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A review by jp_priestley
Everyone Is a Moon: Strange Stories by Sawney Hatton
4.0
I received a complimentary copy of Everyone is a Moon from the author through the BookSirens platform (https://booksirens.com), and am leaving an honest review.
Three distinct things inspired me to read and review Sawney Hatton’s collection of dark fiction short stories in Everyone is a Moon: a) the inspired and striking cover artwork design by Fredrick Richard [1]; b) the author’s unusual name. Sawney — sometimes Sandie/y, or Sanders, or Sannock — was an English nickname (now obsolete) for a Scotsman in the 18th century, portrayed as a common figure of fun in English cartoons of the age. It might fascinate you to know that the word ‘Sawney’ survives in the current Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD), validating the word in Scrabble tournament play, and defining it to mean ‘a foolish person’ [2] (not something one could accuse Sawney Hatton of being!); c) the title of the book itself, which intrigued me.
As I was new to Hatton’s work, I found myself, of course, in the dark (pun intended) concerning what I would encounter when I downloaded Everyone is a Moon from BookSirens. First, what of the book’s title? As Hatton himself states, “This collection of what I consider to be my best dark fiction short stories represents a twenty-five-year span of my writing career (…) It is obvious I am drawn to the darker sides of the human psyche. But I’m also intrigued by those who harbor secrets or suffer delusions, the faces they present to others often masking their perverse thoughts, feelings, or compulsions. Hence the title of this collection (…) derived from Mark Twain’s maxim found in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar (1897): ‘Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.’ ” [3]
The notion that everyone has a dark side — like the moon — reminded me, yet again, of something that Maya Angelou (1928-2014), the African American novelist and poet, said: “Nothing that is human is alien to me.” She was likely quoting Publius Terentius Afer — better known in English as Terence — a Roman African playwright and comic dramatist during the Roman Republic (born c. 195 BC, North Africa). One of Terence’s famous quotes was:
And so, the great duality in human behaviour — and the human psyche — of light and dark; good and evil. Angelou understood that to be human is to be capable of any human thought or act, both noble and ignoble, regardless of how unlikely certain thoughts or actions might be to any of us in our lives. Is it not a given that when the circumstances allow or dictate, we are all capable of any thought or act? For whatever any human has ever thought, believed, and acted upon, so as fellow humans, we are also capable.
For example, would those who boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 — a chartered flight that originated in Montevideo, Uruguay and was bound for Santiago in Chile on October 13, 1972 (yes, a Friday) — have believed that their Fairchild FH-227D would crash in the Andes Mountains in western Argentina, killing three crew members and eight passengers at once, and several more passengers soon after from their injuries and the extreme cold? Would the survivors have believed that they would resort to cannibalism to survive? Of course not. But it happened — they embraced the dark side so they might live. This made reading Everyone is a Moon so rewarding — the plausibility of the plots in keeping with people’s prototypical behaviour when they encounter and embrace the dark side of their nature.
What of the stories? As Hatton’s web page announces, Everyone is a Moon comprises “twelve twisted tales featuring a magical finger, a cannibalistic memorial service, an extreme piercing parlor, a space-age monastery, a budding serial killer, and more.”
A word of warning, however. Hatton’s material is by turns many things — fresh and unconventional; at times irreverent; humorous, quirky, and surrealistic; but also nightmarish, dark, and disturbing — blended in such a way that you feel compelled to continue reading, even when doing so feels borderline voyeuristic or otherwise altogether wrong. Hatton’s story The Dark at the Deep End deserves the author’s warning in the front matter of “Some graphic material herein. Reader discretion advised”. He kids you not with the choice of the word “graphic”. This is adult material and will not be to everyone’s taste. That said, I admire Hatton’s honesty, transparency, and brazenness. I would tell you that Hatton’s work reminded me of this or that author — but I could not say who! He appears to occupy a special space of his own.
Last, I loved how Hatton plays, here and there, with the text in his collection — increasing the size significantly (in stages) in part of Cutting Remarks to ‘shout’ from the page, but in another story to reduce the word count to a mere forty-four words spread over ten pages. And why not, indeed? No writer would ever want to be forgotten; once experienced, there is no likelihood that Sawney Hatton ever would be! Recommended reading.
[1] Fredrick Richard (99designs): https://99designs.co.uk/profiles/2280656 (Re-accessed: 24 January).
[2] Source: Thanks to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney (Re-accessed: 24 January 2022).
[3] The Pudd’nhead Maxims — Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar in Following the Equator (1897): https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/wilson/pwequat.html (Re-accessed: 24 January 2022).
Author's website: https://www.sawneyhatton.com/everyone-is-a-moon-strange-stories/
(Re-edited: 24 January 2022)
Three distinct things inspired me to read and review Sawney Hatton’s collection of dark fiction short stories in Everyone is a Moon: a) the inspired and striking cover artwork design by Fredrick Richard [1]; b) the author’s unusual name. Sawney — sometimes Sandie/y, or Sanders, or Sannock — was an English nickname (now obsolete) for a Scotsman in the 18th century, portrayed as a common figure of fun in English cartoons of the age. It might fascinate you to know that the word ‘Sawney’ survives in the current Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD), validating the word in Scrabble tournament play, and defining it to mean ‘a foolish person’ [2] (not something one could accuse Sawney Hatton of being!); c) the title of the book itself, which intrigued me.
As I was new to Hatton’s work, I found myself, of course, in the dark (pun intended) concerning what I would encounter when I downloaded Everyone is a Moon from BookSirens. First, what of the book’s title? As Hatton himself states, “This collection of what I consider to be my best dark fiction short stories represents a twenty-five-year span of my writing career (…) It is obvious I am drawn to the darker sides of the human psyche. But I’m also intrigued by those who harbor secrets or suffer delusions, the faces they present to others often masking their perverse thoughts, feelings, or compulsions. Hence the title of this collection (…) derived from Mark Twain’s maxim found in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar (1897): ‘Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.’ ” [3]
The notion that everyone has a dark side — like the moon — reminded me, yet again, of something that Maya Angelou (1928-2014), the African American novelist and poet, said: “Nothing that is human is alien to me.” She was likely quoting Publius Terentius Afer — better known in English as Terence — a Roman African playwright and comic dramatist during the Roman Republic (born c. 195 BC, North Africa). One of Terence’s famous quotes was:
“I am a man. I consider nothing that is human alien to me,” or “Homo sum. Humanum nihil a me alienum puto,” in Latin.
And so, the great duality in human behaviour — and the human psyche — of light and dark; good and evil. Angelou understood that to be human is to be capable of any human thought or act, both noble and ignoble, regardless of how unlikely certain thoughts or actions might be to any of us in our lives. Is it not a given that when the circumstances allow or dictate, we are all capable of any thought or act? For whatever any human has ever thought, believed, and acted upon, so as fellow humans, we are also capable.
For example, would those who boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 — a chartered flight that originated in Montevideo, Uruguay and was bound for Santiago in Chile on October 13, 1972 (yes, a Friday) — have believed that their Fairchild FH-227D would crash in the Andes Mountains in western Argentina, killing three crew members and eight passengers at once, and several more passengers soon after from their injuries and the extreme cold? Would the survivors have believed that they would resort to cannibalism to survive? Of course not. But it happened — they embraced the dark side so they might live. This made reading Everyone is a Moon so rewarding — the plausibility of the plots in keeping with people’s prototypical behaviour when they encounter and embrace the dark side of their nature.
What of the stories? As Hatton’s web page announces, Everyone is a Moon comprises “twelve twisted tales featuring a magical finger, a cannibalistic memorial service, an extreme piercing parlor, a space-age monastery, a budding serial killer, and more.”
A word of warning, however. Hatton’s material is by turns many things — fresh and unconventional; at times irreverent; humorous, quirky, and surrealistic; but also nightmarish, dark, and disturbing — blended in such a way that you feel compelled to continue reading, even when doing so feels borderline voyeuristic or otherwise altogether wrong. Hatton’s story The Dark at the Deep End deserves the author’s warning in the front matter of “Some graphic material herein. Reader discretion advised”. He kids you not with the choice of the word “graphic”. This is adult material and will not be to everyone’s taste. That said, I admire Hatton’s honesty, transparency, and brazenness. I would tell you that Hatton’s work reminded me of this or that author — but I could not say who! He appears to occupy a special space of his own.
Last, I loved how Hatton plays, here and there, with the text in his collection — increasing the size significantly (in stages) in part of Cutting Remarks to ‘shout’ from the page, but in another story to reduce the word count to a mere forty-four words spread over ten pages. And why not, indeed? No writer would ever want to be forgotten; once experienced, there is no likelihood that Sawney Hatton ever would be! Recommended reading.
[1] Fredrick Richard (99designs): https://99designs.co.uk/profiles/2280656 (Re-accessed: 24 January).
[2] Source: Thanks to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney (Re-accessed: 24 January 2022).
[3] The Pudd’nhead Maxims — Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar in Following the Equator (1897): https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/wilson/pwequat.html (Re-accessed: 24 January 2022).
Author's website: https://www.sawneyhatton.com/everyone-is-a-moon-strange-stories/
(Re-edited: 24 January 2022)