Review: Shoot Me In The Face on a Beautiful Day by Emma E. Murray

Rating: 7/10

Birdie lost everything when her son died. Now, on track to rebuild her life, she has to evade her abusive partner Russ’s rage and manipulations while also worrying about a home-invading serial killer that has descended on her community. Told through multiple POVs, from a decomposing murder victim to Birdie’s day-to-day battle with domestic violence and grief to the horrific crimes of the killer, Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day will shock, disgust, and break your heart as the dark secrets unfold and Birdie does whatever she feels is necessary to protect the ones she loves. ​

Emma E. Murray is one to watch. Her second, excellently named, novel “Shoot Me In The Face on a Beautiful Day,” is yet another sickening, but beautifully done, piece of work, and further evidence that she is carving out her own bloody, exquisite space in the genre. Raw and tender, and bruised and bleeding, in her latest, out August 26th from Apocalypse Party Press, Murray allows us to glimpse the psyche of the very worst humankind has to offer, and the woman who stays with him. A novel about abuse, desperation, devastation, and what people will endure for what they’re convinced is love and survival, just like her debut “Crushing Snails,” this is a piece that refuses moral binaries and revels in the deeply uncomfortable spaces between. Emma continues to wade deeper into the murky waters of transgressive fiction, and I plan on diving right in after: her writing is something I’m ready to drown in.

We follow Bernadette or Birdie whose content family life crumbles in an instant. When she hit rock bottom, grieving a child and the wreck of her marriage, it was Russ who was waiting to pick her up. The man has a temper, and the lows are low, but the highs? He’s steady, attentive, attractive, and always there. Apart from when he storms off after an argument, only returning in the early hours. But still. Her friend Juliana seems to see something that Birdie can’t, something more sinister than a little hot-headedness and jealousy, and when a police sketch for a rapist and murderer, with Russ’ cold blue eyes begins to circulate, she’s quick to clarify her position- but Birdie, of course, knows better. 

There’s a lot going on. We are given the genuinely distressing perspectives of various women targeted and attacked, most in their own homes. The truly unimaginable horror that is endured, and repeated violations of the sanctity of the home, a refuge, and against the body, create an element of real, explicit horror.

 The bulk of the story follows Birdie and her relationship with Russ, which is in many ways much harder to read. I’d be lying to you if I said that this element of the story isn’t repetitive. It’s quite literally, and deliberately, a pattern of conflict and forgiveness, in which, each time, there is greater violence, and then greater justification and faster reconciliation. An up-close, intimate examination of a love that is corrosive and confusing and consuming, this element of the story is deeply upsetting, and is written in a way that can only be lived in.

Finally, perhaps more interestingly we read the lament of a decaying body, waiting to be found, longing for closure and grief- it’s something a little different, and is where the bulk of the most viscerally repulsive and unapologetic horror lies. Body horror aside, it’s also an examination of how unanswered questions can haunt, and a literalisation of how the female body is objectified, disrespected and becomes significant only when cold.

The three strands intertwine into a gnarled, complicated, bloody mess. An emotional, physical and structural anatomy of violence, with one man and its centre. Murray highlights just how difficult it is to break from a cycle of abuse, how so often women are spat at and catcalled and stalked, allegations that nobody takes seriously until it’s far too late, and exactly why so many would choose the damn bear every time. 

Emma E. Murray continues to astonish with the caustic, exquisite literature she produces, and “Shoot Me In The Face on a Beautiful Day,” is a searing, worthy addition to her remarkable body of work. An uncomfortable, and limit-pushing but important, gorgeously-written, viscerally-felt read, I am in a constant state of craving whatever Emma is putting out next- and you should be too.