keen sense of the absurd, as demonstrated in the twin-part opener, The Demon L and Miss Luna; the unlikely but compelling adventures of a murderess turned bearded lady. Sleep is the merciless tale of a single mother’s struggle to cope with her mentally damaged child, while Alter, Heartwood and Into The Woods express Holmes’s visceral fascination with nature. True nature, red in tooth and claw, rather than some bloodless story-book version. Heartwood also explores the contrast between wilderness and civilisation and how they relate to themes of human happiness. Alter and Into the Woods explore the theme of transformation, of people physically returning to the wild via altered states and consciousness.

It isn’t all savagery and horror. Gentler themes of ageing and parent-child relations occur in Strumpet and Bake Day. The latter is a touching account of a lonely mother with three young sons to look after, and how much of her individuality is swallowed up her children. They, in turn, only exist with her permission. The image of her ‘eating’ her sons by consuming gingerbread versions of them is particularly memorable. The collection ends on Rootless, an eloquent and brutal dissection of fairy tales, in which ‘tooth fairies’ appear as cruel, manipulative creatures, using the extraction of teeth to control humans. If I have one very minor criticism, it is that I would have liked to read more of Holmes’s take on ancient fairy tales, with all their blood and cruelty and dark magic (or magick, if you prefer).

 No hesitation in awarding five shiny gold stars.'

Figurehead on Amazon