Review: Phantasy Moste Grotesk

A rusty stained scalpel, nestled on a bed of black velvet.

Corpulent Insanity Press brings us Felicity Dowker's most significant publication to date in the form of a signed and numbered print run of 26 copies of a novelette entitled Phantasy Moste Grotesk.

It opens nicely with the traditional knock at the door by night. Instead of an expected pizza delivery, a black eyed boy stands there, wanting in.

Thus, the lid is lifted on this macabre pizza that the author has created for us. To a hiss that sounds like 'Seth' (now doesn't that seem like a word that a scalpel would whisper, if a scalpel could speak?) we take in the smell of this concoction, the scents of circus; popcorn, fairy floss, sawdust... and blood. Our eyes widen at sight of the glimpsed ingredients baked into the base. And even as we stare, eager to partake, we start to pay, the curl of our hair, the shine in our eyes, the softness of our skin, is taken...

The writer has used several figures from myth and legend and added them to her own recipe.

Therein you'll go with our two protagonists, Josh and Erin, to the Long Chat Place, a mundane location of sweet reminiscence, where, of course, the extramundane awaits. There you will enter a circus tent with this couple, 'Salioso's House of Monsters, Moste Grotesk and Phantastique', a place of otherworldly sacredness, Lair of the Hidebehind, The pitiful Ferris, and lascivious Doppelgangers. Yes, circus tent attractions are such fun, and one of the old standards in the fantasist's prop options and settings. Dowker here parts the canvas for us on an interesting addition to the canon.

A professional grade story, I'd expect to see this in the Year's Best listings. It certainly warrants more than 26 copies, though CIP have a solid, steady strategy there. I suspect more printings will be required.

'The moon was a pale, bloated corpse, drifting above them in the fetid waters of the starless sky. A heavy breeze soughed through the twisted branches of the guardian trees and gusted about the open field, bringing with it the stench of something spoiled and oozing.'

Here's a writer not listening to voices that discourage metaphor. A writer not afraid to try the occasional Neo Gothic approach.

'Nothing could be ugly tonight. Not with Erin by his side, here in this sacred and mundane place. The Big Feelings nibbled on the insides of his mind, whispering to be let out, but he repressed them, too.'

That's a key to this writer's take on matters. The exposure of things startlingly otherworldly and sacred in the most mundane of locations. The uncanny manifests itself and the rest is directed by how the human aspect interacts with the unearthly. Like much of the best horror fiction, her stories are not negligent in their humanity, her characters deal with the Big Feelings.

No story is perfect. Negatives? Only one here. Endings are often where writers can stumble, amateurs, semi-pros and fully fledged professionals. This writer has not stumbled, but she has had to adjust her grip on that ink and blood drenched implement at the end and, in doing so, the smooth, terrible stroke of the narrative has wavered just a touch. In the next tune up I would like the ending reworked from page 37 (of 39 pages). Less words and less blood to obscure the tragedy.

But this is a minor aspect, and, if you like gore with your tragedy or vice versa, Felicity Dowker delivers here.

Felicity Dowker is a wordsmith who explores both sides of the page. She has made her own hole there and through it she brings us dark gifts. She will, I'll wager, do so for a long, long time to come.


(This book was reviewed in PDF format. Therefore I could not comment on most of the physical aspects of the publication itself. The cover heading this review is not the one that will appear upon the chapbook when it is released.)

Stephen Studach