Words Written Backwards

by Gemma Files

Deep winter, Algonquin Bay. Something underground is poisoning the land. Rez elders have called in Joe Tulugaak, Innu shaman for hire, to investigate. But just as he thinks he's closing in on the problem, what looks like a half-frozen teenaged girl suddenly walks out of a gathering snowstorm, collapsing at Joe's feet.

But Judy Kiss isn't really a teenager - or even (completely) human, anymore. What's hidden at the bottom of the abandoned mine isn't what either of them thinks it might be. And Joe himself has more in common with Judy than either of them could have ever guessed...

36 pages, Chapbook

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Previously best-known as a film critic for Toronto's eye Weekly, teacher and screenwriter, Gemma Files first broke onto the international horror scene when her story "The Emperor's Old Bones" won the 1999 International Horror Guild award for Best Short Fiction. She is the author of two collections of short work (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart) and two chapbooks of poetry (Bent Under Night and Dust Radio). Her Hexslinger Series trilogy is now complete: A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all available from ChiZine Publications.

Reviews

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gemma Files, Words Written Backwards (Burning Effigy Press, 2007)

The Gemma Files is not yet recognized as one of Canada's premier storytellers can only be explained, as I see it, by the fact that she's just not prolific enough yet; certainly most who have read her two collections of short stories have sung her praises pretty much uniformly. So where's the love from the New York Times and the Guardian and Booklist and Publisher's Weekly and Bookslut? No idea. But “Words Written Backwards” should be dangled in front of them to show them how wrong they are in continuing to ignore such a talent.

This is a one-story chapbook published by Burning Effigy, a very small press whose editors seem to have very good taste, judging by the stable of names one can find on their webpage. The story itself is more, how shall I say, “mainstream” than the stuff you can find in Files' two wonderful books of short stories (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, which every one of you should read if you haven't already), though that's not what I mean, and you know it. It's less icky. When you read a Gemma Files story, all the character depth and emotional resonance is there, it's usually just got some interesting (and disgusting) viscous fluids it's coated in. Not so much here, to the point where one might call this “dark fantasy” in the Tanith Lee vein, but without Lee's oh-my-goth patina; it's substituted with the hard, cold realism of a Brad Smith (why this story reminded me continually of All Hat I will probably never understand) or a Giles Blunt (on the other hand, the parallels to the neverending snowstorm of Forty Words for Sorrow are pretty obvious).

The story: an Indian mystic has been sent to attempt to cleanse an abandoned, and seemingly haunted, mine of evil spirits. The night before he's about to get started, however, a young woman from Toronto stumbles into his camp, only slightly frostbitten despite being dressed for the mall instead of a snowstorm. Once they start talking, the mystic starts suspecting her presence here may be more than coincidence.

It's tough to pin down what it is about Gemma Files' stories that makes them so good, and maybe that's part of the attraction; all the authorial trickery washes into the background, leaving you satisfied without knowing exactly why. There's no place where the author pops up and says “look here! Characterization!” or the like. The great Billy Wilder once said that the best director is the one you don't see; it holds true for writers, as well.

What can I do to convince you to read Gemma Files? Tell me. I'll do it. ****

[Loren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a Gemma Files fan, since her days of selling chapbooks at the World Horror Convention in Chicago. This chapbook was published by Canada's Burning Effigy Press. While it is fascinating, I didn't think the story was entirely successful.

For a story with only two characters, I found there was one character too many. I was smitten with Joe Tulugaak, a psychic detective who follows First Nations traditions. (Note to Gemma: could we have more of his cases? Pretty please?)

Judy Kiss, the girl who walks out of the snowstorm, couldn't hold a candle to my fascination with Joe and how his magic worked.

Still, beautifully written, intriguing story, and worth checking out.

[Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing and unique short story set in the Artic north, with a native shaman for hire and "Toronto's Version of Regan [from The Excorcist]." Files keeps the pacing brisk and the reader's guessing. A quick read with originality enough to keep things interesting.