Words Written Backwards by Gemma Files

Gemma Files writes dirty, which in her deft hands is a good thing. She’s the author of two collections, Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, which saw her charting a similar gothic, transgendered, human/monster terrain as that explored in the work of writers like Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite. Which is not to suggest that her stories are derivative but to give some indication of the characters, ideas, and themes you’re likely to encounter in her work. At her best, in stories like “The Emperor’s Old Bones” and “Kissing Carrion,” she combines an intense, internalised narrative perspective with moments of jaw-dropping horror, perversion, or sexiness, and frequently all three in the one image or scene.

While Words Written Backwards, a stand-alone novella, sees Files continuing to probe at and scrutinise the relationship between the creatures of pagan myth and those of Christianity—angels and various demons—her writing has become more, for want of a better word, restrained. Absent are the more familiar trappings of neo-goth fiction and the preoccupation with transgender sexuality, along with, sadly, some of the outrageously dark and comic images they inspired. I hesitate to say the writing is more “mature”—I don’t think Files would take it as a compliment—but want to suggest instead that its fluidity, the conviction of the narrative voice, and the story she tells are strong enough to render the need to grab the reader by the throat and shock her into submission unnecessary.

The protagonist, Joe Tulugaak, is an Inuit Shaman contracted by tribal elders to investigate the unexplained and sudden despoliation of the land. Animals are dying mysteriously, and two native kids were found dead at the bottom of a pit. It is to this pit that Joe is heading when he sees a waif-like teenage girl stumble out of an approaching snowstorm. Judy Kiss, it transpires, has a background as dark and haunted as the shaman’s, and though Joe welcomes her help in his investigation, he’s also fatefully wary of the source of her magic. Without giving too much away, it seems the two have more in common than Joe first thought and that their encounter in the frozen wastes of Algonquin Bay is not as random as it appears. The forces that have been poisoning the land have an ulterior motive which the shaman only discovers when he and Judy descend into the pit.

Files creates a believable and sympathetic protagonist in Joe, something of an outsider, given to living inside his own head, but capable of compassion and, indicated in a few choice lines, humour. His relationship with Judy is vividly and economically portrayed, and the delicate balance between trust and scepticism he feels towards her is conveyed with conviction. It’s a shame perhaps that what we learn about her is mostly through Joe’s perspective—even in analepsis—and the story might have been even stronger had Files chosen to show us more of the events that shaped what she has become. Though the flashbacks explain the how and what, subsequent events in her life are merely alluded to in the shape of Joe’s visions. Yet the power and strength hinted at in these visions would surely have sustained a longer work without diminishing its considerable mystery. We can only hope that Files is already mapping out fresh territories for Judy Kiss to roam.

Publisher: Burning Effigy Press (2007)
Price: $8.00
Chapbook: 36 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-6-2