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[title]In spite of its title, death, not love, is the subject of Rajesh Parameswaran’s debut collection of stories. His tales play with mortality so frequently that doom and destruction merely become props in an ongoing series of dark, often grotesquely comedic, circumstances. In “The Infamous Bengal Ming,” a sentient tiger realizes he’s fallen in love with his caretaker at the zoo—right before accidentally biting through his keeper’s neck. The title story deals with an executioner in India, an uneducated man who wonders why his wife (from a recent arranged marriage) won’t touch him. In ”Demons,” a woman musingly wishes her husband dead before watching him expire in front of her; rather than panic outright, she leaves him on the floor while she cooks and attends a cocktail party.
Each story brings a new angle to dealing with the end, and the author expertly outfits each protagonist with a distinctive inner monologue that feels richly authentic. Most of the characters in this exceedingly dry read have a detached air even as they’re calculating the proper amount of rope from which to hang someone. Less a commentary on the desensitized nature of the modern world, Parameswaran is comparing the awkward, inescapable facets of everyday life—work, romance, familial exchanges—with the awkward, inescapable reality of death. I Am An Executioner won’t be tossed around at tea parties, but it’s a heck of a way for an author to make an entrance—if, admittedly, a bloody one.
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