Blog tour: Eerie Exhibits, by Victoria Williamson

This post is part of a blog tour organised by TheWriteReads. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.

‘Five unnerving tales of the weird and uncanny from award-winning author Victoria Williamson.

‘A room full of screaming butterflies.

‘An unsettling smile on the face of a carved sarcophagus.

‘A painting that draws its viewer into the disturbing past.

’ A stuffed bear that growls in the dead of night.

‘And a shell that whispers more sinister sounds than the sigh of the sea…

‘Dare you cross the threshold of the old Museum and view its eerie exhibits?’

Eerie Exhibits, by Victoria Williamson, is a collection of five short horror stories, each based around an exhibit in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. A handful of distinct characters, all unhappy for one reason or another, experience transformation when they interact with the artefacts on display – and rarely for the better.

I found Eerie Exhibits really imaginative and compelling. As the blurb indicates, no two stories centre around the same, or even similar objects, and the ways they affect the protagonists are all very different, but usually unsettling.

The author ably furnishes each item with a backstory – in terms of its tenure in the museum, as well as its wider historical context – and makes this the reason for its power, enriching the objects and ensuring the information she provides about them is relevant to the plot, keeping the stories efficient and concise.

The characters don’t vary only in age and gender, but also in likeability. It was easy to feel sympathy for Jeremy (The Screaming Room) and Amy (The Grinning Man) – both put-upon, yet still curious and kind children – and Julie (The Whispering Shell), because I could relate to her much-maligned quietness, as well as her low self-esteem. Dave (Et in Arcadia Ego) seems okay until you learn more about him, whereas Thelma (The Shape of the Beast) comes across as bitter and twisted from the get-go.

Despite/because of its nasty protagonist, The Shape of the Beast was my favourite story of the five. Thelma’s resentment towards anyone “better” than her, regardless of their actual personalities or misfortunes, did have me like “godsake, let it go!”, and she recounts doing some breathtakingly evil things, but these – and the changes she undergoes after communing with a taxidermy mother bear – give this piece a particularly thrilling, nightmarish edge.

There are a few thought-provoking themes that tie some of the stories together. Families are a major theme, with parents’ circumstances and behaviours being at the root of all five main characters’ woes. As a security guard and cleaner respectively, Dave and Thelma are working-class, and their antipathy towards the museum’s more educated/”cultured” visitors and staff betrays an “us and them” divide behind the scenes.

We’re also prompted to consider how museums have changed over time in terms of intentionality, purpose, and presentation. Jeremy, telling his story as an adult, recalls how the museum of his childhood wasn’t carefully curated, and a trip there mostly involved looking at curiosities. Much of its vast, eclectic collection was on display at once and “organised” according to vague themes, with no attempt to guide visitors through the exhibits using a narrative, or encourage contemplation. There was also a lack of ethical consideration around exhibits that are/were previously alive, were used to harm people, and/or originated in other countries.

Fast-forward to Julie’s time as an education officer, and she’s giving talks to school groups that focus on particular topics covered by the museum, and encouraging children to get hands-on with artefacts – or replicas thereof – from its collection, including the sinister carapace of the story’s title. Across the rest of the book, too, you get the sense the museum has become a more inviting, thoughtful, and comprehensively multi-sensory space since Jeremy’s day.

Eerie Exhibits is an inspired and varied collection of short stories based around a single museum.