Eat His Heart Out: Amelia Gray
by Rosie Clarke
While reading Amelia Gray’s 2010 novel THREATS for the first time, I experienced the sort of compression in my chest indicative of an impending panic attack–the kind where you have to remove yourself from the triggering situation and pray (emptily) for relief. But, to remove myself would have involved terminating my masochistically gratifying involvement, one that made my hands clench into fists in contact-empathy. I could not. I read until it was done.
The emotional arousal that tingled in my brain sought further gratification, and so I absorbed Museum of the Weird and AM/PM in single sittings before reaching Gray’s most recent work, Gutshot. Empathetically inhabiting peculiar, disturbed and borderline psychopathic mind-sets with intuitive grace, Gray communicates our innermost fantasies with sharp wit and a canny nod towards unspoken fetishes, compulsions and obsessions.
Ranging from shit-crusted swans to a pet embryonic mass, a woman whose mother lives in her pimple, cannibalistic love stories and self-mutilating evenings of romance, Gutshot is both literally and figuratively visceral. Gray’s vivid vignettes creep under the skin like parasites, becoming part of us without consent, absorbed into our nervous system. To my delight, there is an underbelly of comedy, razor-sharp in contrast to Gutshot’s disturbing violence and sadness, which invites us to laugh along with life’s cruelty and absurdity. It is a book at once full of heart and not for the faint of.
Clarke
What I find particularly enthralling is your use of psychological and physical horror, dark humour, and mystery to explore the human condition. These thematic approaches can most obviously be seen in the work of male writers and artists–reading your work, David Cronenberg, JG Ballard, Franz Kafka, and Stig Saeterbakken spring to mind. So, I am especially interested in engaging with female writers who employ similar refrains.
Gray
Briefly, there are lots of female writers who use these elements to great effect in their work: Joyce Carol Oates, Shirley Jackson, Vanessa Place, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O’Connor, Lindsay Hunter, Toni Morrison, Alissa Nutting, Mary Shelley, Diablo Cody, Anne Rice. I’m always flattered by suggestions of my own originality but I think it’s important to not frame violence, mystery, and horror/darkness as something unique among women.
Clarke
I agree, and you offer excellent examples to contradict the misconception that dark and violent themes are more frequently found in the work of men. I didn’t intend my lead-in to dismiss the work of women writers!
Gray
I get the impulse to look to the canon, but I think we should try and challenge and squash the canon, too.
Clarke
What made you return to short stories after publishing your first novel?
Gray
It wasn’t a return exactly–I was writing short stories while I was writing THREATS and also while I’ve been writing the novel I’ve been writing for the past three years. Any work, long or short, is a project, and I’ve always dealt best with projects by balancing them with other projects. It’s how I like to do freelance work, it’s how I did schoolwork. When I can keep busy with different things, there’s always something close enough to what I want to focus on.
Clarke
In previous interviews, you’ve spoken about the research that you did for THREATS–did you find yourself doing any particular research before writing Gutshot?
There were some stories–like ‘The Swan as Metaphor for Love’ and ‘Loop’– that I purposely didn’t research. I thought I’d rather keep myself in the story rather than worrying about exactly how a collarbone would attach to the neck or what a swan eats. It’s easy to get hung up in research and lose the thread of the story, or forget why you were telling the story in the first place.
Clarke
One of the things I like most about your writing is the undercurrent of feminism, perhaps even misandry–my favourite story of the collection is ‘Fifty Ways to Eat Your Lover.’ Is this intentional?
Gray
Everything in this book is done with intention, but I wouldn’t say something the size of feminism or misandry is ever quite it. ‘Fifty Ways to Eat Your Lover’ is a very sweet story to me, a very bodily story, of loving a person so much you want to crush and consume parts of him. It is a love story.
Clarke
It’s very interesting you say that, as my experience of reading it was almost the opposite, one of gratification; I felt a sense of empowerment, as a woman, visualising these gory reactions to romantic tropes. Your reply reminds me of the scene in Punch Drunk Love:
Barry: I’m lookin’ at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin’ smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You’re so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face, and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
Gray
It’s very much this impulse, yeah. I’m taking care of a puppy this week and I basically want to put his entire face into my mouth and eat his tongue.
Clarke
On a related note–although never overt, it often feels like you are making fun of men, and criticising notions of masculinity: I’m thinking of stories like ‘A Gentleman’ and ‘Go For It And Raise Hell’. Would you agree?
Gray
‘A Gentleman’ is about a sexual predator and ‘Go For It and Raise Hell’ is a romp. There are criticisms laid into each (more in the former) but I wouldn’t say that either of them are precisely critical of men or masculinity.
Clarke
Perhaps I am too keen to project my own criticisms of patriarchy onto the things that I read. What would you say the criticisms laid into ‘A Gentleman’ are–something along the lines of rape culture?
Gray
Yes, that gets closer to the mark. I wanted to write from the perspective of a male character who casts himself in the hero light. He sees himself caring for and saving this girl, and in doing so he feels he’s earned something in return or absolved himself of something. A lot of the stories in this book benefit from being read with a mind-set of how people balance themselves and each other, a system of payments and debts that exists in every person.
Clarke
Many of the stories in Gutshot are psychologically or physically violent. This violence is often perpetrated by women, but there is also quite disturbing violence against women, for example in ‘Away From’ and ‘House Heart’. So while some of your female characters seem empowered, you also depict others being degraded. Can you talk about this contrast?
Gray
When I write, I’m not thinking in that way–now comes a scene of empowerment or degradation. I know you weren’t suggesting that exactly. Maybe I’m not the right person to ask about larger themes like that. Though my moves are very purposeful, I’m not necessarily moving along those lines. The women and men through the collection suffer or triumph as the story wills. My only desire is to tell the truth.
Clarke
In addition to violence, you frequently describe graphic and disgusting bodily functions or illnesses. Can you explain what draws you to this sort of “body horror”?
Gray
Bodies are strange! They’re easily damaged and mistreated and so awfully present. They are full of snot and bile. It’s hard to not think of ourselves as an immortal soul in essentially an old yogurt cup.
Clarke
That’s a really wonderful analogy!
Gray
It’s a little too clean really, but it’s close.
Clarke
With that in mind, do you think that your repeated use of physical functions and failings is connected with the themes of conception and motherhood apparent in many of the stories in Gutshot–‘The Moment of Conception’ and ‘Precious Katherine’ in particular–?
Gray
Sure–conception and motherhood are special and often precious events prone to catastrophic failure, gross malady, destruction and death.
Clarke
You very effectively balance darkness and creepiness with humour. Stories such as ‘Thank You,’ ‘Gutshot’ and ‘The Swan as a Metaphor for Love’ are simultaneously weird, gross, and very funny. Is this intentional, to give the reader relief, or do you find that humor and horror go hand in hand?
Gray
Yes, both of those things. The world thrives in balance. But I didn’t think of those stories as too weird or gross, so I’m probably too far-gone to be that good of a resource on the idea of balance.
Clarke
I’m inclined to find myself in the same situation. Finally, what’s next for you?
Gray
I’m writing a novel now and some screenplay work. I am writing the copy for a financial planning app and some book reviews. And I’m crate training the puppy, so my hands and keyboard now smell like liver snacks. How gross is that?
Clarke
If there’s one thing that will desensitize you to faecal matter and dismembered animal parts, it’s a puppy. Is the screenplay a short film or feature-length piece? I’d love to see some iteration of your writing on screen, so that’s exciting news.
Gray
Thank you for the vote of anticipation. I’ve written a few screenplays, both alone and with friends. It’s a way to kill time in Los Angeles. Nothing will come of any of it for some time yet but it’s fun to play.
Gutshot is available from April 14th on FSG Originals. You can read Labyrinth and House Proud online.
About the Author:
Rosie Clarke is London-based writer and critic, and works for Asymptote. Her writing has appeared in Music & Literature, The White Review, and The Quarterly Conversation. Her review of Gutshot will appear in Electric Literature this month.
