Parallel Hells

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Carly had attempted to explain her sexuality to a male character, Luke: “why should I put myself through something I know I won’t enjoy. Yet, they are terrified of being noticed, like the rat which causes a horrifying shock when he scurries through Stan and Marie’s flat. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

She holds her breath and tries to squeeze further along, her left arm outstretched towards the light, such as it is, a glow from the kitchen”. A particular highlight for me was ‘Hags’, a tale of an ancient (possibly demonic) entity currently in human form, enjoying the London party scene and navigating how to continue to feed on humans whilst also befriending them; and forming relationships destined to fail as they inevitably outlive any friends. P arallel Hells is a debut short story collection from Leon Craig which uses sensuous gothic horror and folklore to explore queerness, identity, love, and power in strange and intriguing ways. In this deliciously strange debut collection, Leon Craig draws on folklore and gothic horror in refreshingly inventive ways to explore queer identity, love, power and the complicated nature of being human. I loved some of the stories in this collection, I liked others, and I’m pretty sure I’m not smart enough to understand a few.By turns dark, sharp, witty and tender, I'm a huge fan of Leon Craig's writing, and the way she reveals the complex dance of beauty and brutality in our innermost, most vulnerable selves. Tommy talks about the fear of getting stuck and jamming “like a piece of wood you stick in a wall or something. I found the best stories were the ones that were a little longer, because they gave Craig a chance to flex her impressive writing muscles and created more space for her examination of the human condition through these surreal vibes. Craig takes figures and tropes familiar to the horror genre – the vampire, the undead bride, the haunted book in a dusty library, demons, possession, haunted houses – but skilfully integrates them with the sensibilities and concerns of readers today.

Part-way through the narrative of this story, the page splits and we are presented with two characters’ perspectives running parallel down the page. The horror in this collection is less overt than you might be expecting; these aren’t stories that will make you squeamish, they’re stories that will wake you up in the middle of the night. One thing that drew me to this book as soon as I picked it up was reading in the blurb that it had a story in about golems, which are one of my favourite mythological creatures. All of the stories play on surrealism and I love that they are influenced by folklore and other gothic literature. When Stan, who is white, confronts Gary, who is black, the encounter bristles with accusations of racism.Her academic work focuses on contemporary trauma literature and theory but her freelance and creative work covers any and all topics, particularly those which deal with the horrors of capitalism and issues of gender and class. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Whilst a party next door throbs through the walls, she drifts through her house with a ghostly lack of purpose. The little details make the stories more encompassing and really add to the eerie theme of the collection. She squeezes into the dark space, pursuing a dot of light on the other side of the wall, beyond which, the neighbour’s party thrives.