The return of horror’s new transgressive star
Synopsis
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.
Review
I have a confession, which is thankfully a lot less worse than the confessions of some of the characters in this book: over the last couple of years I have become a little obsessed with Emma E. Murray’s transgressive, shocking, beautiful, brutal brand of horror. From her Southern Gothic paean to revenge and female rage When the Devil to her 16-year-old-girl-serial-killer-POV downright masterpiece Crushing Snails to her astounding short story collection of love in all its brutality and beauty The Drowning Machine and Other Obsessions, Murray has evolved her formula of deeply distressing images, triggering topics covered with both poetic brutality and beauty, and incredibly immersive POVs which force you into the head of someone you can’t understand… until now. But with Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day, out now from Apocalypse Party, Murray may well have reached even greater heights as this is transgressive horror at its peak; forcing the reader into a compulsive, addictive, uncomfortable examination of the complexities of domestic abuse and the courage of survival. The result is frankly astonishing.
The plot unfolds over multiple POVs, each just as unsettling and bold as the other. One is an unknown woman’s corpse in a wood, murdered by a serial killer, her consciousness still trapped even as she decays, hoping someone will find her so she can be at peace. The other is Birdie, a woman still grieving for her dead son, who is in an abusive relationship with the monstrous Russ, who emotionally manipulates her into worshipping him even as he rages at her. And then the final POV, or more accurately series of POVs, are various women falling victim to a home-invading serial killer on the loose.
If you’re wondering which of those is the most unsettling POV, be assured the answer is all of them. The perspective of the slowly rotting corpse of the murdered woman showcases Murray’s ability to blend the horrific and the beautiful all in one; she does not shy away from the realities of body decomposition while retaining a sense of the beauty of nature as they wait for justice that may never come. Meanwhile, the constant interruptions to the main story from the serial killer’s victim’s POVs are tough to read. Murray’s ability to put you in the heads of the victims, and will them to survive, to fix yourself in their brain with all the risk of emotional attachment in such a short space of time, is genuinely astonishing. Murray wants you to see the heroism of survival even as it is almost certainly not guaranteed, and it works.
But it’s the main first-person POV of Birdie, the grieving mother enmeshed in the abusive relationship, that makes this novel a true masterpiece for me. Her boyfriend Russ is a true creature of the gaslighting abuse cycle; raging at her for trying to live her life while other times threatening self harm and making himself the victim; and then trying to paper over this with over the top declarations of love of her. Yet despite his patent manipulations Birdie, her guilt over her son having destroyed her self esteem, is constantly excusing his every foible, blaming herself, swooning over him to the reader and completely unable to see him for what he is.
This creates an interesting dynamic for the reader. It is very hard not to be immensely frustrated with her inability to stop praising him. Indeed, the reader is represented by the character of her best friend, who is immensely sympathetic and patient, desperate for her to see sense, yet struggling with her own frustrations and wondering how long she can keep being the shoulder to cry on for someone who will never give themselves a chance. As the reader we are this friend, and the sensation of frustration is almost suffocating; true tension through dynamic voice.
And this is Murray’s genius: she is asking you to understand Birdie: why she hates herself, why she cannot stop forgiving and idolising a monster. Not judge her. To understand that your finger must be pointed at the correct culprit. And throughout all this, despite the manipulation wielded on her, Birdie is surviving, and not breaking, even as she threatens to complete the cycle Russ has created. And this is the real heroism Murray is asking you to witness. It’s an all-time great exercise in a horror first-person POV, an astonishing tour de force that I’ll be thinking about for some time.
Overall, Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day is a shining masterpiece of the transgressive horror genre, a deeply unsettling relentless page-turner that lays bare the manipulation of domestic abuse while stripping down the reader’s defences in order to show them the true courage of what it takes to survive it. Maybe the most necessary and astonishing work of horror you’ll read all year.
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