Hair Side, Flesh Side

by Helen Marshall, Robert Shearman (Introduction)

A child receives the body of Saint Lucia of Syracuse for her seventh birthday. A rebelling angel rewrites the Book of Judgement to protect the woman he loves. A young woman discovers the lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. A 747 populated by a dying pantheon makes the extraordinary journey to the beginning of the universe.

Lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting, Helen Marshall's exceptional debut collection weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human in fifteen modern parables about history, memory, and cost of creating art.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Collections, Short Story Collection, Magical Realism

247 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2012

About the author

Helen Marshall (manuscriptgal.com) is an award-winning author, editor, and bibliophile.

Her poetry and short fiction have been published in The Chiaroscuro, Paper Crow, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com. In 2011, she released a collection of poems entitled Skeleton Leaves from Kelp Queen Press and her collection of short stories Hair Side, Flesh Side was released from ChiZine Publications in 2012. This collection won the 2013 British Fantasy Sydney J. Bounds Award and was short-listed for a 2013 Aurora Award for Best Related Work. It was named one of the top ten F/SF books of 2012 by January Magazine. Her second fiction collection Gifts for the One Who Comes After launched in September 2014.

Reviews

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another wonderful collection of stories that I can't really call horror but more fantastic with occassional horrific moments scattered throughout. One of my weird fiction websites ran an interview with Marshall that really spurred my interest in her work, so I guess if I had to categorize this collection it would fall in to the weird genre. I enjoyed how Marshall was able to create these strange, almost outlandish situations but put normal everyday people in the settings to see how they would react. I could picture myself in some of these stories.

As with most collections there were a few stories that didn't resonate with me but I will highlight some that I thought were brilliant.

Blessed-In these days where kids(and adults) seem to get caught up in the idea of needing all the latest/best of...everything, this was a heart wrenching story with a gut punch ending, of a young girl caught between her divorced parents as they give her presents of The Blessed for her birthday.

Her dad bounced her on his shoulders and then heaved her off again so she landed gently on the ground, and she stood tip-toed until she could see over the top of the crate. Chloe fingered the straw shyly, not daring to touch it yet, not daring to stroke the soft leathery skin.

“For your birthday, kiddo,” he said in a warm, excited voice. “You’re almost seven, and we wanted you to have this—”

“Lucia of Syracuse,” her mum interrupted. He gave her a look, but it was an affectionate look, one that showed he didn’t mind much. “Died 304. A real, genuine martyr.”

Sandition-Probably my favorite story about the unfinished Jane Austen book and just how the rest of the text was discovered.

Something caught her eye, a smallish discoloured lump on the side of her neck, no bigger than a dime. She squinted, touched it with a finger. The skin was dried out, rough, but the space itself was numb, as if all the nerve endings had been disconnected. She shook her head, tried scratching it with a nail. A queer sensation ran through her body, as if the area was simultaneously hypersensitive and blanked out with Novocain.

Pieces of Broken Things-How one man deals with his wife leaving him after twelve years of marriage

Love, she said, love was messy and incomprehensible and she, almost forty now, almost the big four-zero, didn’t want messy and incomprehensible. She had, she told him a little bashfully, replaced her heart with the only thing she could get to fit— a tiny clock the pawn shop owner had handy. She showed it to David. She undid the front of her cream silk blouse, and David got a glimpse of a little ormolu face with two prim hands nestled in the little hollow between her breasts.

He decides to dig a hole and bury her things because they bring him too much pain

When he looked at the hole, he felt a little of the love shudder out of him. It was just a tiny bit of love, but it flopped in the dirt by his feet for a moment like a fish. His heart slowed, just a few beats, but it slowed.

In the High Places of the World-How the incidents surrounding Soledad's birth shaped the rest of her life

A fact: during Soledad’s birth, a dove crashed into large, glass window of the delivery room of the Hospital do Coração de Messejana, snapping its neck instantly. They had thought the baby dead in the womb, and her mother, grey-faced with the pain of pushing, saw only the flurry of feathers, saw it slantwise through eyes that had long since ceased to register details.....

The doctor in charge saw the bird, and in that moment his eyes flicked away from the trembling mound of flesh of the mother. He was not an inattentive man, but his eyes slipped for that brief moment, and so he was startled when he turned back to realize that he now held in his hands a wailing girl.

A higly enjoyable collection for those who like stories that are a bit off the beaten path.

8/10

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read because I try to read everything that the podcast Writer and the Critic review.

And damn, I am glad I did. So much lyrical, gorgeous writing in here, so many short stories that seem half poetry, half prose. So many vivid images that will linger with me (most notably right now, the woman who begins to peel her skin away to find a book inside). Seriously good.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of surreal stories that I didn't understand.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The intro to this collection captures these stories and their genesis perfectly: “Don’t go to a museum with Helen Marshall. And whilst you’re at it, don’t take her to an art gallery either, or anywhere where there might be statues or quirky bits of architecture, no where you might come across pieces of old pottery. Because such things fire Helen’s imagination.” One can almost picture the exact object, story, artwork or conversation that sparked each of the unique and often creepy stories in Hair Side Flesh Side. My favorites:

- Pieces of Broken Things: On the difficulty of letting go of a lost love
- Dead White Men: Intellectual desire for the classics becomes physical
- A Texture like Velvet: What if vellum was made of other than we think?
- External Things: What to do when the passion for scholarship fades?
- No Ghosts in London: A Neil Gaimann-esque ghost story
- The Book of Judgement: Death ponders the demise of Jane Austen
Austen is also key to the story Sanditon.

The book’s presentation by the small Chizine Publications is also impressive, The book feels like a labor of love versus simply words printed on pages. The cover is very cool. Each story is introduced by an original artwork suited the story. Even the promotional material at the end for other books published by Chizine is beautifully done.

Overall, the collection reminds me a lot of Daryl Gregory’s excellent Unpossible and Other Stories. Like Gregory, Ms. Marshall’s writing is top notch and her stories are intellectually stimulating. There are a few I did not like—too odd, incomplete, or featuring weak and unconvincing female leads. For me, Sanditon is an example of the latter. Other readers found this story to be the highlight of the collection.

Bottomline: A very interesting collection of imaginative fiction by an author worth watching. On my buy, borrow, skip scale: a solid borrow, though you may want to buy and pass on to a friend as I am.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm almost glad I didn't win this on the Goodreads Giveaways, because then I'd have to leave an actual review, and I don't think I can do that.

This book was wonderfully creepy, it sent chills through my body and had me guessing in some of the tales. My favorite was the story from which the book took it's title, where Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon was written on the inside of a woman's body. I connected the most with the story about Chaucer, because I have been to Oxford a few times and could picture the setting as well as understand the lyricism of the story itself.

Overall a very interesting collection of stories, one I would recommend to anyone who likes to feel a bit creepy and doesn't mind a bit of sex. It also helps if you're literary-minded, because there are a lot of references to the classics.

[Margaryta · Rating 2 out of 5]

The summary of this book seemed to promise a collection of disturbing or bizarre short horror stories that were all unique and rather unusual from others I may have read. These weren't horror stories at all, to say the least, nor were they that disturbing or bizarre or unusual.

If I had to tell a friend about this book and retell one of the short stories, the first one would be the only one that'd come to mind, the one about the girl who received a stuffed saint for her birthday. It was a strange story and something about it appealed to me, although it was rather confusing and I didn't understand the entire point of the story. It was memorable for me, and after reading it I hoped the rest would continue in the same manner; I was, alas, disappointed.

In many of these I enjoyed the details themselves, such as the one where people who imitated statues would become frozen in that position forever, and it was such a serious situation that fountains and statues all over had to be destroyed. The one about the woman's insides being the unfinished manuscript was another one I found to be interesting conceptually. It was the execution that let me down. Many, almost all the stories in fact, made me feel like there was something I missed after I finished them, like there was a hidden punch line or meaning that I failed to notice. I loved some of the ideas and details in this book, really, but even then I cannot recount all of them, or even a majority. The fell flat for me and the last story I even skimmed through, finding it difficult to get into the situation and character that was constructed.

I guess the problem is also that ingot my hopes up too high for this one. Maybe I'll give this one a chance in the near future, perhaps there really is something I missed and will be able to pick up again. I wouldn't say it's the author's fault in this case, merely a matter of personal taste. This wasn't what I expected and not as lively or terrifying as the synopsis promised me.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This debut collection takes on big concepts like history, memory and art, but it does so through stories that are surprisingly funny, quirky, emotional and human. My favorite story "Sanditon" focuses on an editor who, in the midst of an affair with a famous author, discovers a lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. She then must negotiate the power balance of their relationship as they try to publish. The story plays well off another story, "Dead White Men", where a twenty-something bar fly picks up a woman who acts as a medium, channelling the ghosts of dead authors into the bodies of her lovers. This is an exceptionally well-crafted collection, with themes returning in various forms throughout the fifteen stories, falling somewhere between Jorge Luis Borges, Jasper Fford, and Neil Gaiman. Highly recommended!

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to stop reading books with under 300 pages, but what a way to pad my Reading Challenge early, eh?

More of a 3.5, but I'll round up for just how much I loved many of the stories. Actually, I think the first story, "Blessed", was my favorite, even by the end. Little girls measuring popularity by how many and what kind of saint relics they own? SURE.

There's also a really disturbing piece in here about an alternate history where famous writers and scientists used human skin instead of papyrus, sheepskin, etc as a writing material. *shudder*

[Nicholas Kaufmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surreal, literate, and filled with existential longing, this debut collection of stories by Marshall masterfully fuses the fantastic to the emotions of our everyday lives. Marshall's prose is exquisite and precise, her ideas refreshingly original. The last time I felt this much enthusiasm and astonishment over a collection of stories was when I first read Kelly Link. Whatever Marhsall writes next, I'll be first in line to read.

[Susanne Braburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best short story collections of the year! Helen Marshall's got a really lyrical sense of prose writing that you can just fall into until -- WHAM! -- she hits you with the ending. A brilliant new writer to follow.

[Matthew Rettino · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an English literature grad from McGill who has taken several medieval literature courses, including a course on manuscripts and material culture, I can say that this as one of the Top 5 Story Collections I've Ever Read, right up there with Jeffrey Ford's A Natural History of Hell. Helen Marshall makes extensive use of manuscript culture in her weird fiction, making it surprisingly relateable for me in an unusual kind of way.

I am half tempted to have students read some of these stories, if I ever teach Survey of English Literature I. It had the kinkiest weird tale involving the Norton Anthology of English Literature I have ever read in my life, or will ever read again. Also, who knew that the corpse of saints could become birthday gifts for a young child in the midst of an ongoing war between her divorced parents?

There is subtlety, music, stream of consciousness, and politics at play in this collection. Most poignant perhaps was "A Texture like Velvet," in which the narrator makes a terrible discovery about the primal violence that underlies Western canon--the violence that, in this case, constitutes the pages on which it is written literally. There are scenes of striking intimacy that capture the power dynamics between women and men as they play the game of love and try to figure out what it means.

All in all, this was an eye-opening collection. I liked nearly all the stories and even if a few were not quite to my taste, I could appreciate them for their refinement and sophistication.

[Majanka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hair Side, Flesh Side is a lyrical short story collection ranging from slightly humorous stories to downright horrifying tales. What they have in common is that all of them are strange, and are somewhat related to the human body. It’s a loose thread though, considering I wouldn’t even place some of these stories under the same genre. It’s dark fiction, yes, but I would’ve preferred if I could classify all of them under ‘horror’ or ‘bizar’, not a mix-match of things. I was continuously looking for horror. Now, of course, that could just be me, but I prefer my collections more straightforward. That’s not to say the stories have to be, but the theme of the collection must be.

Don’t get me wrong. The stories Helen Marshall provides the reader with are, each in their own right, interesting. There’s “Blessed”, about a seven-year-old girl who receives a saint’s body for her birthday. In the world of “Blessed”, this is common place, and children argue with each other over who received the most interesting body or body part of a Saint. This is an intriguing, but undoubtably strange and eerie concept. I found it horrific, yet not scary. “The Art of Dying” leaned more toward horror. Then there was my favorite, “Dead White Men”, which was a ghost story. “Sandition” was another interesting story, about an editor who finds a lost manuscript by Jane Austen inked on the inside of her skin. That one wasn’t horrifying at all, just well, ew, and the main focus was on the power struggle between the editor and the author.

I liked most of the stories in this collection. “The Mouth, Open” didn’t do it for me though. It completely ruined my appetite (which was probably the author’s intention) but also my will to read on, which wasn’t that good. The other stories ranged from decent to near brilliant. Another thing that annoyed me was the varying quality of different stories in this collection, like I said, some were bordering on brilliant whereas others were mediocre at best. I couldn’t see a common theme or a common quality, and that bothered me.

The author’s writing style however, is simply sublime. It reminded me of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. The plot of most of the stories in the collection strikes me as imaginative and original as well. Like I said, my favorite was “Dead White Men”, which was about a woman who channeled the spirits of great poets and authors into the bodies of her lovers. While I did think this was morbid and macabre, it also left me a little frightened, peering around my shoulder and expecting to see Lovecraft or Poe back alive.

No common theme was my major concern here, like I said. Looked on a one by one basis, the stories are quite strong and decent. But looked at it together…I just don’t see it. Maybe someone who does can come enlighten me. I enjoyed reading this book, but for me, it was nothing spectacular. As a short story on its own though, “Dead White Men” would have probably gotten a higher rating from me.

[Barry King · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Helen Marshall's fiction and poetry, although how to distinguisn the one from the other is a little difficult at times. I like to think that there is a little hard ball, like uncut diamond, all brillant and uncompressable in the eye-glint of true and shining madness. In all these stories, there is a flash of that light running like water on a hot skillet skittering the surfaces of reality, using the commonplace furniture of life to define the space in between.

In that space? Sex and eternity, death and love. Everything that makes life living. All presented in the pretense of a dissection, from the interplay of parchment and skin, the body of the book laid open.

Of these stories, I'm particulary fond of "No Ghosts in London", "Pieces of Broken Things", "The Mouth, Open", and "Dead White Men". All of them transformations.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply strange things occur in these stories and because the people that populate them adapt so quickly, they themselves seem darker, not the types of people we would trust to be alone with in a poorly lit stairwell. There are so many beautiful words, so many disturbing images, and the stories run deep, if not long, because each explores several different aspects of humanity simultaneously. Body issues, relationships, philosophies, psychological landscapes, and fears branch off from the seemingly straight forward narrative, reconnect, or tangle themselves into knots. Helen Marshall's characters are cut off from one another, from all others, but most importantly, the people to whom they should be closest, the ones they need the most. That's the deepest horror at the core of all the others in this collection. Losing love, never finding love, never being loved. Being utterly alone.

[David Teller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found out about this book when Ellen Datlow listed it as one of the top collections of 2012, and I have to say that I wasn't disappointed. Helen Marshall has a unique voice: her images are startling, moving between the tragic, the beautiful and the horrific. Her stories have a wicked sense of humour to them. A girl who finds a lost manuscript of Jane Austen on the inside of her skin? Amazing! Her writing reads as an amazing cross between Neil Gaiman's love of the dark and mythic, Jasper Fforde's sense of literary play....and...something else, something unique. I haven't read another collection that's quite like HAIR SIDE, FLESH SIDE. Definitely a book I'll be recommending to friends!

[M Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of the stories in Hair Side, Flesh Side, the debut collection of Canadian weird fantasist Helen Marshall, focus on books, libraries and manuscripts. Hair Side, Flesh Side presents a nice mix of straightforward emotions in realistic settings, balanced against off-kilter fantastic elements or surreal impossibilities. I love that these stories show great respect and affection for the world of literature, of books and stories, authors and libraries.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was kind of meh. I really don't care about young men and women having their twisted sexual problems under somewhat weird circumstances ... whatever. However if you like such things, give it a try. I didn't actually finish it, but since I bought it, maybe I will read the rest of it some night when I have insomnia.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just creepy/off-putting/unsettling enough for me. They are told in parable style, so I'm not sure I always "got" what the point was, but, for once, I didn't mind. Marshall is a truly good storyteller.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

The strangest collection of short stories I have ever read. Well written, some of them grabbed my interest and didn't let go; others, not so much.

I got this book through the Goodreads First Reads program.

[toria (vikz writes) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just when I thought I had found my books of the year, this book arrives and blows many of them out of the water.

[Tiffany Lynn Kramer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate DNFing books, even more so when it's by an author who's other work I've liked or the book in question is an anthology. It's very possible I'll be missing out on a real gem but there are times when I just have to suck it up and walk away. Hair Side, Flesh Side is one of those rare, hard cases as I greatly enjoyed Marshall's short story The Hanging Game and found promise in each of the tales I managed to read in this collection. However even with that promise and the proof of her skill none of the stories I read connected with me for one reason or another. The label of horror feels very misplaced and most of the endings left me feeling like I'd missed something.
I still plan on checking out another of Marshall's collections, The Sex Lives of Monsters but Hair Side, Flesh Side just isn't doing anything for me.

[Ana Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marshall shines best when writing short stories. I loved a lot of the stories in this book, which blend magical realism and the macabre in a well crafted and entertaining manner. However, there's also a couple I had to force myself to finish and two I kind of skimmed over, ,since they failed to catch my atttention. My favorites are: Dead white men, No ghosts in London and Blessed.
3.5 stars rounded up.

[E.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a bluntness to Marshall's work that I enjoy, the juxtaposition of it with the soft and poetic language, the focus on the body and the mind, their intersections and battles. She slips the supernatural into the ribs of the mundane so easily that you don't realize how horrific it is until you see the blood. That creeping is the kind of horror I like best.

[scarlettraces · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really needed to be read at intervals (I read 75% of it in one go in order to avoid late fines and it all ended up feeling like memento mori). Which is not to detract from a fine, peculiar collection.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gran colección de relatos a medio camino del weird y la fantasía oscura.

[Seizure Romero · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Dead White Men" is my favorite, which is weird because it's the funny one in a collection of odd and creepy tales. Maybe it's odd and creepy that I found it funny. Not sure.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without a doubt, one of the best collections of short stories I’ve ever read. Gorgeously written, creepy, and evocative.

[Pop Bop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing, Elegant and Creepy

Here's the thing about anthologies, and about attempts to review, describe or comment on anthologies - well intentioned blurbers and reviewers give you one sentence summaries of the most remarkable stories, or even of each story. Depending on whether they liked the collection or disliked the collection they can easily make each story sound fascinating or tedious and derivative. The summaries are helpful, of course, and can be tasty come-ons, but they don't tell the whole story. So, here's a bit more to consider.

In one of the principle, featured stories, according to the book jacket, "A young woman discovers the lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin." Now, what do you make of that? Who is the woman; how can something be written on the inside of her skin; is this story magical, horror, faux realistic, allegorical, weird, bizarro, humorous? How do you get a handle on what Helen Marshall is trying to do here?

Well, that particular story starts out as a character study, describing the first attraction of a young woman editor and a married novelist. It begins to drift into a tale of retribution for the dalliance. Then it moves into the weird/bizarro realm as the Austen draft is revealed. But it is presented as a real story of a real event. Then it moves back into almost a kitchen sink drama, until it transforms with a surreal climax that ties up the whole package.

This is elegant and sophisticated stuff. It's not pretty, indirect and suggestive. There are a lot of bones, and sharp instruments find their way into many of the stories. Art, apparently, is a nasty, bloody business.

This is fresh, admirable and grab you by the throat stuff. Good.

Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.

[Tintaglia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questa è una raccolta estremamente peculiare: sembrano più "scuse per racconti" che racconti veri e propri. Mi spiego: non sarei in grado di riassumerne nemmeno uno, anche se quattro o cinque mi sono piaciuti immensamente e molte delle idee alla base mi intrigano, e tutte sono atipiche e intellettualmente stuzzicanti.
Ma forse è proprio l'eccessivo intellettualismo, la sensazione di terminare un racconto e di aver assistito solo a quindici pagine di esercizi di stile che me ne ha fatto stancare, nonostante gli spunti innegabilmente buoni, due deliziosi omaggi a Jane Austen (...sì, hanno fatto salire il voto. Problemi?) e una scrittura interessante e competente.
Tre stelle e mezzo nel complesso, con picchi di cinque per singoli racconti che ho trovato eccezionali sotto tutti i punti di vista - e che, forse, erano quelli che avevano più sostanza.

[Deanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I savored every word of each story in this collection. The writing is beautiful, and each story is a perfect little gem. That said, these a still what I would call fantastic horror, not gothic, slasher or Stephen King. The author has the kind of imagination that scares me, and yet I envy quite a bit. I think the first paragraph will reel you in. Give it a try.