I Would Haunt You if I Could
by Seán Padraic Birnie
I first came across the work of Seán Padraic Birnie in the eighth instalment of Michael Kelly’s anthology of weird fiction Shadows and Tall Trees. Dollface, his contribution to that volume, features an apparently evil or cursed doll, a clear nod to a common trope of contemporary horror fiction. Yet, Birnie is less interested in the scares, than in the web of relationships between the narrator and his neighbour and their respective families. There is, throughout the story, a feeling of a rather drab normality going askew, a sense that something is disturbingly “off”, a flavour of ambiguity which invites readers to draw their own conclusions.
Dollface returns in I would Haunt You if I Could, Birnie’s debut collection of short stories issued this month by Canadian independent press Undertow Publications. Although the volume includes stories which have previously been in print, most of the tales are new to this collection. And they’re brilliant.
Birnie’s are unsettling stories which, as in Dollface, sometimes refer to or make use of established horror tropes, only to subvert them and create something new and more peculiar. Some examples… Out of the Blue features a father who comes back from the dead. But he’s neither a ghost nor a vampire, but just an ever-present, unspeaking presence – like a metaphor taking a solid shape. Other Houses is a “slipstream” story with elements of the haunted house and timeslip genres – but, again, the emphasis seems to be more on toxic familial relationships than on the supernatural/weird aspects of the tale. The horror element in Hand Me Down is a cursed baby monitor – but are we to take this literally or is the story a literary representation of post-natal depression?
This sense of ambiguity, as well as the “familial” context, runs like a thread through all the collection, including the longish title piece I Would Haunt You if I Could, whose narrator is coming to terms with grief caused by the death of a father and the ending of a relationship… and with a rediscovered telekinetic or telepathic gift.
Some of the stories are more conceptual – I’m thinking, for instance of Sisters, in which the protagonist creates – and gives life to – a copy of a dead sister. Or Holes and New to It All both of which use body horror in fresh, original – and very disturbing – ways.
What most strikes me
about this collection of fourteen stories is the beauty and mastery of language
found therein, worthy of the best fiction irrespective of style or genre.
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