False Bodies by J.R. McConvey
Reviewed by Naomi MacKinnon
Inspired by Kraken stories from Newfoundland, J.R. McConvey found himself diving more deeply into the subject for False Bodies, his debut novel. In an interview with NQ, McConvey talks about his interest in monsters since he was a kid, squids in particular since the two years he spent on Jeju Island. Then he found the Moses Harvey story (inspiration for the character of Moses Kane) and knew he had to use it in his novel.
“Settle in for this weird, wild, wet Newfoundland supernatural adventure that will simultaneously provoke the heart and the mind.”
Any novel about mystical creatures is asking you to suspend your disbelief, and this one is no different. But who doesn’t love a good story about a mysterious creature of the sea—a place we know so little about—to haunt your dreams and to spook you the next time you’re taking a refreshing dip in the ocean.
“Nothing’s more dangerous than thinking, It could never happen. Anything is possible, especially under the sea.”
Eddie “the Yeti” Gesner is a believable monster-hunter, pulled into the profession by a devastating incident in Tibet while on vacation with his wife; she was there one second and gone the next. Eddie is sure he saw—in that split half-second—the face of a yeti, and has been haunted by it ever since. He now spends his life “chasing the ghosts of a wife and a daughter, and the person I thought I might be.” Eddie is a complex character; uncomfortable in his big body, mourning the one person who loved him as he was, and feeling like an outcast everywhere he goes.
“Everyone walks around in the shadow of their own self, caged within bones, hidden beneath cloaking skin. We’re all false bodies, ghosts of ourselves. We’ll never know, never, what we really are.”
Eddie travels to Newfoundland after hearing about what happened on the offshore oil rig in Conception Bay. When a ferry of men showed up at the Harvey Queen for shift change one day, they found it completely deserted, with only a smell left behind, “a sharp ammoniacal tang, like sour bleach, cutting through the usual smog of smoke and petroleum fumes.” The next time someone took a trip out to the Harvey Queen, the men were back on the rig, but they were all dead; most ominously, there was a large tentacle aboard.
One of the first things Eddie does when he gets to St. John’s is stopping in at a used bookstore, where he finds the antique diary of Moses Kane. The bookseller wants to sell it, but is also hesitant to sell it; she seems to be both in awe of the diary and fearful of it. In the end, she lets it go for $8000. Eddie has no idea the trouble that book is going to cause. Moses Kane’s diary entries are interspersed throughout the novel, relaying his experience with the mysterious cephalopod and his increasing obsession with it. “I think now, of Christ—that bleeding god to whom I once pledged my soul—and know him to be a distant flicker compared to you, my beautiful god of the shadowed ocean, whose flesh and mind have touched my own.”
A rogue tentacle, 64 dead men, a dead doctor, an old diary, mysterious warning signs, a broken-hearted seven-foot-tall expert on otherworldly creatures, and the suspicion that Haxan Corp. is up to something on the Harvey Queen besides extracting oil… what is local cop Amelia Keane supposed to do with that? “She had a point. Whatever was happening, it was deadly. It was coming from Kane’s diary, it was coming from the sea, it was coming from the fishy stink around the Harvey Queen. It was coming, in part, from me—and as usual, I hadn’t figured out how to control it.”
Throughout the book there is a dark, almost gothic, feel, and an atmosphere of wonder and unpredictability. One never knows what is going to happen next. At times, there are intense scenes of horror. The intensity picks up near the end of the novel, the horror made worse by the claustrophobic feel of being 700 feet below sea level. But this is not just a horror story; McConvey has explored political, environmental, and philosophical ideas about how people exist in relation to nature. So settle in for this weird, wild, wet Newfoundland supernatural adventure that will simultaneously provoke the heart and the mind.
“… you never know what things are going on, unheeded, just below the visible membrane of the world.”
About the Author
J.R. McConvey’s debut short story collection, Different Beasts, won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for speculative fiction. His stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and the Bristol Short Story Prize, and published widely in magazines and anthologies, including Joyland, The New Quarterly, Taddle Creek and Weird Horror. He splits his time between Toronto, where he lives with his family, and a different dimension, in which he is an eldritch, giant cephalopod, hovering in the cosmos. Find him online @jrmcconvey & jrmcconvey.com.
About the Reviewer
Naomi MacKinnon lives in Nova Scotia with her husband, three kids, a dog, three cats, and a bunny. She works in the children's department at the beautiful Truro Public Library where she loves to read all the picture books and play with the puppets. She blogs about (mostly) Canadian and Atlantic Canadian books at Consumed by Ink.
Book Details
Publisher : Breakwater Books
Publication date : Oct. 18 2024
Language : English
Print length : 248 pages
ISBN-10 : 1778530338
ISBN-13 : 978-1778530333
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