Review: I, No Other by Yarrow Paisley

A disturbing but entrancing collection of stories, I, No Other by Yarrow Paisley is a post-modern plunge into the psychological fringes of human nature.

The narrative voices in this collection represent a shocking breadth of humanity, and the dark extremes of the psyche – a compendium of obtrusive thoughts made flesh, of dark fantasies and nightmarish realities that most readers would prefer to deny. A leering predator with the silver tongue of a scholar, an obsessed madman mentally escaping the bars that hold him; a man slowly builds himself into a pipe, only to experience a Kafka-esque transformation as he spirals out of touch, and out of his mind; an evolving simulation seeking new depths of depravity and a disembodied but obsessed spirit… these are just a few of the taboo-shattering narrators that inhabit these mind-stretching tales.

The prose is meticulously stylized from start to finish with painstakingly chosen language, wry slaps of wit, and a deranged energy behind much of the writing, as though the ideas are being ripped root and stem from the author’s mind. The deviant edge of some stories is reminiscent of William S. Burroughs, while others boast the sinister mania of Edgar Allan Poe, or the coarse profundity of Bukowski. While Paisley’s style and influence veer as wildly as his plotlines, the esoteric and fustian language is consistent, with antiquated verbiage rubbing shoulders with graphic descriptions of voyeurism and lurid violence.

In many of these stories, the shock factor is almost a character in itself, lurking around every page turn and hard-left twist in the narrators’ fickle moods. Incestuous desires and degenerate dreamscapes populate these pages, as if presented as a kind dare to readers, or a cathartic confession from the deepest corners of one’s mind. Some of these visceral scenes exist in a nebulous vacuum of thought, a stream of subconsciousness that could only ever be fully decoded by the narrator. Others are grounded in reality, but bent into obsessive loops or enigmatic visions that are intentionally maddening to follow; no narrator is to be trusted, and no subject is held sacred.

Paisley offers no quarter or explanation for the collection’s full intention, forcing any sojourners to unpack these unsettling stories alone, without entirely knowing the motive of both the author and characters – to challenge, to titillate, or to inform, it’s difficult to discern, but that only adds to the collection’s discomfiting nature. That may also be the weak link of the book’s execution, however, as some readers may find the transgressive tone and style too inscrutable or off-putting. That said, that sense of cryptic mystery is a feature of these stories, with some pieces descending into screeds of wild poetry, erotic interludes, and gratuitous tangents where artistic license is taken to a heightened degree, like a Rorschach test made of prose.

For everyday bookworms who prefer to keep their sanity and sleep intact, this boundary-pushing tour de force may be a bridge too far. However, for those readers who enjoy every type of challenge – to their senses, sensibilities, taste, and morality – this collection offers no end of intense taboo corners to explore.