Image: The cover of the book is a busy mix of text and artwork. It is composed primarily of black, white, and shades of red. At the center is an eye, staring towards the reader with the lids wide open. Due to the color, one could assume this is only the muscles and flesh under the skin being shown. Around the eye is a circle of intertwined and broken nerves and blood vessels of various sizes and shades. The background is black with splotches of red resembling something like blood added to a petri dish of water. Across the top, in a stylized white font with sharp edges is the tite of the book. Below that is "edited by Ellen Datlow" in red and white, each line separated by a thin white line. Across the bottom of the book is a list of 15 of the many authors contained in the book in small white font. Below that is a gray line across the bottom.
As someone who is generally put off by what many call "torture porn" in film and writing, I found myself surprised by how much I enjoyed body horror stories. Perhaps enjoyment is the wrong word. While there is surely overlap between the two, the creative way that good body horror stories create a disconcerting tension around how we view and expect bodies to be separates it from the lazy technique of showing gratuitous violence (more often against women than not) in order to shallowly upset the viewer. Kameron Hurley's book "The Stars are Legion" and Cronenberg's film "The Fly" both come to mind immediately when I think about body horror that affected me in lasting ways. Both of these are considered to be mainly in the science fiction category, but manage to horrify nonetheless.
When I saw that the anthology, "Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror," edited by Ellen Datlow, was coming out, I figured I should give it a shot. The draw for me were the names of some authors I really enjoy such as Tananarive Due and Carmen Maria Machado on the cover. I went in expecting new stories from these authors, but the entire collection is composed of stories that were previously published elsewhere. As a result, I had already read the ones included. On top of that, for these two authors in particular, the stories chosen are not good representations of or introductions to their talent.
One of the best things about this book is actually its visual design. The cover is not my favorite, but the inside of the book is full of artwork by John Coulthart. The works of his featured within all deal with manipulations of black and white educational anatomical imagery. Part of me wants to cut the pages out of this book and frame them were it not for the stories on the other side. The graphic design in general is also very good and creates a well rounded experience.
The stories, however, on the whole were mostly unimpressive. All anthologies tend to be a mixed bag, but this one leaned more to the side of lower quality stories unfortunately. Some of them have great promise, but are then abruptly cut off. Others just aren't very good. There are a few that really did shine though and they made reading the book worth it.
Of these, I found Seanan McGuire's "Spores," which focuses on a lesbian couple's unsettling experience with something so prevalent around us, to be the best in the book, hands down. I originally thought that McGuire usually wrote young adult novels, which is why I have not read much of her stuff. After this story, I am definitely adding things to my to-read list. Lucy Taylor's "Subsumption," is my second favorite story. If you like things similar to Jeff Vandermeer's work, you'll probably like this story. It's only fault is that it is far too short. It felt like something interesting enough to be a full book or at least a longer story. Kirstyn McDermott's "Painlessness" was pretty interesting, but it did lose me a bit in the ending where it takes an unnecessary turn away from thoughtful examination of the story to torture porn. "Welcome to Mengele's" by Simon Bestwick was intense and worth reading. The two aforementioned stories both deal with themes around sex work in interesting (and horrifying) ways. Gemma Files' "Skin City" was also worth reading, even if it lacked originality in some ways.
This book is huge and has a large quantity of stories so, many things that did not float my boat may still appeal to others. The artwork in this book was a great complement and also stands quite well on its own. It's not the best anthology I have read, but there were still some great moments that made it worth my time.
This was also posted to my goodreads.
