Before you read any further—if you’re looking for popcorn
fiction, head elsewhere. Yes Trespassing is not what you are looking for. Maybe
it’s what you need somewhere down the line, but you’re not quite ready for it
at this point in your life. However, if you have time to enjoy a 12-course meal
of literary weirdness, welcome to this review.
It’s difficult to place Johnson’s short fiction in a
convenient box, which is a good thing where I come from. Is it horror?
Sometimes yes, and when it is operating in that territory (for instance, in the
first couple of stories in this book), it’s unsettling. It’s essentially what I
hope the future of horror fiction looks like. No cheap, convenient scares or cliché
approaches. Just something that feels wrong. Something that slices a thin pouch
in your flesh and slides right in, making itself right at home, scraping its
claws from inside every chance it gets. Is it literary fiction? Without a doubt
(at least based on how I define it), though certainly on the darker/stranger
side. And it’s this unclassifiable strangeness that pervades every word Johnson
writes.
Which brings me to my next point. I suspect Johnson is the
type of writer who obsesses over each word and sentence to unhealthy degrees, perhaps
losing far too much sleep until everything on the page is exactly as his warped
brain sees it. If this is not the case, then I hate his guts because he
shouldn’t have so many perfect sentences in one 400+ page book. It shouldn’t be
legal. I could probably point to any page in the book and find a line that
dumbfounds me. However, the story “Blumenkrank” begins with one of the best
opening lines I’ve read in a while: “Because Brother hung himself from our
chandelier with fine silk ties, mother and I had to take in a boarder.”
The stories are all over the place, from creepy to brain
melting to hilarious. More than a few of these tales feature a private
investigator named Martin Box, and they often evolve into the most bizarre of
the bunch. My favorite story in the collection is “‘Do You Sing?’ Asked Xavier
Steen,” a strangely poignant and touching piece of fiction, not something I
ever thought I’d find myself saying about a story featuring a major plot point
that involves the murder of a True Norwegian black metal band’s vocalist.
I must say, I really love the design of this book. Maybe
this doesn’t matter to the average reader, but it matters if you care about the
unlimited potential of art. The entire front cover contains a short story,
several stories have been omitted but are apparently accessible via a QC code,
there are many enigmatic handwritten notes throughout as well as brief
conversations between writer and editor, and there is even a page you can tear
out and use as a bookmark if you so desire.
I’m not going to pretend I understand what is happening in
all of these stories. Some of them, frankly, went over my head, yet I was still
engaged by the sheer force of the language. But Johnson has written a
collection of stories that command attention, that demand multiple reads. I’m
sure I’ll be returning to this book at least a couple more times in my
lifetime, simply because I WANT to better understand the madness that is Erik
T. Johnson.
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