“The Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”) is a yearly competition to recognize, honor, and celebrate the talent and creativity present in the indie community. We are a sister competition to both SPFBO and SPSFC, and we highlight greatness in the novella format in all areas of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.).” – From the official SFINCS website.
Note: The following review contains only my personal thoughts as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole.
REVIEW
Gothic can be tricky. In my experience, a lot of modern Gothic mimics the density of prose you find in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic, but lacks the subtlety of subtext or the layered symbolism that makes that density feel necessary. It’s probably for that reason that in terms of modern Gothic stylists, I tend to prefer works in the vein of Angela Carter, who evoke an uncanny sense of the dread within the familiar without mistaking thickness of prose for richness of theme or premise. The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill is very much, for me, in this relatively rare camp of modern Gothic works that achieves a deep sense of atmosphere without overburdening itself stylistically. Author Nicole Willson’s critiques and influences in Shadow Dancers feel pointed and clear, her prose lucid yet not without a sense of time and genre.
I’m a huge horror fan and have a background in the study of Gothic literature, so was excited to have an excuse to pick up Shadow Dancers. Many of the most effective horror stories (particularly short form horror stories) focus on a simple premise executed sharply, and happily that’s the case here. The novella takes place during the Great Depression and centres a circus scout named Kate Montgomery. Kate’s family circus is being courted by a suspicious gentleman named Oswald, who represents the titular troupe of shadow dancers: three teenage ballerinas who can project their shadows and also manipulate them so that they move independently. Oswald is immediately a sinister figure, and the mechanism by which the shadows operate opaque. The girls are practically starved and appear much younger than their supposed ages, and even worse, a fourth dancer apparently drowned under mysterious circumstances. Kate is barely allowed to speak with the girls without Oswald present. While Kate’s initial impulse is to refuse to recruit the shadow dancers, pity for the girls and a long-quashed maternal instinct nudge her toward incorporating the routine as a means of rescuing the girls from Oswald’s clutches.
It’s a perfect premise for a novella and reminded me at turns of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop and, of all things, an episode of My Little Pony called “Bright Lights” that I was obsessed with as a child. The emaciation of the girls, along with the obvious abuses they suffer under Oswald, clearly parallel the exploitation of young women and girls in the modelling industry, the ballet world itself, and other sports.* The focus here really is on concept, intrigue, and theme. While Kate is a fine character, the most compelling piece of Shadow Dancers is undeniably the no-doubt horrifying secret of the shadows themselves. That the promise of a supernatural explanation for the dancers’ routine is somewhat overshadowed by the real-world horrors of gross exploitation; the manipulation of young people and their vulnerable, impoverished parents; and parallels with the height of freak show popularity, is not a negative but very much a credit to Willson’s treatment of her concept. There’s a human story, as well as real weight, behind the story Willson is telling.
At some point during the night, I dreamed the shadows of the tree branches on the wall began to move. They stretched down, swarmed over my body, and wrapped around me like steel arms, trapping me in the uncomfortable bed as Oswald stood over me, smoking and staring, completely unmoved by my pleas for him to help free me.
Although the historical setting and feel of Shadow Dancers is to be commended, one of my few critiques of the novella is that occasionally a stray slice of word choice pulled me out of the setting and reminded me that it was a work authored in the 2020s. Aside from that minor criticism, I did find Oswald’s initial introduction, where we’re informed that not only does he starve the girls, but he also forces them to live in the barn, a little over-the-top. The fact of the barn itself didn’t bother me, but the way the information was conveyed–as though Oswald were reciting a list of all the reasons he was a villain–came off as unintentionally funny in a work that’s otherwise very serious. It simply felt off compared with the consistency of tone elsewhere on display. I should note though, that this was limited to one page of the whole work.
The steady build of tension was well-handled, though the explosive finale could have used just slightly more time to spin out, but overall I was very impressed by how easily Willson hooked me (and continued to hook me) throughout. Shadow Dancers is a short, tight read and has me eager to see what Willson does next. Short-form writing is an art in itself. Not everyone is a great novella-writer (I, certainly, am not), but Willson clearly has an impressive command of the form. Given how tightly and sharply she writes, I’d be very excited to see her approach to short story-writing and novel-length projects.
The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill is a finely-crafted and polished novella that will easily trap you from its first page and which I recommend reading in one sitting, if at all possible. With a solid structure, accessible and mature prose, as well as a strong thematic throughline, Shadow Dancers was a joy to read and one I’d recommend to fans of Gothic in the vein of Angela Carter.
*At the end of the novella, Willson cites the abuse of Russian figure skaters as a major inspiration, and although it wasn’t the skating world that initially sprang to mind for me as I was reading, it was very apparent what dynamics Willson was critiquing, and which sadly prevail in a number of industries. Willson also notes the film Vampyr (1932) as an inspiration.
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