Ghostly Demarcations: Stories

by Joe Taylor

Everyone is constantly admonishing our narrator to keep quiet: "You're full of bull hockey, college boy...Shut up and drink your beer." Or, "'Shut up,' Michelle replied. 'Shut up,' Michelle repeated." Or, "Don't look up. At least don't shout when you do. She's here, on the balcony." Or, "'Shit.' Sarah spit this out like a too-hot cinnamon ball, pulled me off the dental chair, and led me to the closet with the skeleton, shushing me with her fingers." Or, "Hush, be still. Tacete, tacete." Everyone admonishes him, when all he wants to do is shout the wonders, the horrors, the terrors that he abd his older adoptive brother Galen face as one spiritual incursion after another manifests in their lives, moving from trickster poltergeists to forlornly wandering ghosts to intent fetches to avenging revenants. Perhaps, instead of admonishing him, everyone would do better to heed his early, youthful deliberation: "I never heard his voice again after that night. If we humans could always recognize the last words we were ever to hear from each person we knew or even met, our lives would perch as fragile indeed, gathering tragedy every listening moment to lean over a dark cellar of dark farewells."

230 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2019

About the author

I’ve had stories published in over 100 literary magazines. Pineapple, A Comic Novel in Verse, was published by Sagging Meniscus Press, as was Back to the Wine Jug, another novel in verse. NewSouth Books published The Theoretics of Love. Sagging Meniscus also published a story collection of mine, entitled Ghostly Demarcations. A previous novel of mine, Oldcat & Ms. Puss: A Book of Days for You and Me, was published several years ago by the now defunct Black Belt Press, and it was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. I have three story collections published, and I’ve edited several anthologies, notably, Belles’ Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women and Tartts One through Five. I recently published a novel with the imposing title, Let There Be Lite, OR, How I Came To Know and Love Godel’s Incompleteness Proof. I’ve been the director of Livingston Press . . . forever.

Reviews

[Mark]

Ghost stories are at least as old as the concept of ghosts or maybe even predates it. But Joe Taylor twists this concept to the point it becomes fresh and exciting again. It’s hard to define Taylor’s style. The catch-all term for fiction like that is magic realism but really, a different term is needed. Call it “ghostly realism.”

This short story collection can also be classified as a novella because each story has the same protagonist, the same supporting characters, and, of course, a common theme.

Out of 17 stories in this collection, my favorite is… Well, all of them are my favorite. But let me just mention “Red Phase.” Four people are excavating an abandoned communal dump, which also was an old murder scene. The protagonist, his sidekick who travels with him from story to story (me met them when one was 13 and the other almost 11), the sidekick’s girlfriend whose hair gives one reason for the story title, and the said girlfriend’s dad who tells them the story of the murder. They found four dolls that ooze something resembling human blood. And then two of them begin to sink…

I don’t want to spoil the ending but I want to add this is not a run-of-the-mill horror. Like all stories in this book, it’s literary fiction, both entertaining, quirky (in a good way) and deeply beautiful.

[Robert McKean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Taylor’s story collection, "Ghostly Demarcations," achieves that ultimate goal of any good collection, that is, it becomes a “Novel in Stories.” The 17 tightly interwoven stories are held together by the wry voice of the first-person narrator and his experiences with his closest friend, Galen, their growing up together and apart. As expected given the title, the stories all revolve around some supernatural occurrence. But that isn’t what holds the reader. What is truly brilliant in the book is the sparkling, witty language, the absolute grasp of concrete detail, and the depiction of real lives being sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously lived. The reader is there with the narrator every step of the way. When characters begin shooting ghosts with revolvers, you know you have stepped out of a traditional ghost story.

[Marlin Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories rise above the level of simple ghost stories and ultimately comment in a deep manner on human nature. I love how the stories connect through the friendship of Galen and the narrator as they move through their lives. My favorite two stories are “Angel’s Wings” and “Madonna on a Country Road.” I think the language in them, especially in their last several paragraphs, is beautiful and gives the endings such emotional weight in the way they comment on loss and grief and the mysteries in life we have to navigate our way through. This may be too strong a word, but I felt the endings were profound.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Taylor’s new collection of stories takes readers deep into the spooky and unnerving and also inhabits several territories in between. His settings—particularly Mr. Howard’s hobby shop (“I Am the Egg”), the narrator’s all-black cupola room (“Tacete”) the “farm” house in Woodford County (“Ms. Sylvia’s Home Cure”)—might also suddenly show up in your own dreams. (They did mine.) Along with the ghostly, Taylor packs much humor and insight into these tales. Favorite line: "Magic is when you're filled with wonder; horror is when you stop thinking." (less)