Is that the crunch of a snail shell or my sanity crumbling, who can say
Synopsis
Winnie Campbell is sixteen and a burgeoning serial killer. Her father blames her for her mother’s death, dotes on her little sister, and executes increasingly cruel punishments meant to humiliate Winnie. As the punishments morph into torture, she begins fantasizing about regaining some semblance of power, eventually working through her rage by killing small animals.
Review
Emma E. Murray’s debut long form When the Devil, a novelette released earlier this year from Shortwave Press, left a mark and announced a talent. Barely a few months later, showing considerably greater speed than the gastropod on the cover, comes Murray’s debut novel Crushing Snails from Apocalypse Party Press, and let me tell you unlike the slowpoke insect it’s named after I don’t need salt to shrivel up into a ball, I just need to read some of the horrifying scenes contained in this almighty mind f-, which straps you tightly into the birth of a serial killer and refuses to let you go until its inevitably horrifying conclusion.
Winnie, the burgeoning killer in question, is a sixteen-year-old girl suffering endless abuse at the hands of her father, abuse Murray doesn’t shy away from and forces us to endure in scenes that are as uncomfortable to read as, well, almost every other scene. But they are also important; because before we are given any real evidence that Winnie might be on a path that ends in news headlines, Murray, through a combination of wincingly realistic and horrifying abuse scenes and sympathetic and heartbreaking interiority, makes us sympathize and empathize and virtually become her, trapped rigid in the cocoon of her horrific life.
At some point, as Winnie’s lack of control over her horrific domestic life starts to bleed over into a need for control elsewhere, she slips into the indefensible, but the line is so non-existent that you may find yourself feeling for her even as the most awful things are being meted out at her hands, and if the thought of that is terrifying then be aware that this is the playground of horrors Murray wants you to be in, and you have the choice to stop but, just like Winnie, you will not.
I can’t emphasize enough how dark this gets; where some authors would stop at suggestion or implication or analogy Murray creates scenes that put the ill into chilling. One scene in particular, involving a famously defenseless form of human, is what content warnings are made for. Later in the book, as I was already desperate for air and reeling from the one-two punches, Murray creates a new narrative trick; the POV of the victim – and given the nature of the victims it is as nasty and effective a device as you will read all year. This is as equally hard to take as it is hard not to marvel at, all heightened by Murray’s superb descriptive prose which seems to come alive in the grossest and most sadistic imagery.
Amidst all the horror though is poignancy; the opportunities for salvation that come and go as Winnie trundles down the tracks laid down for her to hell. Winnie is failed by everyone and even in her darkest times you feel there is not without hope, so when that hope is consistently whipped out from under us you are left as helpless as the snails who see her boot coming from the sky. Murray wants you to understand Winnie even at the end, though whether your frontal cortex has any capacity for such thought after the horrors within is open to question.
Overall, this novel has slimed its way into my head and left permanent trails there. Forget snail shells; emphasizing so effectively with a serial killer has left me a shell of a man. A chilling tour de force from one of the year’s breakout horror stars
Crushing Snails releases August 6 from Apocalypse Party Press.
Also check out fellow FanFiAddict reviewer George Dunn’s excellent review here
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