Review of Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin

Title: Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse
Editors: Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin 
Publisher: Jurassic London
Published: October 2011
Genre: short stories, science fiction fantasy horror
Source: review copy from author Sam Wilson
Rating: 7/10

I debated reviewing Pandemonium. I received a review copy in November 2011, but it’s only now that I read the whole thing cover to cover. When I finished, I learned that Pandemonium was a limited edition. Very limited: it was available for just over a year and now it’s out of print in both paper and digital formats. Questioning the merits of reviewing a book that no one can buy, I figured I could perhaps help someone decide whether or not to take it off the tbr pile, borrow a copy from a library or friend, or perhaps check out some of the stories if they appear elsewhere. And of course there might be another print run. So, on with the end of the world!

The apocalypse is, of course, the theme of this anthology, but it’s also inspired by the  work of John Martin an English Romantic painter famous for grandiose apocalyptic visions based on his intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and related mythology (such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost). The cover of Pandemonium features the painting Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, which is also the title of one of the most harrowing stories in the collection. I’d seen The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium  in the Louvre last year, and the anthology encouraged me to check out more of Martin’s work online. And I must say – it’s impressive stuff. It’s epic. And I love the idea of an sff and horror anthology based on those paintings.

Admittedly, it doesn’t encourage a great deal of variation in apocalyptic visions. With John Martin and his art in mind, many of the stories use Christian mythology, so there are plenty of angels, demons, and worlds ending in fire. But while a few stories are a bit dreary, others offer creative twists or alternative visions. Many don’t actually seem to take much inspiration from the paintings, but I guess it’s an anthology based on the apocalypse, not an anthology based on John Martin.

The collection starts out very strong. The first story, “The Architect of Hell” by David Bryher, is still one of my favourites. It’s written as a series of hilarious letters from the demon Mulciber (the architect of the demon city Pandemonium in Paradise Lost) to John Martin himself, asking John to design Pandemonium for him. Mulciber lost all his creative abilities when God threw him out of heaven and Lucifer’s going to be really angry if Mulciber can’t deliver.The story is clearly based on the golden city in The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium and is actually a surprisingly bright start to the anthology: it’s quirky, funny and ends on a note that’s doubly apocalyptic but hopeful too. Also, the apocalypse – or rather post-apocalypse – depicted in the story is the fallen angels’, not the humans’.

There’s actually plenty of humour here; perhaps the best way to deal with the end of the world. The second story, “Chislehurst Messiah” by Lauren Beukes is a kind of black comedy horror set in an affluent English suburb. A snooty upper middle class bastard plays a Facebook game while his wife dies horribly, and he thinks about how this is an easier way of getting her money than divorcing her. The world is ending, but his thoughts remain ridiculously selfish and narrow-minded:

He needed to get to the gym; his abs were turning into jelly. Too much stale bruschetta and salty snack foods. But the one in the building’s basement stank like an abbatoir and the Stairmaster was practically alive with maggots. (25)

High on the uppers he stole from one a neighbouring apartment, he imagines that he could be the Messiah for the supposedly aimless lower-class “chavs” who are  running riot in England as society falls apart.

“OMG GTFO” by S.L. Grey is another satire, with a narrative composed of emails, interview transcripts, Twitter feeds, and so on. It describes a world descending into chaos as politicians, celebrities and other prominent figures are randomly possessed by dead people who describe visions of hell. But is it a vision of hell itself or hell on earth? The humour comes from the kind of speech you get on Twitter and in emails, the rubbish that spews from the mouths of air-headed celebrities, and the little ironies that emerge as the world degrades. It’s a great story.

There’s an amusing case of denial in “Another Abyss” by Magnus Anderson which features another snooty upper middle class English character. Leticia’s husband Geoff has just been promoted, and she’s hosting a dinner party to celebrate and gloat. She’s extremely upset that the damn apocalypse is ruining the evening with a blood-red sky (forcing her to close the curtains more than is respectable) and lava pouring down the lawn. Leticia is someone who’d be bragging about the cost her antique violin while Rome burned. The burning world-scenario is a common one in this anthology, but like the better stories that use it, Anderson makes it the background of a character-based tale rather than taking the more boring route of putting cliched apocalyptic destruction at the forefront.

“The End of the World” by Den Patrick is not as elegantly humorous as the previous four, with character names like Bumblefuck, Rigorprick, Spittleshite and Candy. But it’s tongue-in cheek, and surprisingly cute – the demon Spittleshite has fallen for a human named Candy and as a result he’s not especially keen about the apocalypse that’s about to begin. The story can be silly and crude, but it’s also hopeful (well, sort of) and quite fun.

Being an agnostic, I enjoyed the irreverent nature of all the stories that address Christian beliefs, which are typically are revealed to be useless or deceptive while the truth is rather disturbing. It helps to have a sense of humour when the apocalypse comes, but being a Christian seems pretty pointless.

Of these stories, “Evacuation” by Tom Pollock is the most beautiful and touching; instantly one of my favourites here. The evacuation in the title is the evacuation of Earth by the angels. The archangel Michael goes to find the last two humans, who have been held back by Michael’s lover, the angel Zaphkiel. The stories segues back and forth between the present story on the burning earth and the history of their relationship in heaven, bringing up issues of the war with Lucifer, and doubt in God.

“The Day or the Hour” by Jonathan Oliver sees Reverend Paul Smith questioning his faith when he finds himself among “the chosen” who have who have “been called to fight the forces of Satan” (164) in the final battle between good and evil. Commanded by cold, arrogant angels, Paul doesn’t feel divine love and inspiration. He feels like canon fodder in someone else’s war.

Like “Another Abyss”, “The Harvest” by Chrysanthy Balis is a story of denial, although in this case it’s extreme religious belief distorting the characters’ perception. Paul and Pepper are fully aware that their world is ending, but they’re delighted, believing that the Rapture is here at last, and soon they’ll be taken up to heaven. They decide that it’s best to wait for God in their expensive “neo-Italianate home” (203) full of earthly comforts, watching the drama unfold on their “75″ Panasonice LED flat screen” (204), favouring the Christian Broadasting Network where they “could get the real news”. They’re full of self-righteous, contradictory bullshit, but also some rather funny ideas about what will happen:

“Paul, what about Schultzie [the dog]? […] If we hold onto him real tight maybe he’ll get Raptured along with us?”

“Anything’s possible under the Lord honey,” (203)

“What if He doesn’t come for us?”

Paul had turned stern and taken her by the shoulders. “It’s not possible, do you hear me? We’re plugged in to Jesus. And the Bible says that it’s by His grace alone that we’re saved. Now, if that’s not true then nothing is.” (205)

Jesus is coming to conquer Satan at last, and God’s going to create a New Jerusalem for us to live in.”

“Would we be able to get a house like this one?”

“Sure! […] “But with a bigger pool!”(205)

“What if the Rapture begins but the angels can’t find us because we’re inside?”(206)

All these questions come from Paul’s wife Pepper, a rather daft ideal of femininity. Her daffy character makes sense in the context of the story, but she reminds me of one problem with this anthology: there aren’t many women in it. Of the eighteen stories, only five have female protagonists, and there are only six female authors. Most of the male-protagonist stories don’t have major female characters. The apocalypse, it seems, is considered to be a mostly male affair.

This is particularly noticeable in one of my two least favourite stories, [Pandemonium] by Andy Remic (the actual title is written in a script that my computer won’t copy). The story has some of the least interesting characters. There are three men – a nerd, a hulking goon, and a ferrety goon. Then there’s a hot blonde woman, whose job it is to whine, hang on the hulking goon’s arm, and look hot. But that’s not the only reason I disliked this story. It’s a rather unimaginative portrayal of the basic fires-of-hell-on-earth scenario. Several of the stories use it, but I found Remic’s to be the least engaging, with too much cheap gore. It was the first story I disliked, and marked the point where the anthology took a dip – the middle is rather middling.

“At the Sign of the Black Dove” by Lou Morgan is my other least favourite. It appears to be about a group of people drinking themselves into oblivion and waking up to find that the world is ending. Worst hangover ever? Meh.

“Closer” by Osgood Vance takes place in a world about to die, where most people have already been claimed by heaven or hell. The remainder are essentially the most average people on earth in terms of both skill and morality. I actually really liked this concept, but Vance uses it to tell a story about a baseball match – a group of Americans’ last stab at a bit of joy before they are all consumed by darkness. It makes sense – if you think about being average in terms of skill, then sport would be one of the things you’d think about – but I’ve never been interested in baseball and the story isn’t kind to non-fans, with its name-dropping and technical details about scoring.

There are three stories which weren’t bad, or even average, but just didn’t do anything for me – “The Last Man” by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (although, notably, ‘the last man’ is a female cyborg), “The Immaculate Particle” by Charlie Human and “Postapocalypse” by Sam Wilson. Each of them actually have interesting ideas – the cyborg, vanishing city blocks in “The Immaculate Particle” and apocalypse via postmodern thought in “Postapocalypse” but for reasons that are probably entirely subjective none of these stories left much of an impression.

In contrast, there are a couple of stories I wanted to single out for being more creative than others. They’re not necessarily better, but I liked the ways they differed from the norm. “The Architect of Hell” and “OMG GTFO” both use alternative narrative forms – letters in the former (not groundbreaking, I know, but it stood out) and media excerpts in the latter.

“Sadak In Search of the Waters of the Oblivion” by Archie Black disturbed me more than the visions of hell and burning. It’s set in a world ravaged by climate change where the earth hasn’t died (some landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful) but is horrifically hostile to humans. A research team heads out on an expedition, only to find themselves constantly assaulted by insects and micro-organisms, wading through a swamp and forced to sleep in it so they never get dry. Bugs nest in the flesh of the humans, horses and dogs in the team, their bodies rot while they’re still alive and the pain drives them mad. It’s heartbreaking and utterly revolting; if predictions of starvation isn’t enough to scare people into taking climate change seriously, then this would.

“Deluge” by Kim-Lakin Smith, inspired by the painting The Eve of the Deluge also features a post apocalyptic world ravaged by climate change, but in this case they’re about to experience a second apocalypse – a flood. Eve, the daughter of a pirate philosopher and a ‘weather witch’ in her own right, realises that the flood is coming, and tries to warn her society, a city built on a dried-up ocean floor. But, as with Noah, no one believes her. It’s only by turning to the pirate aspects of her heritage that she’s able to find salvation.

“A Private Viewing” by Scott K. Andrews is the only story besides “The Architect of Hell” that actually uses John Martin’s artwork in the plot. This story is not about the apocalypse itself, but suggests that the paintings themselves are apocalyptic forces inspiring unrest or madness. In the novel a man is forced to sit and stare at one of the paintings for hours every night and it gradually unhinges his mind.

After my interest had waned midway, I was hoping that the editors had saved a really great story to end the anthology. I wasn’t disappointed. “Not the End of the World” by Sarah McDougall is a poignant story set in Germany in WW2; or at least it seems to be. It follows a small group of tenants living in a house where ghosts from the war occasionally appear. It’s sad, but brave and hopeful; an elegant note on which to close the book.

Overall Pandemonium is a strong collection; I wished I’d read it earlier so I could review it while it was still in print. On the other hand, this also seems to be the year of the short story for me. seldom paid them much attention in the past but suddenly I’m reading or listening to at least one every weekday. It’s given me fresh appreciation for this form of fiction, so in that sense maybe it’s good that I waited until now to read this. It’s a pity that it’s out of print, but get a copy if you can, or see if you can find some of the stories elsewhere. They’re all quite short (except for the last) and most of them are worth the diversion.

January 2013 Round-Up

I can’t believe January’s already over. At first it seemed to crawl and every time I looked at the calendar I felt liked I had loads of time to finish the reading I’d scheduled for this month. And then suddenly it was 1 February and I’d only read 5 books.

Luckily I started off with an excellent read - Revenge by Yoko Ogawa. It’s a novel made up of interlinked short stories that are deceptively calm and hypnotic with scatterings of shock horror. The writing is exquisite; Ogawa is exceptionally talented when it comes to the finer details of fiction. I’m also giving away two copies of Revenge, so if you haven’t entered, go and do so now!

Next up was A Killer in the Wind by Andrew Klavan, a somewhat self-reflective hardboiled crime novel. The protagonist, Dan Champion, is trying hard to live up to his name and come to terms with the times he failed to do so. A decent story with plenty of action is unfortunately spoiled by utterly dismal female characters – lacklustre, weak and whiny. Can a man only be a hero when the women around him are damsels in distress? Perhaps Klavan is being satirical, but either way I wasn’t impressed.

The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher is a fantasy-horror-western about a primordial monster  slumbering within an abandoned silver mine out in the Nevada desert in the 1800s. Of course, something begins to wake the monster, and it’s up to the citizens of the town of Golgotha to save themselves, not to mention the entire universe. An average read, but with a few issues I want to discuss. Review to follow this week.

I’m still processing my thoughts on The Best of All Possible Worlds  by Karen Lord. On the one hand, it’s an elegant, skillfully written piece of literary science fiction with exceptionally well-rounded characters. On the other hand, it’s very much a love story, and although the love story takes a long time to develop, it dominates the ending with what I find to be far too much cheesiness. So while the novel is undoubtedly far above average, I have my reservations.

My leisure read for January was Expecting Someone Taller, Tom Holt’s debut novel. I’ve read several of his comic fantasies (and one or two sf ones), and although they’re enjoyable I find that they can get a tad chaotic with their very large casts of characters. Expecting Someone Taller, which draws on Norse mythology, had a lot of people to keep track of, but in general it was simpler. Perhaps my favourite of his novels that I’ve read so far.

I’ve embarked on the very daunting task of reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, but although I started on 15 January, I’ve only made it through about 20% of the novel. If you’ve seen a copy of the book though, you’ll know that 20% of it is already the length of your average novel. to add to that, it’s a pretty dense read with loads of rather technical infodumps. But Stephenson can write infodumps like no one else, and I’m really enjoying the book so far. I just hope I can find time to finish it within the next month!

Review and Giveaway of Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

Title: Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales
Author: Yoko Ogawa
Published: 29 January 2013
Pubisher: Picador
Genre: literary fiction, short stories
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 8/10

I googled a bit of information on Yoko Ogawa when I started writing this review, and I was impressed but not too surprised to learn that she has won every major Japanese literary award and has published over twenty works of fiction and non-fiction. Revenge undoubtedly showcases the skills of a talented, experienced author. When I read “Afternoon at the Bakery”, the first of the “Eleven Dark Tales” in this collection, I was stunned. It’s a devastating kind of story, like many of the stories here – very calm and quiet, with sudden stabs of shock and pain, like a surgical knife slid quickly but gently into the heart of an unsuspecting victim. A simple narrative draws you in – one sunny afternoon, a woman walks to the bakery to buy two strawberry shortcakes for her son’s birthday. For some reason, the shop is empty – there are no customers, and no one behind the counter. The woman is not in a rush, so she sits down to wait for the pastry chef. Soon, another woman comes in, and they make small talk. “How old is [your son]?” the second woman asks. The first woman replies with this:

Six. He’ll always be six. He’s dead.

She tells us about her son’s death twelve years ago, and how she kept the strawberry shortcake they were meant to share one his birthday and watched it rot. When her husband told her to throw it out, she react violently:

I threw it in his face. Mold and crumbs covered his hair and his cheeks, and a terrible smell filled the room. It was like breathing in death.

I fell in love with Ogawa’s writing in this story. I know it’s translated, but it’s still superb – elegant and hypnotic, with details that tease your senses (I’m thinking of the mention of vanilla, strawberries, cream and the warmth of birthday-candle flames) or cut right into your heart and lungs. It’s the kind of thing that makes you pause to consider or savour what you’ve just read.

“Afternoon at the Bakery” remained my favourite Revenge story (I think I got attached, since it was the first), but with such a wonderful writing style, the others certainly did not disappoint. Ogawa’s great talent, it seems, lies in her absolutely exquisite details and the skilful ways in which she uses them. Most of the stories have rather odd plots. In “Old Mrs J”, the creepy old landlady of an apartment complex finds hand-shaped carrots growing in her vegetable garden. In “Sewing for the Heart” a woman asks a specialist bag maker to sew a bag for her heart, which is particularly delicate because it beats outside of her body. In “Welcome to the Museum of Torture”, a young woman takes a walk after her boyfriend leaves her, and ends up going on a tour through a museum of torture, imagining how she might use some of the devices on her boyfriend.

Besides the plots, there are many beautiful, quaint, tragic or bizarre details within the stories. In “Fruit Juice”, the narrator describes the way that the events of the story he just related “sank into a hole at the bottom of my sea of memories” giving the reader a vague sense that he’s lost something important but inexplicable. Another character describes a woman’s voice as having “an impressive coldness to it – I could almost imagine its tone freezing my ear drum”.

But the most impressive details are the ones that can’t really be quoted and are difficult to write about because they are scattered within and across stories, linking characters and tales, reminding us of sinister things, exposing eerie truths, or revealing the conclusions to earlier stories that ended ambiguously. The strawberry shortcake and the bakery from the first story are mentioned in a later narrative, and the reminder gives an ominous feel to the current tale. We learn about a character’s murder in one story, and when people are looking for him or mention him in later stories we recall why he was killed and the gruesome way in which he died. There are many elements of horror, entwined with the drama unfolding between the characters.

With these tiny but memorable details, Ogawa delicately links lives and stories, creating an unusual kind of novel composed of separate tales. It’s an interesting form; my only problem with it is that one or two of the stories are a bit dull, and seem to be there largely to provide links for others. But for the most part it works beautifully. Although most of the characters never meet each other, the events and artefacts of their lives join them and form a coherent whole for the reader.  There is also one notable recurring character – an obscure writer – who appears in several of the stories. We learn that she has actually written some of them, although whether we read her versions or the real-life events on which they are based is unclear. The book is enjoyably vague in that way – it’s not the kind of novel that offers answers or meaning or easy conclusions; instead it taunts and delights you with its intricacies. Ogawa has said that “one of the fundamental values of fiction is its power to express the inexplicable and the absurd” (Q&A with Yoko Ogawa) and I think that’s exactly what she does with Revenge.

Another notable thing is that almost all the characters are unnamed (a trademark of Ogawa’s according to the Q&A just referenced). The only characters with anything akin to names are Mrs J and Dr Y, and both are secondary characters. Every story is intimately narrated in the first person, and it can sometimes be unclear how old the “I” is or whether they are male or female. The location is completely anonymous too – there are no place names, no landmarks; the novel could be set in any well-developed country. The only suggestion that it might take place in Japan, where Ogawa lives, is that characters sometimes bow to each other in greeting or thanks.

Unencumbered by these specifics, the novel seems almost ghostly, and reading it can be a rather strange and hypnotic experience. But I like it a lot. It’s so well done, that names and places aren’t necessary. It’s a pensive rather than exciting read, but it’s the kind of book that can teach you to appreciate the qualities of good writing, particularly the way writers can manipulate certain elements of a story in order to leave an impression on the reader. Most authors can only dream of writing something this evocative, or writing a sentence or crafting an image that etches itself into the read. Yoko Ogawa is one of the few who can, and I’m glad to have found her.

 

Giveaway

Now, I my thoughts on Revenge have convinced you that it’s worth reading because I’m giving away two copies on Violin in a Void. One has been generously provided by Gabrielle Gantz at Picador, for residents of the USA and Canada. And since I don’t want everyone else to miss out on a chance to get a copy, I am providing one as well, via Book Depository. Here are the details:

• To enter, follow me via email (sign-up on the homepage), WordPress or Twitter (@Violin_InA_Void) and leave a comment on this post. Be sure to mention whether you’re from the USA/Canada or the rest of the world.
• The USA/Canada copy will be sent to the USA/Canada winner by Picador.
• I will be sending a copy to the second winner via Book Depository, so you are only eligible if they ship to your country.
• This giveaway will last for two weeks and ends at midnight (GMT+3) on 12 February.
• I will choose the winners using random.org, and contact them on 13 February for their addresses. Both winners will be announced in a blog post shortly thereafter.

Thanks so much to Picador for sponsoring a giveaway, and good luck to all those who enter!

Review of Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses by Ron Koertge

Title: Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses
Author: Ron Koertge
Published: 10 July 2012
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Genre: fairy tales, short stories
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 9/10

Note: the eBook file was converted from pdf to awz when sent to my Kindle, and it messed up the formatting. As a result, my quotes are almost all incorrectly formatted. My apologies to the author, publisher and readers; I’ll fix it if I get the chance.

Ron Koertge. That’s all I needed to know. In high school I read his prose-poetry novel The Brimstone Journals, about fifteen teenagers in their last year of high school. Using only simple, intertwined narratives (one of which involves a guy planning a Columbine-style shoot-up), Koertge captivated me with brief but intimate portrayals of the many facets of teenage angst – alienation, insecurity, sexuality, anger, hating your body or being obsessed with it, being too smart or not smart enough, wanting to stand out or wanting to fit in. A narrative made up of poems was unusual and exciting, and Koertge proved masterful with this short form, skilfully filling it with more memorable, evocative details than you would ever find in an ordinary novel. I still remember some of the lines and many of the characters, perhaps not perfectly, but at least in essence.

Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses is written in a similar style – narratives in the form of poems, although in this case each of them tells its own story. Each is a retelling of a classic fairy tale in contemporary language, often with a modern setting. In writing both elegant and punchy, the stories explore relationships, the body, sex and sexuality, desire, violence, prejudice, and cruelty. It can be funny, tragic, and bold, it’s usually very twisted, and sometimes perfect.

Definitely not for children though. It might be a collection of fairy tales, complete with illustrations (all stark, eerie silhouettes), but I wouldn’t give this to a kid. Teenagers maybe. Koertge tells these tales in ways that expose the violence, sex and cruelty in them, or explores the characters’ psychologies in disturbing ways. These stories aren’t explicit, but there are themes and innuendo that would be better appreciated by adults. Take the ending of “Bluebeard” for example:

She knows her life is on the line but, believe it or not, she’s never been so excited! Her husband’s a serial killer, and her bodice is wet with tears, but there’s a chance her brothers will show up like winning lottery numbers. Which does she want more — her hair wound in the maniac’s hands and her white white throat bared, or the sound of boots on the marble stairs?

That should give you an idea of the dark, sensuous stories that Koertge tells, full of taboo desires. Hansel and Gretal have a semi-incestuous relationship and a taste for revenge. There’s an ogre wants to eat her own children.

Cinderella’s stepsisters tell their own sad story:

Ella is married and happy. Our Ever After is silence, darkness, and bitterness. We have names, by the way. She’s Sarah and I’m Kathy. We were always close. As girls we lay in bed kissing and pretending one of us was the prince. We were practicing for happiness.

One particularly unsettling story is “The Princess and the Pea”, where Koertge considers what life might be like for a woman with such a fragile body:

Have you seen the prince? My God, his hands are big as anvils. Do you know what that would do to me? Do you? I see him ogling my breasts and I think, “If you want one of them black and the other one blue, if those are your favorite colors or something, go ahead and grope. Don’t let the screaming bother you.”

Not surprisingly, few of Koertge’s fairy tales have happy endings. Usually there’s at least the taint of dissatisfaction, if not outright misery and pain. Marriage isn’t as blissful as the princes and princesses imagined, and even if they’re happy, there’s often a longing for the past, with its danger and adventure. The Beast is very happy with Beauty, but he hasn’t forgotten his previous life: “With a sigh, sometimes, I brush my perfect teeth and remember when they were fangs.”

Rapunzel, with more than a touch of vanity, is disappointed with her brutally masculine prince:

RAPUNZEL: Up there in the tower, I was a catapult of questions — one after another to keep the witch at bay. So when I first saw the prince, I was thrilled. I wouldn’t be a prisoner forever after all! But he was so hairy. His kisses were like blows. His cheeks sanded down my mother-of-pearl skin and the Plow Horse Game skinned my knees. I admit he made me feel real. I was vapor, otherwise, only collecting into the form of a girl when the witch called and I tugged and she climbed and she was the oven and I was the bread. Now that it’s all over, I suppose I’m happy. I love my daughter. But the prince is moody and thinks of himself. While the witch thought only of me.

Koertge constantly subverts conventions and expectations. Villains and monsters are portrayed with sympathy, while heroes are often revealed to be selfish, manipulative, or just average imperfect human beings. It’s not all so dark and disturbing though. There’s humour too, as in the reaction of the princess who kisses a toad and gets a prince:

OMG. He’s a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint, a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He’s the path through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard from the castle and a one-way ticket there. He’s the most astounding arrangement of molecules ever!
Just look at those tights! An honest-to-God prince at last.

I also loved Red Riding Hood as a contemporary teenager, telling her mom what happened when she met the wolf:

So first he’s all into my pretty this and that, like I haven’t heard it all before. What? Where did I hear that all before? At parties. What planet do you live on?

And what she thought when she found out that the wolf had swallowed her grandmother whole:

And it kind of makes me want to know what that’s like. What? No, as a matter of fact, if everybody at my school got swallowed whole I wouldn’t want to. It’s lame if everybody does it, Mom. How old are you, anyway?

There are a few stories that I thought were just ok, but this book still went straight into my ranks of best short fiction. Ok yes, I haven’t read that many short fiction collections, but that’s because I seldom enjoy them as much as this little beauty. I’ve read Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses twice now (it’s really short, you can do it in an hour) and I want to buy a print copy because it’s the kind of thing I like to pick up on a whim. I’d open it for some random reason, perhaps looking for a quote, and then inevitably end up curled on the couch reading the whole delightful thing.

Buy Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses at The Book Depository

eShort Review of Edie Investigates by Nick Harkaway

Title: Edie Investigates
Author: Nick Harkaway
Published: 14 February 2012
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday
Genre: short story, mystery
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 7/10

Old Donny Caspian has been found dead, and Tom Rice, “recently appointed Under-Nobody in charge of sod all”, has been sent by his organisation to oversee the investigation with firm instructions that the death be attributed to natural causes. But the corpse is missing its head, and Tom cannot do as told. Is it possible that his true purpose in the investigation has been concealed from him? He goes to a little tea shop called The Copper kettle to await further instructions.

Also in The Copper Kettle, “locked in combat with tea apparently made out of sump water”, is Edie Banister, retired spy, now a single old lady trying to avoid falling into the single-old-lady stereotypes (although she’s not averse to using them when it suits her). Donny was a good friend and she’s in town to ensure that things are done right. If not, “[s]he would arrive, spot the hidden clue and read the scene in the light of her knowledge of the secret parts of Donny’s life, and pronounce gravely that these were matters to be dealt with at the highest level”. Edie imagines it will be “like a bit of a last bow, a sort of Edie Rides Again”. In the meantime, she sits in the tea shop, seeing herself “reflected in the mirror as a cake-eating, gossipy Old Lady Detective” and thinks back about her first days as a spy, when she met Donny.

When Tom comes in however, her attention is inexplicably drawn to him, and it’s in The Copper Kettle that both of them realise that there really is something suspicious going on.

This short story has a lot going for it in terms of writing – it’s funny, charming, and full of detail. So much detail in fact, that once or twice the story meanders into arguably unnecessary territory, but it worked for me, so no harm done. I highlighted quite a few passages that I found amusing, most of which were related to Edie, who I think is a fantastic character. I couldn’t help but worry about her – she is in her eighties, after all – but she’s defied expectations of being a weak little female since the start of her career and she continues to do so in retirement.

The downside is that this eShort is essentially a way of introducing Edie, who plays a major part in Harkaway’s novel, Angelmaker. As a result, Edie Investigates feels incomplete and the plot is decent at best, particularly since the it’s largely preoccupied with Edie’s past, and deals rather briefly with Tom and Donny Caspian’s death. This wasn’t too problematic though – the writing and characters were enough to keep me interested in this short read.

Included in the eShort is the first chapter of Angelmaker, introducing us to the main character Joe Spork, the son of an infamous London criminal. Joe hasn’t followed in his father’s footsteps but spends his quiet life repairing antique clocks. Edie is one of his clients, and he repairs a little clockwork toy for her. According to the novel’s blurb, the clockwork gadget turns out to be a 1950s doomsday device. Having triggered it, Joe finds himself and Edie on an insane adventure featuring “mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realizes that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight” (Goodreads blurb).

Frankly, I didn’t need the first chapter of Angelmaker. I didn’t find it particularly intriguing, and like the eShort it’s got loads of tiny details, only this time they felt a bit more like hard work than quaint amusements. Edie Investigates was enough to get me interested enough in Edie to read a whole novel featuring her, and I already wanted to read Angelmaker thanks to a positive review and the rather enticing blurb. But hey, the first chapter’s there if you want it – read it, don’t read it. Edie Investigates is worth a look either way (you can buy it on Amazon) and I still think Angelmaker looks like a great book.

Review of Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and the Sublime from Tin House

Title: Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and the Sublime from Tin House
Editor: Rob Spillman
Published: 26 July 2011
Publisher: Tin House
Genre:  short stories, magical realism, folklore, mythology
Source: eARC from publisher
My Rating: 6/10

Fantastic Women is a collection of short stories, all written by women, that have been gathered together because they’re “peculiar”. In the introduction, Joy Williams mentions how she once “got spanked by the doyenne of the literary establishment” for using the word ‘peculiar’, despite it having such wonderful meaning – “special, distinctive, different from the usual or normal or ordinary. It even means exemption from the power of an authority to interpret or control” (vii). And that is an excellent description of the tales you’ll find in this anthology. They’re nothing if not unbound by convention. Don’t imagine that this means you can pigeonhole them as fantasy, because you certainly cannot. Fantasy may not be mainstream, but much of it nevertheless bows to the conventions of storytelling and genre. Not so here.

In Fantastic Women, you’ll encounter such odd stories as Lucy Corin’s The Entire Predicament in which a woman finds herself dismembered, gagged and suspended from ropes in a doorway of her home. From the window she can see her children playing with soldiers, and when her husband comes home he holds her hand while he eats a sandwich as if nothing is out of the ordinary. In Beast by Samantha Hunt, a woman wonders how to tell her husband that she turns into a deer at night – “If I tell him, though, maybe he could build a special door for me. He’s handy like that. A door that doesn’t require opposable thumbs”. In Abroad by Judith Budnitz, a couple go on holiday to a third world country, but the man keeps inviting people to their hotel room, until it

“is just a mass of bodies, cookstoves, tents, shanties, music, dancing arms and bobbing breasts, boys pitching pennies, stray dogs, the burned smell of someone curling her hair, a bazaar of stalls selling rugs and copper kettles, laundry hanging on lines overhead, the endlessly overflowing toilet. The walls are grease-stained, the bare-bulb a small-sun”

The narrator refrains from complaining about any of this because she doesn’t want to offend the locals.

Don’t expect to be given reasons for how any of this is possible. It can’t simply be said that it’s all magic. You can’t use the excuse that the stories take place on another planet, an imaginary world or in another dimension. No one is going to wake up and claim that it was all just a dream. What happens, happens, so just go with it.

You could, perhaps call this magical realism, that blurrily defined genre where mainstream literary fiction goes to a tea party with folklore, mythology, and all things fantastical, and leaves in hallucinogenic bliss, full of fresh, bizarre ideas for depicting life’s conundrums. These stories certainly have a very literary feel to them – they abound with metaphors and they’re beautifully written.

It all sounds so lovely, which is why I was so disappointed to find that there was only one story I actually loved – Aimee Bender’s Americca (misspelling intended), in which 10-year Lisa narrates the story of how objects keep appearing in her family’s home. Each object is a duplicate or imitation of things they already own. There’s nothing malicious going on, but the family naturally finds this very unsettling, and the objects themselves suggest discomforting things about their lives.

I can’t quite explain why I enjoyed this story so much, but I was surprised that it was the only one to evoke such a strong reaction. There are a few others I liked such as Snow White, Rose Red by Lydia Millet and The Wilds by Julia Elliot. Abroad (mentioned above) resonated with me because I’ve been living in a country much poorer and less developed than my own and I found the narrator’s sense of being overwhelmed, coupled with her patronising fear of offending people disturbing.

But unfortunately most of the stories in the collection did nothing for me. In the anthology’s defence, these stories aren’t particularly easy to appreciate, so they’re not necessarily bad, just… peculiar. You may find their weirdness enchanting or simply odd. The metaphors might resonate with you, or just leave you confused. Perhaps the most difficult thing to get used to is the fact that many of the stories don’t have a traditional narrative. It’s not clear where it’s going or why and the characters are often too strange for you to understand their motives. These stories seem to be luxuriating in their own oddities, and whether you can do the same is up to you. Joy Williams’s interpretations is that “their take on the psychological viewscape is that it’s endlessly curious [...] They are fictions neither moral or immoral. Rather they are involved contrivances, preposterous in conception, logical in presentation, quite delightful and askew”.

Consequently, even though I didn’t enjoy most of the stories, I nevertheless found this collection to be full of exquisite little details – a character’s quirk, a touch of humour or pathos, a beautiful sentence:

“my dog caught two rabbits in the backyard, finally, after years of failure. He slung them in a bundle over his shoulder and went packing.” (The Entire Predicament by Lucy Corin)

“I am boiling inside a kettle with five other people, our limbs are bound, our intestines and mouths stuffed with herbs and garlic, but we can still speak. We smell great, despite the pain.” (Hot, Fast, and Sad by Alissa Nutting

“I read the newspaper in bed at night, propping it open on my bare belly, my boobs falling off to either side as if they were already asleep” (Beast by Samantha Hunt)

The little details are in themselves rewarding especially if you appreciate good writing. And if you’re a short story reader who thinks “peculiar” is a lovely word, you might enjoy this anthology.

Buy a copy of Fantastic Women at The Book Depository

Review of Voices edited by Mark S. Deniz and Amanda Pillar

Title: Voices
Editors:  Mark S. Deniz and Amanda Pillar
Published: 9 March 2011
Publisher: Morrigan Books
Genre: horror, short stories
Source: Review copy from publisher
My Rating: 6/10

Impersonal and unknown, surrounded by strangers and desperately lonely – these are the most unsettling characteristics of hotel rooms and while hotels sometimes carry connotations of holidays and pampering, they also lend themselves very easily to horror. Voices is an indie anthology of horror stories set in a sinister old hotel.  The authors have imagined what you might hear in those rooms, and behind the locked doors are voices that whisper, plead, threaten and scream. Some reveal dark secrets; some are the ramblings of insane minds; some might be the voices of ghosts or other paranormal beings. Hotel rooms are so impersonal and alienating and yet, as this anthology often suggests, they bring out deeply personal, often deeply disturbing aspects of the people who occupy them.

The stories play around with the various characteristics and uses of hotel rooms. One of the most common uses is as a space for lovers. Several of the stories use this theme, although in this case the relationships are stained by obsession, loneliness, tragedy and violence. In “His Only Company, the Walls” by Brad C. Hodson (one of the collection’s best stories), a man waits with demented tenacity for the arrival of his lover, Julia. The narrative is composed of the voicemail messages he leaves on her cellphone. The days and weeks go by and he becomes increasingly unhinged, missing Julia then hating her, while worrying about the thing lurking in the hallway. He’s managed to puzzle out the language in which the walls are talking, he tells Julia: “I wish they would shut the hell up. I don’t believe a thing they’re saying about you.”

In “Paris” by Todd C. Edwards, a junkie ODs in the hotel room she shares with her drug dealer boyfriend. She can hear and see but is completely paralyzed and has to watch, helpless, as the lover who promised to take her to Paris deals with the body in his hotel room.

Hotels can often provide an escape from normal life, but since this is a horror anthology, the characters in Voices aren’t having happy holidays. In “Mirror” by K.V. Taylor, Max and Luca are hiding out in a hotel room after some unknown crime that Max committed. He stares constantly at the mirror in the room, while his mind is warped by the loud, chaotic music only he can hear. The unnamed woman in “Sanctuary” by Carol Johnston is trying to find some relief after a failed relationship and the last of a long series of hospital stays, but instead of finding comfort she’s ravaged by nightmares, the tortures of her own dysfunctional body and the otherworldly nature of the room itself.

Hotel rooms offer more permanent escapes too. According to author Paul Kane, anonymous hotel rooms are favoured places to commit suicide, so in his story “The Suicide Room”, a man who has been lonely all his life checks in with a suitcase full of things with which to kill himself; he just has to decide which method to use. Anonymity presents a different kind of suicide in “The Man Who Wasn’t There” by Rodney J. Smith. Ash, a man whose job has turned his life into a miserable journey from one lonely hotel room to the next, one day hears a voice that tells him that if he wants to escape his life he can give up his name, his existence and simply cease to be.

The privacy of hotel rooms allows for another common theme – murder. “Just Us” by Pete Kempshall is my favourite in the anthology – a police procedural that begins with a brutally hacked body in a hotel room and goes back a few hours to witness the murder. Another police procedural – “A Picture of Death” by Shane Jiraiya Cummings – also begins with a body in a hotel room, this time hanging from the ceiling. It seems that this killing had something to do with witchcraft, and no matter where the detective stands in the room, the corpse turns to stare at him with dead, bulging eyes.

Cleanliness is a worrying issue in dodgier hotel rooms and “Bedbugs” by Martin Livings takes a psychological and supernatural approach to the idea of a bed swarming with disgusting, biting bugs. “Sentinel” by Sonia Marcon has a surprisingly optimistic approach to the idea of something living inside the walls, watching the people who come and go from the rooms. Another room haunted by a paranormal presence is found in “Faking it” by Siobhan Byford, where a con artist who pretends to be psychic finds her act being taken over by the real thing.

The anthology also contains a series of six shorter stories by Robert Hood that act as an overarching structure for the theme of the collection. The idea is that the narratives are all set in the same hotel, and Hood’s tales (which include the prologue and epilogue) give us glimpses of the hotel across the decades, from 1928 to 2008. Unlike the other stories, which are all set in rooms, Hood’s take place in the lobby and corridors, the public spaces of the hotel. Each story features a creepy porter – possibly the same porter, a man who’s just as much a part of the hotel as the masonry.

I like the premise that all the stories take place in the same hotel and the implication that there is something sinister about the building itself. The creepy, haunted building is a standard horror trope and it’s one of my favourites. Unfortunately this presents a flaw in the anthology, as the stories don’t feel like they’re taking place in the same building. Of course, you could argue that the specifics of the hotel change over time and some differences and contradictions could be explained by the supernatural nature of the building, but that’s a very weak explanation. It may have been better if the editors presented the authors with specifics about the structure of the hotel for the sake of thematic consistency.

On the whole it’s a nice collection, if not great. Quality varies from very good to average to dull, but it’s an enjoyable, easy read – a bit of light horror for a quiet evening. At its worst the stories are forgettable (as opposed to being badly written or schlocky, which is much worse), while at its best it’s punchy and unsettling. Many of the narratives are deliberately ambiguous about their supernatural elements (is the character insane or is there really something weird going on?) but there’s a very fine line between being mysterious and being vague. Some authors find that sweet spot of creepy intrigue; others feel like there’s something missing.

I’d looked forward to Gary McMahon’s story simply because he was the only writer whose name I was familiar with, but his piece, “Constance Craving” was boring. It’s about a therapist who tries to treat a young girl who’s convinced she’s a vampire (they meet in a hotel room, in keeping with the theme).  The story doesn’t tell you whether or not the girl is really a vampire, but instead of being mysterious it was melodramatic and dull. Which also goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a story on the name of its author; chances are you will not have heard of the authors in this collection, but that’s no reason not to read it because there a few gems.

Among those are a few features that scored points with me. Each story is accompanied by a bio of the author and a personal note about their writing process. I particularly like the latter, and it makes the anthology that much more interesting for writers and anyone else who enjoys hearing about the creative process.

I also appreciate is that the collection favours more subtle psychological horror over blood and broken bodies. Gore and other gross things are often a major part of the horror but do not overwhelm the far more interesting things that make these stories disturbing – insanity, cruelty, revenge, misery, loneliness and of course, the paranormal. I’m glad I got the opportunity to read this little collection, and although I’ve never felt weird about hotel rooms, I certainly will now.

Buy a copy of Voices