Gunflower

December 18, 2023
Mckay stimulates with this introspective and variegated collection. The narrator of “Flying Rods” reconciles with her infidelity after she’s bitten by a bug and undergoes a metamorphosis. In “Come and See It All the Way from Town,” a family is haunted by unknown voices speaking in a language they don’t understand. The voices turn out to be those of sentient rocks in search of the Indigenous people who once shared the land with them. The young female protagonist of “Smoko” leads a workplace uprising to earn back employee smoke breaks, while the title story follows a woman who leaves the state of Georgia for a ship floating in international waters so she can get an abortion. Onboard the ship, a metaphysical force disrupts her sense of reality. The family at the center of “The Two O’Clock” finds a portal inside the wall of their house, which takes them to an extravagant party. In “Ranging,” a woman forms a support group in a world where men have disappeared. Whether they’re rooted in reality or fantasy, Mckay’s narratives enthrall. This will stick with readers long after they’ve turned the last page.

August 22, 2023
Laura Jean McKay’s Gunflower is a vivid and tantalising short story collection where animals are as seamlessly anthropomorphised as humans are animalised. McKay asks readers to suspend their narrative expectations and blurs the line between animals and humans as fur and bodies become indistinguishable. The stories’ narrators adopt an almost detached narrative voice—perceptive, alert and unbounded by societal norms. This creates tension, leading us to anticipate their wild impulses and whims as the story unfolds. The stories in Gunflower are split into three sections—Birth, Life, and Death—and while they can sometimes lean towards feeling confusing and unfinished, I was won over by the evocative prose and phantasmagorical atmosphere. In Birth, cats are set free, grief over a miscarriage eerily seeps in, and a woman undergoes a feverish transformation. The characters’ nonchalance about the strange transmutations happening to them, or the chaos surrounding them, readily immerses us in evocative surrealism. In Life, characters sway with uncertainty and the titular story ‘Gunflower’ shines. In it, a law professor documents her experience of travelling to a ship that offers abortions, and discomfort and fear pervade as she navigates the unknown to regain access to her body. Finally, in Death, themes of extinction, dread and decay permeate the stories. McKay’s collection offers something for all lovers of speculative fiction and is an impressive follow-up to The Animals in That Country.