reviewed by Isaac Fox
Rick White’s short story “The Hand,” which appeared in Issue 47 of Gone Lawn, is a roulette game of playful barbs, a miniature satire aimed at an endless array of targets. From tennis to conspiracy theorists to any number of fictional genres and tropes, no one and nothing is safe from White’s dark humor. His main target, however, is upper class suburbia.
On Ghost House Lane in the fictional English town of Blatherwick, an array of exaggerated, kooky characters live their lives. Among their ranks are Gregory Fist, a conspiracy-minded critic of the “mainstream media”; Tom Tum, a retiree and skeptical new user of FaceTime; and Genevieve Corgi-Slippers, who believes that making martinis is hard labor. Life on Ghost House Lane is orderly, consistent, spotless. Until, that is, someone finds a severed hand in the hedges.
At first, the residents of Blatherwick react to the hand as suburbanites often react to tragedy: they really don’t. Gregory Fist assumes it must be a conspiracy; Tom Tum calls his daughter to tell her about it; and Genevieve Corgi-Slippers reassures herself that she’s taken self-defense classes and will be just fine. All of these reactions maintain the status quo: they back up the residents’ personal narratives, defer action, or both. However, an immediate, urgent unanswered question—and a possible threat of violence—cannot exist within an unbroken suburban social order. So the suburban social order breaks. People fight in the streets and go outside naked. Soon, Ghost House Lane is “one hive mind—with one single entity [the hand] at the centre of it all.”
In the tradition of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and generations of other British absurdists, White seamlessly blends a bizarre, bleak narrative with near-constant humor. For example, his description of Ghost House Lane’s descent into chaos culminates in this passage: “Shopkeepers covered themselves in boot polish, armed with sharpened biros. Teachers captured small children in nets. Vicars drowned wasps in holy water. Cats slept.” Even this moment of swelling tension is alleviated by the absurdity of its imagery and by a snarky little joke about cats.
However, as the plot of “The Hand” grows both darker and more absurd, the jokes that previously alleviated the story’s weight increasingly serve to exacerbate it. Interspersed bursts of comedy contrast sharply with the growing horror of what’s happening in Blatherwick, creating jarring tonal leaps that keep readers off balance. The sly joyfulness of White’s humor makes the ominous, bleak overtones at the heart of “The Hand” feel all the more unnerving.
Gone Lawn is an online literary magazine publishing strange and speculative fiction, prose poetry, visual art, and more. Issue 47 came out in December, and Issue 48 is forthcoming. More of Rick White’s work can be found on his website.
Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. When he’s not reading or writing something assigned, he’s probably reading or writing something unassigned. His work has previously appeared in Tiny Molecules, Rejection Letters, Fifty-Word Stories, and several other publications. You can find him on Twitter at @isaac_k_fox.