|
|
Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
| |
10:29 pm - Mokey Brain Sushi
|
In the 80's a massive turn occured in Japanese literature - writers broke from the norms of group-think and classical standards and emerged with wonderful originality, personality, verve. These authors are the contemporary voices of contemporary Japan and express infinite depth through flavorful narrative.
The book I am currently enjoying is Monkey Brain Sushi: New Taste in Japanese Fiction edited by Alfred Birnbaum and published in 1991. Birnbaum is "American by passport" and lives, writes, and translates in Japan. The authors whose stories appear in the book include Eri Makino - a housewife revolutionised by her rediscovery of Elvis, Kyoji Kobayashi - a lyrical connector of haiku and fiction, and Japan's most famed Haruki Murakami - an enigmatic entity all on his own.
Haruki Murakami is a wonderful author. His tales range from the strange supernatural to the stranger human. Personally, I suggest "South of the Border, West of the Sun" and "Norwegian Wood" if anyone is interested in his novels. "The Elephant Vanishes" is his book of short stories. These are some of his stories that can be found online:
Honey Pie
Airplane
Birthday Girl
- Marina
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, September 5th, 2004
| |
11:40 am - The Leading Man
|
Reviewing a story by Aimee Bender is not an easy task. In fact, it's a taunting task. Because what do you point to when there is so much to point at? I suppose I should talk about story, and this particular story, "The Leading Man" was published by one of the leading literary magazines about, The Paris Review.
It's a story of a young boy who grows into an older man and along the way, he seeks his identity within himself, within his family and within his community. It is a slow process, but one furthered by Aimee Bender's use of the fantastic in the real world. The boy is born with fingers shaped like keys, his father fights in a foreign, unannounced war, and, later, the boy finds employment in a factory where he breaks glass for a living.
The wonderment of this story about a latch-key kid, isolated in more ways than one, is the way the pieces of the story, the pieces of the protagonist's life fit together, not unlike the way the right key fits into the right lock and opens the way with a solid click, the way child holds the keys and becomes a leading man of his own right.
One can hardly ask any more than that in a story and when it happens, applaud it and place on a site where others can discover it as well.
Written and posted by Pam McNew
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
8:25 am - The Orange
|
An orange is an orange is an orange, except when it's not. Except when it's the ruler of the world.
Such is the case in the very short and very sweet story, "The Orange" by Benjamin Rosenbaum. First printed, in Quarterly West, the small press literary magazine published at the University of Utah, and later, reprinted in the very sharp and very fancy, Harper's Magazine, this story presents the reader with a world both pastorial and technological. Through a slip of fate, a "temporary abdicaton of Heavenly Providence," an orange becomes a miraculous and wise ruler of humanity.
But life is short and it is shorter for produce. A season is all it has and being from nature, from the single branch of a Floridan tree, the orange recognizes this.
This story is about gifts; the gift of delight and wonder, the gift of wisdom and appreciation, the gift of simple times and veritable trust. Honesty and honor. High expectations and tender sympathies. Faith. And hope.
Written and posted by Pam McNew
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, September 4th, 2004
| |
8:33 am - 55th Anniversary All Star Issue!
|
Yes, that's right. It says it on the cover and there within the pages, the pages of the Oct/Nov issue of Fantasy & Science, one can find fiction of stellar quality. My favorites, in no particular order:
Gene Wolfe's epistolary tale of a witch in the woods in "The Little Stranger." But this is no true witch, I know because she tells us so, or she tells her dear dead cousin Danny that in her letters to him. Delightful. It's stories like this that make me smile and smile and say, “Hey, Gene Wolfe, that man is a Master, a true and true Master of his craft.”
If you have read "Bronte's Egg" by Richard Chwedyk (and if you haven't why not, it was the 2002 Nebula winner for novella and so worth the reading of it) you will recognize a few of the Saurs (little dinosaurs manufactured in a factory or a lab of a toy company) who have been relocated to a safe house. "In Tibor's Cardboard Castle," within that same safe house, something wonderful is going on. Wonderful and strange and still within the laws of physics. Well, maybe. There is still that leap of faith in the reading of the genre.
I am this greatbigfat fan of the writing of M. Rickert. She has a unique, vivid, kaleidoscopic vision of what story is all about. "Cold Fires" is no exception to this. It's a story about a house bound couple in the coldest of all possible seasons telling one another a story about themselves before the fire. If we are the stories we tell, the telling is painful. No, not just the telling, the hearing, the reading. The recognition.
"The End of the World as We Know It" by Dale Bailey is what it says it is. And, this isn't one more same old, same old production of a tired old theme. It takes an exception while presenting those past endeavors. The story gives depth and emotion and an edgy reality to the quietly hidden fears present today that yes, yes, the world can end and all that will remain will beautiful sunsets. The sunsets aren't the only beautiful part of this story, but the writing of it is as well.
I have to admit that I almost didn't read Robert Reed's story, "Opal Ball." Slow opening. Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, in a world of popular probability voting, boy loses girl. But I did read it, and I'm glad I did because Robert Reed knows how to write short fiction. The ending was poignant and sweet, touching and ever so very right.
"Flat Diane" by Daniel Abraham is a horror story of sorts. A financially struggling, single father makes a life-size paper silhouette of his young daughter and sends it to relatives they cannot afford to visit. He asks relatives to send photos and information of themselves and 'Flat Diane' back to his daughter. Through some odd turn of events, his daughter becomes connected to the life of Flat Diane, dreaming and remembering although not remembering how she remembers moments of the paper silhouette’s life. This is not good and it becomes worse. “Flat Diane” is a story about fatherhood and love and protection. And a verily good story.
And, last, a kiss on the cheek, or just a good firm handshake, or maybe an acknowledging smile and a nod of the head should go to John Morressy for writing a nontraditional fantasy wizard/apprentice/fairy godmother story with a strong, determined, smart female protagonist in "The Courtship of Kate O'Farrissey." And, Lisa Goldstein, she should be smiled upon and praised for her Prince Charming who goes beyond his fairy godmother birthing gifts and changes, in my humble opinion, into a real, a true, an honest-to-God Prince in "Finding Beauty."
Written and posted by Pam McNew
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
8:32 am - The ghosts you know.
|
I finished Greg Bear's Dead Lines and I have to say that I admire his focus. Greg Bear takes a horror scenario with all the individual and world-wide focus of a King novel and writes what is essential to his protagonist. A protagonist, whose life has been composed of easy choices, faces some of the most difficult decisions of his life. To let his dead daughter go. To face unearthly horrors. To look at his life with clarity and yet continue it with charm and grace and courage.
And I have to admire Greg Bear's style and pace. Some very very nice sentence structure can be found in the action scenes. Quickly paced, plot elements blend and combine to create and answer questions about being human, about our humanity. Questions about soul and questions about ghosts and questions about life and living it the best we can.
Written and posted by Pam McNew
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, August 29th, 2004
| |
9:53 am
|
At the moment, I'm reading Greg Bear's horror novel, Dead Lines, the Oct/Nov issue of F&SF and stories out of Adam Haslett's You Are Not a Stranger Here. I've finished A. S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories. "The Thing In the Woods," is a wonderful wonderful thing and the description of 'that' horror in the woods matches the creature/god in the opening of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke exactly. "The Stone Woman" is a surrealistic fantasy piece where a woman becomes stone and it is not a bad thing, not really. A powerful collection. And there was The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes. Hey, there have been a lot of reviews about this book being all about aging and dying, but it's really about lives lived. I'm going to point a finger at these particular stories, because I loved them, "Hygiene" and "The Story of Mats Isrealson" and and and "Knowing French" which is an epistolary tale where the aging female protagonist writes to Julian Barnes.
Written and posted by Pam McNew
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, January 4th, 2004
| |
9:29 pm - January Issue of Chizine
|
--at www.chizine.com
“Tohil,” by Edo Mor
This was probably the weakest of the stories in this issue. The prose moves back and forth so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on, the author sacrificing clarity for quirkiness.
However, as the story unfolds, the setting shows some fascinating faces swimming in all the sharp style. It’s a character’s quest to find his roots, his father dead and his mother unknown, the character is a Houdini of sorts, we get hints of a disappearing act he performs, drifting off into some kind of perpetual nothing until he decides to come back at his will.
We eventually learn more about the mother, although the confusion never really dissipates completely, and the ending leaves the reader with a sense of “What just happened?” with a somewhat overused closing paragraph in which the character commits suicide to rejoin a loved one.
***
“Sloe-Eyed Jacks and Homicide Kings,” by Jay Lake.
As the title suggests, this story is a kind of personification of playing cards, although I was under the impression that they were called Suicide Kings, but perhaps the fault is in my own ignorance and not Mr. Lake’s.
Playing cards are common objects in westerns, so it’s only natural that this story is a kind of western of its own, moving over a clichéd plot of bad-guy-moves-into-town-and-good-guy-fights-in-face-off. There is some rich imagery here along with strong word choice, yet at the same time there’s nothing in here that makes it stand out above some of Jay Lake’s other fiction.
***
“Memory Analog,” by Tim Akers
A science fiction piece swimming along with the other horror stories, but there’s no doubt it contains *dark* aspects. It takes one of the constantly used ideas from Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” of memory upload capabilities, in which the story can continually play with memories and give them more substance.
A father is looking for his son, trading and buying memories in an attempt to put puzzle pieces together, finding his way through a cyberpunk-type world filled with all the usual Goth-type setting.
This is one of those stories that, while being well-written, won’t stay in the reader’s memory for long.
***
“Ice on Heated Steel Script,” by Tom Piccirilli
A cool, twisted love story between a Komodo Dragon and our main character, bringing us into the story with our character standing below a burning building and a woman clutching onto her “baby” while the flames reach up around her.
Inevitably, she lets the wrapped blanket fall while she burns to death and the main character catches it to find his hideous love wrapped within, bringing his head down to kiss it.
An enjoyable and short read.
***
“A Twine of Auburn,” by Eric Pape
Easily the best piece in this issue, this is one of those horror stories in which the character becomes so consumed in his grief that it begins to manifest inside himself and grow out of him.
Like “Memory Analog,” it plays with memories and brings out the most remembered aspect of the character’s dead wife, her hair, and creates a conflict out of it, the hair a left-behind thing that continually brings his grief to the forefront and eats him alive, until he is empty and hollow and without substance.
The piece is touching and bittersweet.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, December 16th, 2003
| |
2:55 pm - “Fetch” by David Moles
|
--at www.strangehorizons.com
This story could very well bring you to tears. A kind of historical outlook on the space program, focused on the first dog in space launched up by the Russians. “Fetch” takes the familiar Apollo 13 idea and puts animals in place of people, and by doing this breeds an entirely different story.
The first chimpanzee in space orbiting the earth to save a Russian dog. Only in the hastiness of this rescue mission, mistakes have been made and we find the chimp must make decisions of bravery and sacrifice.
This story is highly recommended.
--Simon Owens
(to subscribe to this free review journal, send an email to writercritic@aemail4u.com)
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
2:34 pm - “Bad Characters” by Jean Stafford
|
What I find most amusing about stories of this kind is being able to see through the naivety of a child’s eyes. The narrator is a loner, a little girl who befriends a thief whose brilliance is unmatched, which we learn near the end of the story. The narrator has never stolen before, yet she is intrigued by her new friend (who is only her friend because she was caught red-handed trying to steal cake out of the narrator’s kitchen) and joins her on her quest to steal from the Five and Dime.
This quest leads to ultimate betrayal from the narrator, but there is no doubt in the reader’s mind that she pays for this. A lesson for her to learn to never go against the mind of a brilliant thief.
This story has become a classic, and rightly so.
--Simon Owens
(to subscribe to this free review journal, send an email to writercritic@aemail4u.com)
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|