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Richo Reviews: Your Body Is Not Your Body, Various Authors (Tenebrous Press, 2022)

 One thing I love is a themed horror collection. An array of different takes on the same theme, commonalities spiraling off into individual and idiosyncratic concepts. Make that theme something as deeply personal as a trans perspective on body horror, and you have the makings of something not only exciting and inventive, but insightful, painful, powerful.

The variety on display here is dazzling and every story offers something unique; even some that explore similar territory on the surface do so through deeply personal lenses. Some are acutely, painfully in the present moment; others draw us to the distant past, imagined futures or other worlds. There are stories that invoke mundanity, the gothic, schlock, religious horror, science fiction, all spun around the anchor of the human body and its transformations. Speaking as someone who rarely feels grounded in his own body, these stories made me deathly aware of my chest tightening, my stomach churning, my skin crawling.

None of these stories are particularly long. This means that none outstay their welcome, but in fact several are incredible examples of what a talented writer can achieve in just a few pages. 'The Same Thing That Happened to Sam' by M. Lopes Silva, for example, is just long enough to say exactly what it needs to say; an angry, heartbreaking evocation of pain and hope. Devaki Devay's 'Lost in Reincarnation' and Ori Jay's 'Seaflowers', while very different stories, both fill their short wordcounts with beautiful, powerful imagery. 'Cholesterol-Monoxide' by W.N. Derring-Judith is a fragment of a gnostic nightmare, an oppressive collision of gears, goo and our fallen world.

These aren't the only standouts, of course. Joe Koch's 'Chironoplasty' is typically masterful and transgressive. Hailey Piper's 'Why We Keep Exploding' is a masterful combination of allegory and anger. Rain Corbyn's 'Tonsilstonespunksplatter666!' is both deeply humane and playfully punk - until it is angrily, fiercely, screamingly punk. In 'The Divine Carcass' Bitter Karella weaves a gothic tapestry through space, the human body, and the very throne of god. Astounding. And there are more, more, more - more stories strong enough to rend flesh, to melt bone, to dissolve you to ichor. Stories of pain, of power, of becoming. Who knows what you will be after this book has worked its changes on you?


(I read this book as part of the Trans Rights Readathon, raising money for Transgender Action Block. You can support them too at https://linktr.ee/transactionbloc or find out more about the readathon here)

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