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Review: The Drowning Machine and Other Obsessions by Emma E. Murray

February 3, 2025 by Ed Crocker Leave a Comment

Rating: 9/10

Synopsis

In these eighteen stories, Emma E. Murray navigates uncharted waters of love, lust, and loss, descending into that most darkest of the human (and inhuman) heart.
Amidst the spiral and churn, you will hear frighteningly realistic tales of parental regret, the death of innocence, carnal yearning, and creeping evil, among other voices of the damned. Some are ferocious howls from out of the deep; others, tender lullabies or deranged arias of grief—and, beneath it all, the quiet, contented hum of something which has just fed… yet hungers for more.
With stories that have been previously published in such venues as Vastarien and Cosmic Horror Monthly, as well as critically acclaimed anthologies, Emma E. Murray’s virtuosic prose takes the reader to the very root of the vortex and will leave you gasping for breath.
Enter the maelstrom of THE DROWNING MACHINE and Other Obsessions, and let yourself sink—into a darkness that will devour you.

Review

In last year’s novel Crushing Snails, Emma E. Murray put us in the head of a sixteen year old girl who was also a burgeoning killer, and pulled off one of the great narrative tricks of recent horror: making us sympathize and more worryingly empathize with her. Were we right to, given the trauma she endured? Or we tricked by our narrator? Why did we empathize so strongly with her? The question haunted me, and it was meant to.

She also gave us utterly horrific and mind-numbingly traumatizing images that didn’t so much imprint themselves on my retinas as take out a lease and stay there for months.

Both of these Murray traits, wickedly effective empathy and chilling scenes of transgressive acts and violence return with a devil’s vengeance in The Drowning Machine and Other Obsessions, a collection mainly composed of Murray’s stories previously collected in anthologies, with a couple of original stories thrown in.

It’s a collection that has a remarkably consistent thematic through line – the theme, as J.A.W. McCarthy explains so vividly in the introduction to the collection, being love, in all its horrific and understandable, its obsessive and extreme manifestations. Through Murray’s gift of giving a real voice to even the most unimaginable of narrators, we are placed, across three separate parts, in the heads of those experiencing powerful emotions, some devastating, some chilling, some beautiful, all understandable, many horrific. We are forced to consider whether we can ever understand someone’s motivations – or whether we understand them too much.

Part 1 sees mothers doing understandable things in horrific situations, horrific things in horrific situations and several permutations in between. Murray makes us confront whether something can ever be truly bad if it comes wrapped in the burning, unstoppable bow of unquestioning devotion. I mean yes, probably, but if you’ve come here to judge, you’ve misunderstood the assignment.

Oh, and those chilling images return. In the opening story An Angel of God, we are put in the head of a mother grieving for her child who sees an opportunity to save them through the pain of another. The image we are confronted with here is truly, monstrously horrific – if there is a more shocking opening to a collection, let me know – and it’s not sugar coated but rather fed to us raw and seared on our brains. This is extreme love, and it asks of us extreme empathy.

Another standout is Lavender and Dandelions, where a mother must protect her daughter from the fall of nuclear bombs. The horrors are more subtle and unseen but inevitable and oncoming. Here the duality of the horror and the beauty of the mother’s devotion is stark and haunting.

In part 2, the strong emotions of children are examined as we enter their heads, and here Murray’s powerful voice echoes fierce, perhaps none more so than in Dyin Ain’t Nothin’ But Fallin’ Asleep, which presents a nightmarish society where children are executed for the tiniest crimes. The story begins discordantly as we experience the thoughts of a child with an almost adult voice. What Murray does then with this is nothing short of a remarkable exercise in narration, reminding us of the fragility of children and how foolish we are to transplant our adult voice onto them.

In another Part 2 standout, Take Control, the supposedly adult emotion of sacrifice is examined through one of the most horrific parent nightmares you can imagine – but no parents here, just children and their capacity for the purest form of love.

Finally, Part 3 sees some of the most extreme, and extremely imaginative, of Murray’s experiments in love and obsession. In Blessed Are the Meek, we see through the perspective of an android used and abused by her programmer, who journeys down unexpected pathways of pleasure and pain. Murray flips the switch here between agony and ecstasy and makes you completely feel the robot’s perspective even as you are repulsed. Then, In Exquisite Hunger, we are, with echoes of her novel Crushing Snails, forced to be in the head of a would-be killer again, and the extended horrors and gore and insanity that follows is a real example of Murray’s you-can’t look-away retina trauma. Murray loves to transgress with the act of making you watch unspeakable atrocities while forcing you to swallow the narrator’s cold mania as they explain it. It’s an unforgettable experience, much though you may try.

Then there’s the titular story The Drowning Machine, which is a quieter tale of grief and guilt, and serves as the current that pulls you and all the other stories under, showing that Murray’s subtleties can be as haunting as her grand guignol transgressions.

Overall, Murray’s collection submerges us in the worst horrors to force us to empathize with all the terrifying contours of love. An astonishing feat of narrative voice whose beautiful and terrible truths will haunt you.

Filed Under: Anthology, Fear For All, Reviews Tagged With: Book Review, Horror

About Ed Crocker

Ed Crocker was born in Manchester, UK and has managed to stay there ever since. By day he edits books—his clients include Sunday Times Bestselling authors, award-winning indie authors, and acclaimed small presses. By night, or sometimes also by day (freelancer rules), he reviews books and interviews authors, watches horror films, plays video games and writes fantasy and horror novels. My god, what a nerd.

His epic fantasy trilogy The Everlands – vampires, werewolves and sorcerers but no humans - is being published in North America by St Martin's Press. The first book, Lightfall, is out Jan 14, 2025.

You can find him on most socials (not Twitter) at @edcrockerbooks and at ed-crocker.com, where you can sign up for his newsletter GET CROCKED for your sins.

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