Tenebrous Press never disappoints and I’m beginning to think M. Shaw doesn’t either. I first encountered Shaw’s particular blend of reality and weird horror in One Hand to Hold, One Hand to Carve and have been obsessed since. That first book I read by M. Shaw will forever hold a place in my brain and heart.
All Your Friends Are Here looks to be heading in the same direction, given I’ve started writing this review when I’m only on page seventy-two and already obsessed.
Shaw said it best in their introduction about “The Cure for Loneliness,” ‘Now here is someone who understands what it’s like to quietly go insane in a one-bedroom apartment with only plants, taxidermy, and self-absorbed exes for company.’ Shaw’s writing is that perfect blend of horrible and comforting, like living in a nightmare that feels like home. Like you belong here, and worst of all, UNDERSTAND the rules of being here, and ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE.
Which is probably what makes it the most horrifying of all. Reading M. Shaw is like reading the morning news.
And that’s fucking terrible thought. When horror and dystopia become your daily fare in life, you can get used to it, the same way you can get used to an abusive relationship. It just starts to feel natural.
But that’s enough philosophizing about reality. We came here for a book review, dammit, and a book review we will have.
All Your Friends Are Here opens with “Roots in the Ground,” a short but pungent little piece that instantly has you questioning your senses. Hard on its heels is “The Motorist,” a terror dream of, yes, quietly going insane while everyone watches and does nothing.
“Man vs. Bomb” and “One Long Staircase, Just Going Up” make you question what it is to be human in a society that doesn’t even put up a pretense of defining a person’s merit solely by their wealth. And then we show up at “The Only Friend You’ll Ever Need” and we start to wonder, well, a lot of things. About ourselves. And our internal mechanisms. Why we do what we do and why we don’t do other things. It’s a good piece. Trust me. You’ll understand when you get there.
“Go With the Flow” and “As I Wait For the Killing Blow” come pounding into our faces next, feeling on the surface like they can’t be any more different when, once you sit with them awhile and digest it all, you realize they’re really two sides of the same thought. What happens when we go with the flow, and when we go against it, striking our own path, making our own way, and defying expectations. A parallel that is reiterated in “My Dad Bought A Space Shuttle.” Because we can either stay stuck where we think we’re safe and happy and have everything we’ll ever need (even if we secretly know that’s a lie and we don’t actually have anything we need), or we can get up and do something scary and outside our nice, safe little bubbles.
Bubbles that are all too fragile and insanity inducing. “The Cure For Loneliness” will suckerpunch that right into you in a couple thousand words that definitely are a collective, social consciousness. If you’ve never felt the absolute need to ESCAPE and not know there is no escape as you slowly plod through the everyday, you will after reading this.
Follow “The Cure For Loneliness” up with “Ready Player (n+1)” and you get a case for madness in the everyday drudge to survive the mundane. Because is what we do to keep existing through the endless hours really sane? Or have we all just left our minds rattling around in our choice of distraction, left behind, waiting for who knows what? A few of us get out, but most of us just stay, like all the other fucking billionaires, who are all the same guy anyway.
Ultimately, the choice is ours. Will we stay in the car in “The Apology,” in the apartment in “Apartémon,” or the restaurant in “Objects at Rest,” or will we take the keys, and walk out? Quit the game while the quitting is good, and run? Hightail it out the front door, well after our shift, sure, but still in time, and jump on the next plane to Korea? The choice is ours, and ours alone, whether we will be an object in motion or one at rest. And our choice just might be the difference between our own Heaven or Hell so we better make a good one.
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