Permafrost by SJ Norman
Permafrost (2021) is a brilliant yet haunting collection of short fiction by artist, writer and curator SJ Norman. The stories work together to show the darker, mythical underbelly of reality. From small town Australia to Hokkaido to rural England, each story transports readers to a time and place textured with their own laws and mythologies. Whether it’s someone returning home to a coastal town, visiting a former lover overseas, or getting an after-hours tour at Auschwitz, each protagonist offers us their own cracks of darkness.
Some shorter, some longer, each of these stories revolve around a central character or characters, exploring themes of the romantic gothic in a modern context. There’s a palpable level of queerness and fluidity to these characters – one never knows who exactly they’re dealing with in the protagonists, and this adds an edge of brilliance to Norman’s writing. The narrators, regardless of their gender, capture your attention from the very first line, and bring you on a journey of visceral self-discovery.
Whether coming or going, the characters are in constant motion. They often start their narration having just arrived somewhere, so that as a reader you’re instantly dropped into the scene. And these scenes, while very different from story to story, carry an element of perpetual hauntedness.
In my favourite story titled ‘Whitehart,’ an unnamed narrator is spending some time in a guesthouse in an English small town. As they move about their surroundings, they meet an irresistible man working the oldest pubs in the country – their encounter is both fated, transformational and ultimately chilling. Its animal rawness draws out a mythical understory that makes you want to reread it as soon as you’re finished with it.
“I carried his scent on me for the rest of the day. I couldn't rid myself of the sense of his presence. Had no desire to rid myself of it. My only desire, in fact, was to get closer. Where this desire came from, I had no idea. All I knew was, under the layers of black hide and rough wool, there was a body, and I wanted it. I wanted to skin him. Suck the marrow out of his bones. The feeling simmered and rose to the boil, rich and fragrant. Suppertime. Suppertime. I was fucking starving.”
In the last, longest story, ‘Playback,’ a young Australian DJ returns home after living and working in Europe. They’re expecting to be joined by their girlfriend/partner/collaborator Elke sometime soon, an occasion that our narrator excitedly awaits – introducing Elke to the sleepy town of their youth and the people they love. Elke, however, never ends up coming. As the narrator reacquaints themselves with their old life, the streets and buildings, and the people they call family, all while trying to forget or at least process Elke, they begin to transcend their physical reality bit by bit. In trying to create music again and in recounting their issues with Elke, a picture begins to surface slowly.
“I’m not sure what kind of war it was she thought she was fighting, but for a while at least she was fighting it with me. We called it love. Maybe it was both. I don’t think either of us were equipped to tell the difference.”
In this new reality, the narrator settles into a plane of solitude, trying to work their way through heartbreak and purpose – more or less successfully.
“It’s like rock climbing, [...] Every minute ritual, every familiar sensation is a foothold in the sheer, vertiginous drop of solitude.”
It’s not often that a book – an author – can so perfectly embody very different planes of being. It’s even more rare to have this happen in one volume, across a collection of short stories – but that’s exactly what Norman achieves in Permafrost. Each character is drawn with such meticulous care and understanding, that you begin to think that they’re each biographical, presenting the author at various points in their life. When Norman embodies the young DJ, they become that person – the person who understands sounds and their textures on a cellular level.
“I can hear everything: I can hear the snow on the ground and the colour of the sky. I can hear the branches of birch trees, fringed with talons of ice. I can hear the smoothness of those rocks and the coldness of water, and for a second I feel as I felt then. Clean. I allow my attention to relax deep, deep, deeper into it, into every icy curl and whisper.”
In ‘Stepmother,’ it’s a child trying to come to terms with her father and stepmother relationship; in ‘Secondhand,’ it’s a bookseller familiar with the ins and outs of not only book selling, but book buyers too. In each of these instances, the characters’ knowledge of said situations is so profound, one cannot help but be drawn in.
The stories stand by themselves yet are perfectly suited to this collection – each of them carries an element of dark and unsettling undertone, a paranormal edge that creeps in almost seamlessly and that feels just as real as any other part of this book.
Permafrost leaves you with more questions than answers – and yet, it also makes you aware of the interconnectedness of worlds, both seen and unseen. The past, present, and future blend together, as do the worlds of humans and the worlds of nature. The outcome is a raw and surreal look at what it means to be haunted by your own life and those of others around you.
Fruzsina Gál is an aspiring writer, born in Hungary but living in Australia. She has been a reader all her life, and her first short story, 'The Turul' was published in Griffith University's 2018 anthology, Talent Implied. Her writing is often focussed on identity and the effects of immigration on the self. You can find her online at www.fruzsinagal.com or @thenovelconversation.