Unfettered Transparency: Reviewing Claire Fitzpatrick’s Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis (2019)
Written by: Claire Fitzpatrick
Genre: Horror
Pages: 245 (E-Book)
Publisher: IFWG Publishing

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Why I Chose This: Forever intrigued by the Phoenix, rebirth, and the darkness in humans, the evocative cover of this book beckoned me to spend some time with a writer I’d never read before. Besides, I’m also a sucker for short fiction because I can squeeze small doses of delicious terror into the scant minutes I typically have between other, less compelling, tasks that must be completed.

The Premise:

A writer who admits to crafting the enclosed stories through the lens of a woman who no longer exists in the same form. An overarching imposition of tangible fear of isolation and rejection. Pubescent teens who struggle with the identities prescribed for them by family and society. Homes that do not represent anything warm and inviting. Loss transcribed into aching desolation. Women without the agency to make simple decisions about their bodies or lives. Seventeen short stories detailing a metamorphosis from pained bewilderment to a somber acceptance of monstrosity, within and without.

No spoilers

Discussion: One of the first things I like to do when I read a new-to-me writer is check out the introduction to their book, if one is included. Delightfully, Fitzpatrick included an honest introspection into the unnervingly personal catalysts for the stories in her collection. Many single author collections that contain introductions written by the writer seek to do one of three things: make excuses for work that can’t stand on its own, portray the writer as an otherworldly figure whose art must be deemed highly artistic and revered, or make tenuous connections to the stories that follow.

Fitzpatrick’s introduction does none of these things. She makes no apologies for the tiny chunks of her soul she lays out as a buffet for her readers to devour. She admits, up front, that she is merely a human who is charged with using her words and her experiences to tell stories. And every story in this collection has strong ties to her comprehensive theme of growth through searing pain and a rebirth.

The collection starts with my favorite of the bunch, “Madeline.” Madeline’s struggle with the constraints of becoming a woman in the way she thinks is proper is visceral. It spoke to my own confusing, lifelong struggle with the same concepts and the pang of sadness in knowing I might never meet all the ideals. However, Madeline’s ushering of herself into self-defined womanhood that she dared her mother to embrace was an ultimate “girl power” moment. Similarly, “The Eagle” is another standout that tells the story of different young woman who struggles with who she is under the oppressive weight of racism. Her inability to create her own identity within womanhood gives her lyrical story a much different ending from Madeline’s. “Scarab” rounds out the top three with the main character, June, using the only agency she has to harm herself and instigate a process of metamorphosis that serves her well.

Other stories were delightful in their weirdness. “The Dog” reads like a snippet of a coming of age tale but goes wrong in a way that can only be right. Jean was the perfect girl monster, and I’m totally here for that. “The Town Hall” could have been a scene in the same movie as “The Dog,” simple in its matter of fact telling of “a day in the life…”. “Happy Birthday, Ebony” is gut wrenching, but told with such adept command of vivid imagery I simply had to consume and enjoy it without turning away. Without the explicit sexual content in Ebony’s tale, these three stories could easily have been included in Rod Serling’s weird series The Twilight Zone. As a lifelong fan who watches those black and white episodes repeatedly, I say this with the highest of regards.

The stories in this collection are well-connected through the expert weaving of details that meld seamlessly into the story that follows. Although it’s obvious the stories aren’t about the same people and take place in different worlds, they don’t feel like completely detached pieces. However, there are a couple of aspects that could be confusing. For instance, in two back-to-back stories, there are characters named “Jack,” creating the false impression that one is a continuation of the other. Also, the story “Metamorphosis” was very similar to “Madeline” and although the main characters were different genders, the latter seemed almost like an earlier draft of the first. The plots of “The Jacaranda House” and “Senses” fell within horror story tropes that have been used over and over again and were salvaged mostly through Fitzpatrick’s effortlessly unique stamp of evocative description. And there were many things throughout the stories that were cornflower blue: so many that I found myself looking for a deeper meaning to the repetitive description before I decided there might not be any deeper meaning. None of these minor details greatly decreased the overall quality of the collection because Fitzpatrick infused each and every story with haunting emotion that glossed over the drawbacks.

In conclusion: The immersion into Fitzpatrick’s realization of her own metamorphosis as a writer and person through the nuanced characters and raw emotion in this collection is jolting. It feels almost dirty to poke around in this honest undressing of her spirit; further, Fitzpatrick’s willingness in allowing readers to trample through this well-connected documentation of a personal journey is simply heroic. I couldn’t have stopped reading if I had wanted to. Fitzpatrick commanded that I continue to witness her — and her characters’ — painful immolations in the name of rebirth. If only we all could be this self-aware.