Book Review : Charlene Elsby - Red Flags (2024)

Oct 18

Oct 18 Book Review : Charlene Elsby - Red Flags (2024)

Charlene Elsby is a philosophy PhD and a horror author who writes stories that are exactly what you'd imagine them to be. No matter how violent and horrifying it gets on the "ever inaccessible outside", they are inevitably about how byzantine, uncomfortable and terrifying it is to be trapped within oneself. She's like a closer in baseball. She's got one pitch, but it works on everyone. At least it's what I thought until I started her new short story collection Red Flags, which shows new, unexpected nuances to her game.

Red Flags features three different parts: the titular Red Flags, Letter to Jenny Just After She Died (which I believe was a originally a chapbook published in 2022) and Dirt Wet With Blood. I might be completely beside the point, but I believe it is respectively: original stories, an older project and reprints. All three are interesting and unapologetically Elsbyesque in their own right, but the first part is the most different and daring of the collection. It's where Charlene Elsby shows some heart in her own convoluted way?

The Inexorable Pain and Loneliness of Being a Human Being

For the first time since I started reading Charlene Elsby, I believe it’s the first time I encounter characters who aren’t cold, calculating automatons who cannot relate to the pain and loneliness of someone else. Her characters are still hopelessly alone, but in a different, more heartbreaking way. The opening story Whitefish for Luna is narrated from the perspective of a pedestrian dying under a car that ran her over. Her thoughts are swirling uncontrollably and it’s really hard not to feel for her.

Seriously, it’s fucking devastating.

The character is hopelessly alone, but her predicament communicates that loneliness for her. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World is narrated from the perspective of someone who has seen her life being pulled away from her and therefore wants to destroy the normalcy and the carefreeness she once had. Dick That Won’t Quit is about a man who wants to grow a bigger dick in order to get over a breakup. His longing is silly and idiosyncratic, but his predicament is universal and therefore, his story is human.

Don’t Stand Around the Liquefier is more of a conventional Eslby story with philosophical underpinnings where the narrator feels useless and objectified at work and figures she’s at least smarter than an obnoxious sign telling her something she already knows. The title story and Frozen are the two other standouts in this first part of Red Flags, which explore these feelings of hyperrationalized rage and isolation in a way that makes them feel less understandable that they should be.

I mean Elsby doesn’t completely revolutionize her writing here. She merely adds a layer of emotion and humanity to her byzantine and solipsistic narratives. It alters and deepers the perspective on what she does, but she remains the same ol’ explorer of existential loneliness.

Jenny and the Olds

Letters to Jenny Just After She Died was interesting for different reasons. In many ways it’s even more different than the opening stories because it explores desire in impossible circumstances. It’s one of the brainier collection of stories as it begs the question: was the narrator feeling these feelings before Jenny died or is she reinterpreting her own story BECAUSE Jenny died? Also, is she using Jenny as a symbol to make up for something else the can’t obtain? Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure is mine.

As far as the rest of the stories are involved, I’d already read a couple of those and many of them feel like the equivalent of DVD extras if that makes sense? There are poems, short plays/screenplays that I don’t think were ever meant to be produced. They were merely experiment with form. There’s also a nice metafictional twist at the end with Biography of Marie Alighieri, which I believe is one of the most telling pieces about Charlene Elsby herself. It’s added value, but it won’t sucked punch long-time readers.

Red Flags is another fascinating step in Charlene Eslby’s evolution as a writer. Would’ve I taken a collection full of originals? Absolutely. Did I also enjoy the fragmented, almost found footage presentation of Red Flags? Yeah, I kind of did too. Red Flags will be coming out from the almighty House of Vlad on October 30th, just in time to crawl under your skin for Halloween. I suggest you pre-order it now and get it delivered right on your doorstep for the spookiest day of the year. As usual, you can thank me then.