Wormdye

Eamon Espey
Wormdye

Secret Acres, 2008

«Wormdye», a collection of interconnected stories of the same world, starts out as a family chronicle with a fair amount of violence: two brothers put their cat in a microwave oven, heated, and then throw the corpse into the toilet. In the next episode we see how these same brothers, their mother and sister standing at the grave of the father. The father, however, is not dead, but in the post-mortem travels gets all the pleasures of life that he has not had time to get in his time. In the next episode we see crime scene, when the scientist conducting the experiment on mutants (people-larvae), is killed by a group of masked robbers, who then kidnapped the mutant girl.



Such oddities can lasts and lasts, and they are not going to end. Among the other defendants in the events - the Pope, eating spaghetti with worms, wolf devoured the woman, puking children, the aliens. Eamon Espey has a great imagination. Imagine Bosch, who had read Philip K. Dick, the ancient legends and had seen enough of reality shows - this nuclear mix will be called «Wormdye». Plots of stories often are legends remakes - with Romulus and Remus, the Vatican, the ancient Greek voyages. But the classic stories change under the influence of modern culture. This is an ancient world, but with a TV and microwave, postcards and aliens. You won’t understand the nature of this world after reading the book, so I think, as the author himself. Espey certainly is the chronicler of strange times: between the novellas in the book often there are pages in the form of the ancient wall maps. It is not only a world map of Wormdye, it is maps of the entire universe. These huge paintings, which occupy page or two, dispense with the plot as such, but contain a bottomless pit of information. Emon Espy saturate the page with so many small details, from people to the quaint lines, that you can not look away a glance from a page for a few minutes - an abyss of information is mesmerizing.



Espey’s art is in harmony with the wild and crazy world of «Wormdye». The art is both primitive, simple, full of small details. When you look at the picture, you do not believe that it has drawn by a human, our contemporary. Likely to believe that this is done by someone from another civilization that lived long before us.



«Wormdye» is an artifact from another world and another time. This is a world that can be admired on paper, but you do not want to be there for a moment. And is this not the best compliment to the book.