Glass Coffin Girls is a collection of short stories written by Paul Jessup. And if this book was a guy, I'd have a crush on a very bad man.
The blurb description reads: "This is a crevice book... a shadow volume whose pages were written in the cracks of ancient cities and long since forgotten. Nine stories, nine shadows... words tattooed on skin, locked in towers, frozen under glass and sleeping with apple hearts, refusing to be defined. They are carved of light, and slither through your fingers like winter rain.
In these shadows you will find:- resurrection, quantum vampires and magic tricks- jealous mothers, dead birds, and a cannibal princess- a high school trapped behind a wall of snow- a man who makes art out of misery- a surreal war and a chance for survival- feral children, a dead mother and the bogeyman- hypnotism, speaking to the dead, a girl in thorns and a haunting- a drought, a story in reverse, and a man who makes a star out of a mermaid
Step inside... but be careful.
The path is uneven and will melt with every step, trapping you between worlds."
Creepy, huh? You're not wrong there.
But I HEART IT. This is the sort of stuff angsty, self-obsessed adults (maybe advanced teens) should be reading, not Twilight. There is some romance (of the obsessed, animalistic kind), but Glass Coffin Girls seems more to be a study of the soul than a study of the body (though there are plenty of body parts and a myriad of physical reactions described throughout each of the nine stories). The characters of the stories are boys and girls - each of them trapped like separate Snow Whites in glass coffins. Some become free. Some do not.
Yep - I'm really going to have to be abstract with my review of this book because the stories, the writing, the heart of the stories is abstract, like a Dali painting invading Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. The collection is surgically violent, sexually primal, and darkly fairytale in equal measure. The stories themselves read more like poetry than prose - it's written in short-sentenced grunts: stark and pumpkin-grin evil. Words are pinned carefully to the page and then examined in detail. I felt as if I was under a spell reading this - the first few sentences pull you in and then you're stuck, clawing at the walls and not really sure whether you're ready to turn and around and face what you must.
But I would be lying if I said I understood it all. There seems to be more layers to this sort of work than a wedding cake. And maybe it's a bit Forer Effect, where I'm just seeing the symbolism I like where there might just be randomness. I'm utterly confused, a little bit dazed and a little bit unused to light right now.
Definitely though, there are parts to each story that link up. The cruelty and fragility of human beings, the mirrored halves of the soul. Freedom and domesticity. Animal behaviours and model citizens. Wolves and dogs and rats and foxes. They're all there.
My favourites? I especially enjoyed the title story Glass Coffin Girls, for its beautiful and tormented bird-girl; Stone Girls for its classroom sexual morphings; Red Hairs for its forest dwellings and absence of clocks; and It Tasted Like The Sea, for its beautiful mermaid corpse.
I remember writing something like this at uni. Of course Paul Jessup has done it so much better. I mean, YES, there are some editing tweaks to be made. And the stories could be wound tighter around their core, if I'm to be perfectly critical. But the writing is the making of something brilliant. I just wonder, is there a name for this style of writing? Something between surrealism and magic realism? Something that exists 'between the cracks'? I hope I find it.
Of course, this book won't be for a lot of people. Some might be a little offended, some might be confused, some might be unmoved. If, however, you like things that are perversely pretty, like I do, then you might find yourself thoroughly enjoying this book, and perhaps even feeling guilty for it. I know, I know, I haven't given you much to go off. But it really is a collection that deserves to be speak and be discovered for itself. And quite frankly, no matter how hard I try, I can't explain it. It might be beyond my comprehension.
The best way I can describe Glass Coffin Girls? Like Cinderella walking over the shards of her own glass slipper, broken...the blood looks positively gorgeous against the crystalware, don't you think?
Rating: 4 gorgeously grotesque stars for Glass Coffin Girls.
