Book Review: Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances by Charlene Elsby

Elsby's eviscerations and other ephemera.

I was first introduced to Elsby’s work through her extremely dark and visceral novel, Violent Faculties. Her collection, Red Flags, is not quiet as extreme, but the stories are still a punch in the gut. They remind me of a Shirley Jackson with more humor and body horror.

The book is divided into four sections. The first, which the book is named for, are newer stories. The other three are reprints of pieces previously published in chapbooks.

The titular story is one of the most depressing. A woman narrates it in the middle of being attacked by her boyfriend. An attack she likely won’t survive. She recounts of the “red flags” he displayed in the past from their very first date, but she ignored out of the typical fears of saying no and of being alone. The final words of the story could been seen as the mantra of the entire book.

“Maybe death is how I get out of this now.
Keep on bleeding.
Keep on bleeding.
Keep on bleeding.”

The first story, “Whitefish for Luna,” is one of the most violent and where Elsby’s dark sense of humor is on full display. A woman gets hits by a car while crossing the road. Despite the intense pain, told in detail, and the chance she’ll be dead soon, all she can think of is how she can get the food she bought for her cat to her home. It’s a fascinating study of how the mind thinks in situations of extreme pain or near death.

One of the funniest stories is “Dick That Won’t Quit.” A rich man seeks a procedure to enlarge his penis as a way of getting back at his ex-girlfriend. His spite proves to be stronger than his survival instincts and he undergoes a dangerous treatment that he takes way, way too far. There’s plenty to horrify people with penises here, but it still made me laugh out loud

“Frozen” is probably the most grounded story. A teenage girl comes home to find that her mom has locked her out of the house due to her being out past curfew. Unfortunately, it’s the dead of winter and she has nowhere to go. It’s an affecting story abuse and broken homes with vivid cold imagery.

Letters to Jenny Just After She Died is one of the chapbooks. This short novelette is written as a series of letters from a woman to her recently deceased best friend. She contemplates the now empty apartment where she lived and the man living there now. By the end, she realizes she was in love with Jenny. While it seems like this would be a straightforward tragedy, the narrator brings up many odd behaviors and possible delusions that make the whole thing feel very off-kilter.

Agyny is a another very short novelette. A woman recounts her relationship with a man and her interactions with her mother. Her mother has an extremely cynical view of relationships. The man has affairs which ends up leading the two into committing sex murders. Many of the pieces in this book comment on gender relations and critique heteronormativity. This one is the most explicit about it, taking typical gendered assumptions such as “men will fuck anything” to absurd and horrifying extremes.

The final section is dirt wet with blood. This is a reprint of a chapbook that Elsby had published under the pen name Marie Alighieri, and also includes a few other pieces that were written under that name, but never published.

These stories, one-act plays, and poems were written and published right when Elsby was out of high school and starting college, so there is a tinge of juvenilia to them. They certainly aren’t as strong as the rest of the book. That said, they still are interesting for showing where Elsby began in her career, and they show she had a lot of promise even when she began. As the title and the pen name indicate, she’s always had a dark vision for her work.

There’s an interesting story that Elsby recalls behind the publication of the chapbook as well, which ends with the creep behind the press that put it out being arrested for child pornography possession. I was also pleased to learn that, like myself, Elsby was obsessed with the play Woyzeck for a time and took the name Marie from there. My own first attempt at a novel was basically trying to rewrite Woyzeck but set in the near future.

Red Flags is an excellent collection. Perhaps it’s not the best place to start if you’re new to Charlene Elsby’s work, but if you’ve read and enjoyed at one of her books, then I highly recommend picking this up. Besides some top notch dark stories, you’ll also get some insight into her development as an author.

Buy Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances by Charlene Elsby here.

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