A debut collection of short stories by Paige Clarke, She Is Haunted is imbued with an engaging assortment of characters that remain with you in a way that’s almost like being haunted … but in the best way possible. These characters and their stories will make you question your own experiences — your own thoughts and feelings, even — whilst exploring the need for recognition in a world where there are so many competing voices, yet you’re in constant conversation with your own. Clark crafts these stories like a collection of tiles, where some are similar and others strikingly different, yet they still complete the room and in a way make you feel like you are home.
Paige Clark (Photo by Marcelle Bradbeer).
Despite the bold array of distinct characters across different timelines and within dissimilar and somewhat similar narratives, Paige faultlessly explores the idea of how being locked in your own head can close one off from new experiences, relationships, and family ties. The short stories within She is Haunted traverse existentialism and common human experiences in a unique and refreshing way, primarily from the first person but alternating depending on the gradient of realism within each storyline. This collection ventures into the territories of identity, grief, heartbreak, betrayal, and the complications of human relationships. At times this novel can be unreservedly funny, harrowingly sad, and unquestionably joyful.
Each character is crafted with such vulnerability that it evokes moments of empathy that remind the reader of what it feels like to live in someone else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes. This is so whether it be the fragile connection between a mother and daughter, or the jealousy between a woman and her partner’s ex-lover, or the limitless bond between a dog and their newly divorced owner. The collection demonstrates how everyone is seeking something, and although no two people are the same we still hold common ambitions, common struggles, and a shared need for recognition and understanding in a world that tests us in so many ways. Paige Clark writes with warmth and a precise wit that makes these characters believable and shockingly relatable — particularly in the context of their often embarrassing plights and unapologetically candid inner dialogues.
All in all, Paige Clark has woven together a comforting blanket, constructed of common threads that touch on transnational Asian identity, the competing nature of friendship, the complications of love — all of which are ultimately held taut by the shared thread of feelings of emptiness and a need to fill that space with something meaningful. Ironically, these stories do not always stay within the boundaries of reality and sometimes test the limits by deviating into the absurd, such as the plausible existence of a ‘Department of Recovery’ that would give clients a plan to either reconnect them with their ex-partners or order the termination of the relationship within 30 days. This lends itself to the idea that relationships, romantic or otherwise, can lead to a sudden realisation that there is more to the world than just what occupies your mind, and the reality of a situation is often quite distinct from the scenarios we construct.
—She Is Haunted by Paige Clark (Allen & Unwin) is out now.
She Is Haunted
A mother cuts her daughter's hair because her own starts falling out. A woman leaves her boyfriend because he reminds her of a corpse; another undergoes brain surgery to try to live more comfortably in higher temperatures. A widow physically transforms into her husband so that she does not have to grieve.
In She Is Haunted, these renditions of the author search for recognition and connection, and, more than anything else, small moments of empathy. But in what world will she move beyond her haunted past and find compassion for herself?...
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