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The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night, a collection of short stories by Jen Campbell, has recently been published by Two Road Books. This collection focuses on the conventions of the fairytale and turns it on its head in a interesting and refreshing way. Campbell uses these fairytales to give voices to the shadows, to those who are different, and also to shine light on the untold experiences of many, making it an extremely enlightening read.
One of the most startling aspects of these short stories is this very inclusion of untold experiences. “History has not been kind to those who are different,” Campbell has said speaking to her publisher, and it is clear that she is attempting to rewrite this troubling narrative. The epigraph, a quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, illuminates the very hope of Campbell that those who were once labelled monsters, and “cut from all the world” as Shelley puts it, can grow to be celebrated and identify themselves in these stories. The collection includes those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as people with disabilities, and the collection’s true success lies in the fact that these aspects of identity do not wholly define the character. Each character is complicated and layered in many ways, which is crucial to the stories’ integrity and the enjoyment thereof.
The fact that these stories are presented in the fairytale format gives the reader a false sense of comfort which is destroyed utterly by their content. The narratives may start with the familiar “Once upon a time,” but Campbell challenges our apparent ideas of what a fairytale means to us. The glass slipper and carriage is replaced by sexual assault at the hands of the Church and murder. An example of this is the short story ‘Animals’, which recounts a lover’s venture to buy a heart that will make their partner love them again, but is truly a story of murder due to heartbreak. These hearts may be “Bred to love. Built to last,” as Campbell writes, but it will never change their relationship. Like Frankenstein, Campbell creates something seemingly familiar to us but in other ways unrecognisable. The author uses the traditional method of storytelling to convey the issues that consume our society today.
