Graveyard Shift is M.L. Rio’s second book, a novella drawing inspiration from Gothic fiction and the tradition of diverse characters crossing paths, arguably originating in the works of Shakespeare. Rio herself studied Shakespearean literature at King’s College London, following up with a PhD in English from the University of Maryland. Graveyard Shift is not a formidable thesis but a modern thriller, inviting readers to an eerie and thrilling contemporary setting.
Compressed to ten hours over a single night, we follow five characters after they meet in their usual smoking spot at the local university campus’ obsolete cemetery and discover a mysterious grave dug into the earth. Edie is a student journalist, Tuck is a vagrant living in the local abandoned church, Theo is a young bartender, Tamar works a hotel reception desk, and Hannah wanders night and day as an agent of chaos. This ragtag group’s investigation of the fresh grave uncovers the threat of a growing plague.
Rio’s first novel, If We Were Villains, similarly involves a motley cast of characters. Its references to Shakespeare are more detailed, with the book divided into the bard’s classic five-act play structure, complete with chapters divided into acts and scenes. In contrast, Graveyard Shift is more subtle, instead divided into hours during the single night of the graveyard investigation. It reminds me of the antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where characters confusedly cross paths and resolve problems, also set within the space of a single night. Graveyard Shift is decidedly less focused on matters of love, although it is not without its romantic entanglements by the novella’s end.
Sleeplessness and insomnia are recurring themes throughout the narrative, pushing characters to continue their paths through the night and stirring bouts of anxiety and confusion. Edie, the character most active in solving the mystery of the pit, is a student journalist confounded by her lack of sleep. As Rio remarks in a peremptory Author’s Note, insomnia has been her constant companion since childhood. Like in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she comments that the night is when “the borders between the real and the illusory dissolve.” It is sleeplessness, perhaps more than anything, that ties the characters together.
Theo, another of the protagonists, works at a bar open until the early hours of the morning, a place where substances that stimulate and confuse the mind meet. He tiredly celebrates nicotine as “the only thing that kept his mind sharp” in the late hours, a sentiment the other characters share. Tamar works overnight at a hotel reception desk in one of her chapters. During a series of self-admitted “armchair diagnoses” of herself and the other characters, she describes their linked struggle as a “sleep-wake dysfunction.”
Sleeplessness and sickness pervade the novel. Hannah, the most notorious of the protagonists, is the most sleepless: a permanent, “true insomniac.” She moves about like a destructive id, committing vengeful acts of violence, then crawling into bed with another character soon after. Her arc of developing madness reflects the university campus around, where acts of sudden assault have become more common—a pattern described sterilely by journalist Edie as “Hostile Incidents.” Edie, herself, is distracted by a lump growing under her arm. The town as a whole seems to be sinking into a state of confused, tired sickness, but its source is unclear. It might remind readers of the recent television drama Twin Peaks: The Return, where a state of malevolence slowly encroaches over a community like evening darkness.
Edie is satisfied in finding a reason for this darkness, which is ultimately tied to the investigation of the churchyard pit. But the reader is left wondering if something more systemic is happening, and the revelations of rats, mold, and madness that make up much of the second half of the novella are not merely symptoms. Overall, a desire to survive pervades among both the humans and the rats.
The concluding sections of the novella leave the characters in this wondering state as well. One character, Tuck, celebrates a chance for a new life with him and a friend “disheveled and exhausted, each clutching their coffee in quiet desperation.” One night has ended. Soon, another will begin.
FICTION
By M. L. Rio
Flatiron Books
Published September 24, 2024
What an interesting breakdown of the characters! I’ll definitely check this book out, especially because it deals with insomnia, something we’re all vulnerable to these days.