Divine in Essence

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If eyes are the windows to the soul, then book covers are the windows to the souls of books. They are what catch your eye while browsing the shelves at your local bookstore, or perusing the book pages online. As a former bookseller with over a decade of experience, I can attest to this, as well as making the choice to face out a book or put it on an endcap or display table. The cover needs to be something that grabs the bookseller’s eye, and then grabs a browser’s eye enough for them to pick up the book and investigate.

Divine in Essence by Yarrow Paisley is one of those books. The cover is bursting with color: red, purple, yellow, green and eye-catching yellow. It shows a strange anthropomorphic tree creature holding a small Baba Yaga house with chicken legs in a red field with a purple sky and a misshapen moon. It begs the onlooker to ask the question: well, what’s going on here? And in the case of Paisley’s book, the answer is a strange and creepy and bizarre and wonderful and outré collection of short stories the likes of which you’ve never read before.

With the tagline “After God created the Prison of the World, he threw away the key . . . A few unfortunate but charismatic innocents seek to find it,” the collection is divided into three parts: “Divine,” “In,” and “Essence.” The anthology begins with “The Great Event,” which is an excellent appetizer for the collection you are about to read. The story is about Helen, the daughter of parents Rhea and the very unlikeable and frankly disgusting Mr. Runcible.

Helen has always known she is unique and bound for greatness, while Mr. Runcible considers himself the instrument of fostering and seeing that that greatness comes to full fruition. Rhea, who almost died in birthing Helen, was pushed by her husband to death “in an attempt to carve her delightfully feminine body in a hundred tiny replicas of itself.” And while Helen goes on a similar journey after Mr. Runcible has “played his part,” she turns out to be a much greater and more important being than he ever could’ve imagined.

The story is anything but straightforward, and in there lies its beauty. Often, these stories straddle the line of narrative and poetry, but the subject matter is so cerebral and cosmic and divine and mythological and surreal that that feels the only true language to correctly and exactly convey the story to the reader on the page. “The Great Event” will remind readers of Clive Barker’s clever hand in his lyrical writing and totally out-there and wild storytelling.

“I in the Eye” is a story told from the point of view of a seven year old whose father introduces him to his new fiancée, who just so happens to have a glass eye. Nothing really unusual about that, except on the first page we learn she has some truly sinister plans ahead. Clara Bell is very playful with the boy, as well as being seductively dressed, and as he unavoidably stares into her artificial eye, he sees his reflection. And yes, as he continues to stare over time, he sees the boy in the eye is not just his reflection but something more. The reflection acts differently, moves differently, and seems to have some dangerous intentions.

Before the boy knows it, the two are swapped through some magical trickery, and he finds himself trapped and incarcerated within the glass eye. The homunculus plays the part of the boy now, enjoying his world and life, while the boy’s father has no idea anything has changed, but Clara Belle of course knows full well what has happened. The homunculus delights in playing with the boy’s marbles, no doubt because they are veritable simulacrums of glass eyes. The story comes to a head (pun intended) when the two must confront each other across their glassy prison wall.

”Your Mother Loves You” is a both disturbing and loving story about the mother of a boy who turns him into a girl under the knife and treats him as such for the rest of her life. The mother is one of the strangest and most possessive creatures to be read about on the page, and while it is never fully clear if the boy-now-girl wished this in any way for themselves, by the end of the story they find a solace and new love to warm their heart.

What if a ghost kept a diary? This is the prompt for the next story, “Metaphor of the Lakes.” Gracie knows something is off as soon as she opens her eyes, but she also knows her life has been wrong for a long time, possibly even years. There is her brother, Bob, who may actually be a cat; actually in all likelihood is. But nothing is certain in the house where Gracie resides. Her memory is broken and uncertain, never to be fully depended on. Just snippets of images here and there.

And the passage of time is similarly something not to be trusted. Hence the diary where she can record her thoughts and ideas. Then there is Mr. Menders, who she knows is a bad man and does not trust in the least one bit! And then there is Mr. Scatt, who is such a helpful soul, and Gracie is delighted when she learns he is reading her diary (as she’d hoped) and adding some marginalia to confirm some of her thoughts and ideas. Perhaps with his help she will be able to find out if she is truly a ghost and what perchance happened to her to render her form incorporeal.

“Fever Visions” is, unsurprisingly, about horrific visions experienced while suffering a fever. Specifically, incredibly disturbing visions of a very fiery and sinister hell. Hattie knows her mother has suffered from such visions for some time, as well as experiencing the fever, and so when she is beset with the same symptoms, she has some inkling what she is in store for. They both suffer from what is known as V’Eye Rust; something that wouldn’t be wished upon a worst enemy. But fortunately, Hattie has her mother to help and tend to her, and guide her through. And it is not until the fevers are gone, the visions abated, that she knows what the real truth is.

“Nancy and Her Man” is the most delicate and perhaps most moving story of the collection. A woman is dancing around Herman’s grave. While she is not extremely youthful, she is nevertheless very beautiful and a sight to behold for a dead man. Herman can see her from the ground below and is so enticed he rises up (much like a zombie) to engage with her. His faculties are barely there at all, but he does possess some memory of her. He believes her name is Nancy.

She says she knows him very well, but is somewhat cryptic on what details she is willing to give him. She feeds him fresh dirt that he finds delicious and rejuvenating, and then leads him on a pleasant walk where they engage in wonderful conversation. But while she tells him his name is not actually Herman, that was his stage name, he finds parts of him are starting to disconnect and drop, and while more fresh dirt helps a little, it is clear something is still very wrong with him, other than being a corpse. It is then that Nancy tells him the full and complete story.

In “Rocking Horse Traffic,” readers get to experience what it must’ve been like to be Frankenstein’s monster. Told from the point of view of a boy who has literally been made and put together by his father, he tries to have a normal existence with loving parents, but every time there is an accident or something goes wrong, and he is “disfigured,” his father must attach the piece of him that has come loose, or put him back together again, much like Humpty Dumpty. It is a story about cost; the cost of life, the cost of love, and how much it is all worth.

There are some other stories in Divine in Essence: “Icarus in Bardot,” “Mary Alice in the Mirror,” and “The Life of Cherry” that I leave for the reader to enjoy unspoiled and fresh and new as a blossoming spring flower. What I can say is that Yarrow Paisley’s writing is something special; something to be enjoyed. His stories are moving and make you think, and leave you wondering for some time after you have finished reading the story. Paisley plays around with words in a way I haven’t seen on the page before, as well as experimenting with story format that makes each story an interesting journey to embark upon.

Divine in Essence is a collection you will want to read if you like a challenge in your reading, if you like to be whisked away to somewhere you never could’ve imagined, and ultimately if you want to thoroughly lose yourself in someone else’s imagination, which at the end of it all is why we read stories to begin with, then you’ll want to read this collection.


Reviewed By:

Author Yarrow Paisley
Star Count 4.5/5
Format Trade
Page Count 200 pages
Publisher Whiskey Tit
Publish Date 16-Oct-2024
ISBN 9781952600555
Bookshop.org Buy this Book
Issue January 2025
Category Horror
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