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The newest edition to my all-time favorite books list is We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle, which is surprising given how long a lot of these pieces are. Remember all the Etgar Keret and Lydia Davis I’d read recently. But the pieces kept me engaged.
The reviews are everywhere. If you’re a goodreads member, you can read some of my story-by-story status updates/reviews.
Not that I didn’t read. I just didn’t read much; was busy writing!! So, please excuse these truncated, unvarnished reviews…
I can never say no to this. I accept that now.
I know it looks like I read a fair amount this week. I really didn’t, seeing as the last bunch of stories were flash. So, here’s the roundup.
The first two are from the collection Report to the Men’s Club (from the local library, but I just ordered my own copy).
“Grandma” by Carol Emshwiller. A nice tale that took its time getting to the SF/F element, but was well worth the wait. Not your standard plotted story; it seemed more like a series of vignettes and flashbacks skillfully arranged into a narrative. 5 out of 5.
“The Paganini of Jacob’s Gully” by Carol Emshwiller. You just need to read this! Just do it! It is without a doubt the absolute fucking best lit/genre-blended love story I have ever read! 5 out of 5!
“The Rookers” by Bobbie Ann Mason. Another piece from Shiloh and Other Stories. I’ve took my time reading this one, remembering how well-crafted I remembered the story “Shiloh” was. “The Rookers” didn’t disappoint. Her character and setting descriptions are proof positive that “minimalism” doesn’t mean “2,000 words or less.” While the ending wasn’t as shocking as the one in “Shiloh,” it made me think just as hard. 5 out of 5!
I don’t know why I waited so long to get a copy of The Girl on the Fridge. That was just dumb. Before I knew it, I read these stories in one sitting during my lunch break one day…
“Asthma Attack” by Etgar Keret. Not a story, but it’s the piece that sets a metaphorical rationale for the economic for the economy of word use in rest of the book. Very, very nice. 5 out of 5.
“Crazy Glue” by Etgar Keret. Another valuable lesson for me that fantasy doesn’t have to mean magic and such. 5 out of 5.
“Loquat” by Etgar Keret. Another story involving a grandmother, this is simultaneously a piece on the socio-political complexities of Israeli daily life and on the lengths anyone, anywhere might go to for family. 5 out of 5.
“Hat Trick” by Etgar Keret. Definitely loved the “gonzo magical realism” thing this story had going. Wasn’t too big on the non-ending ending, well-written as it was. 4 out of 5.
Through the hustle and bustle of school, trying to fire off stories to markets, and eeking out some new stuff, I’ve been reading like I haven’t been in awhile. I’ve actually read quite a bit since my last set of reviews, but I haven’t had the brainspace to sit and give more than a passing thought to them before now. So, here’s the latest batch.
This first four pieces are from the Trampoline anthology…
“The Force Acting on the Displaced Body” by Christopher Rowe. A journey always makes a great metaphor, especially when a piece is as well-written as this. It’s a good example of something that skirts around the stricter genre definitions of fantasy. No magic as such–that is to say, no wizardry or the like. I guess it’s more on the lines of myth-making. 5 out of 5.
“Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts” by Ed Park. Slightly long and slightly too descriptive for this Carver-lover but that’s my issue, not the story’s. The premise of the story more than makes up for it. You could almost call this piece Soft-Science-Fiction. 5 out of 5!
“Angel” by Shelley Jackson. This is the second or third Jackson story I’ve attempted. I really can’t put my finger on why I’ve been less than enthusiastic, thus far. Any idiot can see how good the writing is. I really don’t know what I’m not getting. As far as this piece though, it read like something calculated to be a bizarro, if well-written, version of Raymond Carver’s “So Much Water, So Close to Home.” Still, the writing rules, so 4 out of 5!
“Impala” by John Gonzalez. Straight-up sci-fi joint–almost! Loved it! Gonzalez took a risk with the choice of POV character, but I still found it compelling. 5 out of 5.
“Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason. I searched high and low for a copy of Mason’s collection Shiloh and Other Stories, and finally found one (actually, three) in a second-hand bookstore around me that I didn’t know about until about a month ago. I see why this story’s a classic. Believable characters in a well-structured piece with the least amount of “writing” necessary. What more could a reader want? 5 out of 5.
“The Garden of Time” by J.G. Ballard. Another classic, this from his Best Short Stories. The line between sci-fi and fantasy blurs with this one because of Ballard’s skillful writing. A little light on characterization for me, though. 4 out of 5.
I haven’t done one of these in awhile even though I’ve been poring through short story collections, as any survey of my goodreads account will show. But I just had to say something about…
M. Rickert, “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account” — The Oct/Nov issue of F&SF couldn’t come fast enough because I’ll buy anything with M. Rickert’s name on it. Such is my cultish devotion to her writing. This one didn’t disappoint. I’ve enjoyed some of her other stories more, but this one has some jaw-dropping craftsmanship. I can’t think, off the top of my head, of a story she’s written that this blatantly political. It’s got the tropes of the sort of story I usually can’t stand–a near-future world where certain partisan values have run amok and the citizenry has become generally inured. Even the protagonist. But even though the protag doesn’t rail against the system, she’s not blind. She’s fully aware of the effect the system is having on her and hers. Until she decides that she’s finally going to cope with it all in a way–and this is the best part–that most of us would probably cope. 5 out of 5!
I haven’t gotten to do any Unvarnished Reviews in awhile. I’ve actually been reading collections fast enough that I haven’t had time enough between books to review every single story I’ve read.
But thanks to goodreads, I can at least tell you what books I’ve finished lately…
It’s never enough!! I just had to go by the local book crack-house and pile it on.
I know you’re thinking, “You’ve only read five stories since your last post?” Not so. I’ve actually read about fifteen additional pieces out of the collection Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis. Anything I’d have to say about some of those pieces would be longer than the pieces themselves. I don’t think an off-the-cuff review is possible, except with terms like “Damn!” and “Oh, snap!”
These on the other hand…
Jeffrey Thomas, “Immolation” – From The New Weird antho. Very nice crime tale. Lots of phrases I liked, like references to “…some world not yet raped, merely groped.” Another excellent example of world-building, too. 5 out of 5.
Angela Carter, “The Snow Child” – From her collection The Bloody Chamber. I’m not sure how much the praise of her work affected my reading. In any case, I did love this short piece, with the way it slowly disturbs you like a creeping vine that you don’t realize has wrapped itself around your leg until it’s too late. 5 out of 5.
Karen Joy Fowler, “Shimabara” – From her collection Black Glass. You’ll think this story is about one thing and Fowler will turn it around on you. Only to then turn it back around, and unsettle you. Brilliantly done! 5 out of 5!
Jay Lake, “The Lizard of Ooze” – (pdf) Also from The New Weird. Intricate, straightforward plotting and execution. Definitely a lesson in worldbuilding. I didn’t feel too invested in this world, though, or its characters. 3 out of 5.
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Elizabeth Complex” – Also from Black Glass. I really get what she was trying to do here. The story’s clearly about multiple Elizabeths in order to make a universal statement. But Elizabeth I figures so prominently that Fowler’s attempts to weave in various anachronisms just doesn’t work as well as in other pieces I’ve read. 3 out of 5.
Didn’t get a lot of reading done this past week (that wasn’t critique-related). It looks like I did, because I went through some flash stories. As usual, I tried to take as much time reviewing them, unpolished and off the cuff…
Thomas Ligotti, “A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing” – From The New Weird, this was a short piece that seemed to go nowhere at first. But the pace picked up, and the message of the piece was finally revealed. It’s not a pleasant one, but that’s actually not why it gets 3 out of 5.
China Miéville, “Jack” – I thought I must’ve read this when I first picked up China’s Looking for Jake and Other Stories. I must not have; I would’ve remembered a story this good. The best part was listening to a narrator that ended up being as interesting as his stories of Jack Half-a-Prayer. 5 out of 5.
Benjamin Rosenbaum, “The Orange” – I might’ve read this before, too, as I went through the Flash Fiction Forward antho; I maybe even talked about it. The story doesn’t have that “snap” at the end that you see in a lot of flash fiction. It pulls off something harder, building up a smooth narrative arc from start to finish in such a small space. 5 out of 5.
Jim Crace, “21” – Also from Flash Fiction Forward. A good experimental piece, blurring the lines between showing and telling. The showing was the telling. It leaned a touch too far on the showing side to me, though it made sense later as I read that the piece was an excerpt. 4 out of 5.
Karen Joy Fowler, “Contention” – From her collection Black Glass, the story brought to mind Amy Hempel’s “Celia Is Back.” But where the protagonist’s ultimate desires in that story were up for interpretation, the protagonist in this story wants something more specific. I felt there was a disconnect between how the tale was initially presented and what it was ultimately about, but the writing made that transition almost seamless. 4 out of 5.
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Black Fairy’s Curse” – Also from Black Glass, here’s another reinterpretation of a classif fairy tale. More like an amplification, really. 5 out of 5.