Hallucinations is a collection of twenty stories by Hamish Kavanaugh, and it did things to me. I thought about each story after it finished, wondering about it, even rereading some of them. Most of the stories feel like a desaturated fever dream, where everything appears normal but feels far from it. The giveaway of a fever dream is often its hyper saturation — colors so full of themselves they bleed and ooze — and psychedelic tendencies. Hallucinations is aptly named. I found myself questioning what happened in stories: was all of it real or is there an unreliable narrator, am I seeing connections where there are none?
Some of these stories have a darker bend to them. The Cat House reads like a fuzzy memory, something you recount for friends and everyone assumes you’ve got it wrong, an exaggeration or misunderstanding.
Some of the stories seem entirely benign. Mobsters appears grounded on first read, but when considered within the collection, I began to wonder. I started seeing threads that snaked between stories, but I could never quite tell if I was seeing things or not. I felt like I was hallucinating.
My favorite story and the one which I think radiates this strange energy is The Island. It feels like one of those odd encounters or situations that happen once or twice a lifetime. The surreal kind, where it’s hazy when remembered. There are more than a few stories in this collection that will lurk in my mind for a long time.
