Gunflower (Laura Jean McKay, Scribe)

Laura Jean McKay’s Gunflower is a vivid and tantalising short story collection where animals are as seamlessly anthropomorphised as humans are animalised. McKay asks readers to suspend their narrative expectations and blurs the line between animals and humans as fur and bodies become indistinguishable. The stories’ narrators adopt an almost detached narrative voice—perceptive, alert and unbounded by societal norms. This creates tension, leading us to anticipate their wild impulses and whims as the story unfolds. The stories in Gunflower are split into three sections—Birth, Life, and Death—and while they can sometimes lean towards feeling confusing and unfinished, I was won over by the evocative prose and phantasmagorical atmosphere. In Birth, cats are set free, grief over a miscarriage eerily seeps in, and a woman undergoes a feverish transformation. The characters’ nonchalance about the strange transmutations happening to them, or the chaos surrounding them, readily immerses us in evocative surrealism. In Life, characters sway with uncertainty and the titular story ‘Gunflower’ shines. In it, a law professor documents her experience of travelling to a ship that offers abortions, and discomfort and fear pervade as she navigates the unknown to regain access to her body. Finally, in Death, themes of extinction, dread and decay permeate the stories. McKay’s collection offers something for all lovers of speculative fiction and is an impressive follow-up to The Animals in That Country.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Shivani Prabhu is a Melbourne-based writer and editor. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews