Brent Stauffer reviews Ghostly Demarcations by Joe Taylor.
What follows is one AWC member sharing their thoughts on a new book by another AWC member. We are grateful to Brent Stauffer for his close reading of this short fiction collection by Joe Taylor (Sagging Meniscus Press (June 1, 2019).
“Unabashedly conventional horror tales with an understated but remarkable lead character.,” says Kirkus Reviews.
Joe Taylor’s story collection Ghostly Demarcations is a meditation on friendship, growing up in the South and the nature of haunting. Taylor’s voice rings true, with a lyricism woven from homespun cloth, shot through with threads of otherworldly gold. Only the fantastical elements of wraiths, poltergeists and the like remind you that perhaps this isn’t, strictly speaking, a memoir.
We first meet our unnamed hero at ten years old, in rural Kentucky, as his best friend Galen describes his recent ghost sighting. (The book is, in part, dedicated to a person named Galen. Maybe these stories are more true than an adult brain can comfortably fathom!) Their unbreakable bond is a main fixture around which all the events described, spooky or otherwise, revolve. This is true even when the arcs of their lives have bent away from each other. In “Angel’s Wings,” where Galen is in the Navy, worlds away, he is yet heard by his friend in a time of great need via a rinky dink homemade radio. Not only does Galen figure prominently in every story of the collection, he usually appears in the first page, if not the opening sentence itself. In “Faithful Companion,” which takes place during his days at the University of Kentucky, the narrator remarks, “Ha! Let UK’s atomic clock click it’s loudest: what care I, with such a faithful companion close by?”
Another near constant element of these tales is a wry humor, sometimes self deprecating, other times displayed with postmodern flair. Taylor teases us a couple times with the nameless nature of our protagonist: in “I Am the Egg” elderly, clueless Mister Howard rifles off a list of incorrect monikers. (We get a good sense of what his name isn’t!) In “The Perfect Ghost Story, Plus One,” when a girl introduces herself by name, our hero tries to reciprocate only to be rudely interrupted!
Underneath the humor and homespun texture of these stories, however, lurks the constant threat of an incursion of the supernatural. Time after time, Taylor regales the reader with a charming tale of growing up in the New South; and when a comfortable mood is firmly established, the bottom drops out with the arrival of something that is Not of This World. More than once a reader might have to go back over a passage for a missed clue, only to find that the abruptness of the shift is, indeed seamless. After continuing to encounter these transformations, one develops a slight tickle in the back of the brain as the story unfolds in stately fashion. The anticipation, subconscious or not, of a surreal explosion creates a pleasing background tension that keeps the reader awake and engaged.
The combinations of real and unreal, humorous and poignant, full fledged characters and well crafted master storyline, create, in Ghostly Demarcations, an overall delight. The exploration of friendship over time is laid across the known and unknown, in particular, quite naturally, the mysterious dynamics between Life and Death. The reader is left with a profound sense that life, with all its unexpectedness and certainty of a tragic end, is well worth the living.