“Everyone’s patience has its limits.” – Rampart
The fourteen tales that comprise author Amy Grech’s second collection of short stories, Blanket of White, are all about finding people’s limits. Grech takes common themes – love, death, coming of age, sex, family relationships – and drags the reader across the line of comfort on an exploration of the dark side of those familiar situations.
In some, Grech forces the reader to confront that darkness head on, sparing no detail in the horror that people can inflict upon one another: “Prevention,” a demonstration of how the pressure of decades of sibling rivalry and parental neglect can explode horribly sideways; “Raven’s Revenge,” a supernatural tale that tips its bloody cap to the master, Edgar Allan Poe; “Russian Roulette,” in which a love triangle turns decidedly deadly; and “Perishables,” a post-apocalyptic exploration of just how far one man will go to survive.
In others, however, Grech builds her stories around the more nuanced psychological and emotional traumas that people encounter: “Blanket of White,” the title story, is a poignant look at the desperate measures people are willing to take in the name of love; “Initiation Day,” in which a young man makes a life altering choice between fitting in and standing alone; “Crosshairs,” where a father learns, with devastating consequences, just how much his young son has taken his teachings to heart; and “EV 2000,” a clever, futuristic tale of an electronic vampire run amok in its desire to understand what it is to be human.
It is in exploring those emotional shades of gray where the true power of Grech’s writing shines through. As such, it is the wonderfully understated “Damp Wind And Leaves” that is far and away the standout of the collection. Set against the backdrop of a Halloween party, the story skillfully unfurls the emotional evolution of a seventeen year old, over the course of a single evening, from that of a child trying to hold on to his delight in the manufactured scares of Halloween to that of a young man ready to let go of childish things and take the truly scary step forward into adulthood.
While each stands on its own, taken collectively the stories in Blanket of White represent a complete journey through emotions that everyone has experienced – love and hate, jealousy and rage, pride and shame – and does so in an unflinching way that packs a huge emotional wallop.
Like so many times since arriving on the East Coast, I realized that, for all the oohs and aahs I received back home for my accomplishments, they amounted to absolutely nada here. – Sophie Hegel
The only oath I took, as I recall, was to first do no harm. I’m thinking we’re past that point. – Dr. Peter Brown
“Speaking from personal experience, I don’t recommend getting in touch with your dark side. Not healthy.” – Nan Vining
Just a few hard knocks. That’s what he’d kept telling himself, these past couple of years, but now he had to consider a more disturbing possibility. That perhaps the circumstances were not to be blamed, but only himself. – Will Magowan
The usual principles of combat seemed useless when fighting an impervious enemy, an enemy that didn’t need sleep and that functioned on the compulsion to kill, and she knew if they were to get out alive she had to adapt. – Amber Redgrave
It was like suddenly getting a glimpse of a giant invisible hand turning the world. You were not supposed to see those kind of things. You were not supposed to notice the machinery at work. – Gomez Porter
Someone is going to die. I sat in my car and felt that certainty pump through my veins. I took a minute to distill the violence into a more refined form and tucked it away until I needed it. – Michael Kelly
Digging had given his life purpose. It was a small, feeble purpose and was unlikely to end in anything more than a gradual tapering off into nothingness. But purpose was something, wasn’t it? – Blacklands
