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Reviewed by Gabriel Santos for Readers' Favorite
A collection of ten surreal short stories, Yarrow Paisley's Divine in Essence ranges from disturbingly beautiful to beautifully disturbing to truly unique literary experiences that defy classification. These tales share an ethereal, dreamlike quality that blurs the line between reality and fantasy and imposes peculiar forms of logic unaffected by common sense and the laws of nature. Examples include I In The Eye, following a boy who finds himself trapped inside the glass eye of his father's girlfriend and replaced in the outside world by a lookalike; Nancy & Her Man in which a dead man awakes from his slumber due to a tap-dancing woman with wings; and Mary Alice In The Mirror, a story about a girl confined in a mirror for decades.
Brief descriptions and attempts at summaries can hardly do the book justice. The narration stands out as the most notable aspect more than the plethora of absurd events and characters, Yarrow Paisley has a gift for finding unusual metaphors, drawing connections between the most seemingly unrelated things, and diving deep into the psyches of characters living through incomprehensible experiences. The stories are less about going from point A to point B and more about contemplating the abyss between the points, wondering if point B (or even point A) exists at all, and treading a delightfully tortuous path filled with mysterious sights just beyond our grasp. Divine in Essence is a challenging but rewarding read that will appeal to fans of surreal tales and literary journeys into the bizarre and the abnormal. That said, the stories can be oddly wholesome but also quite disturbing, touching on subjects such as incest and child abuse, as well as featuring grotesque imagery, so reader discretion is advised.