'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 40

Short Stories 366:196 —”Lyes,” by Craig Laurance Gidney

[image error]So, this story appeared in Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction from Craig Laurance Gidney back in 2014, and I was reading it at roughly the time the Aunt Jemima discourse hit my timelines during quarantine, and honestly it felt like a sort of kismet moment. The idea behind this story breathes in a kind of fabulism that starts out a trace amusing and almost silly, then takes a sharp turn to somewhere harsher and threatening, and then finally lands an ending that had me smiling and thoughtful. It is this: Sheri, a Black woman finishing her thesis centred around the representation of Black women in marketing, is sleep-deprived, and has one big worry: she doesn’t think she’s going to get her advisor’s approval. Then the women in the ads she’s got posted up around her room drop by, which is both unexpected and a much bigger problem.

Syrup icons, hair straighteners, lightening creams… the women evoked from their posters all have an idea of what would be best for Sheri, and this is where that tone shift I mentioned comes in, because it stars with Sheri convinced she’s hallucinating and talking things through with her friends, but then it becomes very clear that she’s not, and these women are as much a product of their time as they are of their design, and Sheri finds herself facing off not with women, but with marketing forces designed to manipulate and repress.

That said, for the disturbing turns the tale takes, Gidney’s story here is ultimately a positive one, and I loved the wrap-up of the story, where we see how Shari’s thesis has turned out, as well as the fallout of the three icons in her life. Gidney’s weaving of these different tones of triumph, the disturbing, amusements, and seriousness within the concept of “Lyes” is so freaking cleverly done. Indeed, the shifting of scope from story to story in this collection is one of the strengths—the unifying fabulism is there, but the range of these stories really soar.

 

Short Stories 366:195 — “Redemption,” by Lesley Nneka Arimah

[image error]“Redemption” closes out What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, and it does so with a brilliant story that does so much in the space of a short time, but keeps it all alight at once: the weight of disbelief in the face of sexual abuse, the confusing tangle of emotions when a young girl starts to feel for another woman, societal presumptions, infidelities, hypocrisies of faith and justice… there is so much in “Redemption” it’s astounding, and that the whole is just this sublime narrative? Well, that’s the joy that is reading Lesley Nneka Arimah, I think.

I should also point out how the author has this way of injecting little asides of humour into her stories that drop into the reader’s experience like tiny flashes of light among what could otherwise be pretty relentless. There’s one line in particular in this story that had me bark out a laugh mid-walk (the dog jumped), where the main character considers her older neighbour is “very old, creeping on that age when life begins to lose all meaning, fifty, I think.” I had to stop the audiobook and rewind just so I could write down the phrasing. It’s just so perfect, such a precision of character, and all of Lesley Nneka Arimah’s characters felt like that to me throughout the collection—especially when they were delightfully imperfect women being themselves.

As a whole, I don’t think I can sing the praises of the collection enough, but “Redemption” one of the strongest anchor stories I’ve read in a long time. A girl who has withstood a disgrace that was in no way her fault, and for whom there was no justice and only punishment in the eyes of everyone around her, has power over so little. Her developing feelings for someone else shift, and her buried furies and angers and desire to be as callous (and perhaps even cruel) as others nudges the story forward inch by inch to the conclusion, and I ended the collection with a long and careful exhale.

Short Stories 366:194 — “The Wish-Giver,” by Ana Mardoll

[image error]With this story, my journey through the transgender and nonbinary fantasy stories of No Man of Woman Born concludes, and I have to say it ends on a lovely, gentle note. “The Wish-Giver” almost feels like a fairy tale, in that the set-up starts large and winnows down: we hear about a dragon capable of granting wishes, though she must first be defeated, and then a community that has formed around said dragon, catering to those who come to seek wishes (and are more often not successful, at the cost of their lives). Then we focus smaller, and smaller, until we follow a child toddling up the mountainside and into the Dragon’s den, wooden sword in hand.

What follows is a tale about this child, and the wish the child makes, but it’s a larger story as well, with some not-so-subtle jabs at our contemporary world among the rest. Most especially, I enjoyed the discussion of how the people had two perfectly good colours to clothe everyone in, and why would they need more? But as the wishmaker’s wish is made, and the townspeople find themselves relieved to have the child not only back and unharmed but with the wish granted, there’s this melancholy I couldn’t help but feel while I read: we don’t have wish giving dragons, so the power to change on this level has to be battled over and over again. There’s no way to affect the world around us with one wish.

Despite my moment of sadness, the story itself is triumphant, and closes out the collection with a final win. This isn’t by any means unusual for the collection itself, but the tone and effect of the story is just a few shades lighter than the other stories, and it feels purposeful and definitely left me closing the book with a small smile on my face and feeling, in some way, refreshed by a genre I hadn’t touched in quite a while.

Short Stories 366:193 — “A Thief By Any Other Name,” by Violette Malan

[image error]I do love a good grifter story, and in this latest trip to the interstellar supermarket in The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis, Violette Malan delivers exactly that. A woman who lives on the edges of legality on Plexis finds herself at the wrong end of a “negotiation” with a “Scat.” The Scat are often violent, definitely dangerous aliens often seen in The Clan Chronicles universe, but like nearly all the stories in this shared-world anthology, Malan give you more than enough to work with if your new to the universe. Claws. Teeth. Blackmail. Referring to humans as “soft flesh.” It’s pretty clear these are not creatures you wish to work with.

But, Graine ends up more-or-less blackmailed into doing a job: grab something that’ll be in restaurant and make sure it ends up in the hands of the alien in question. She’s not a thief, but a human is best suited to the task, and, well. She might not be a thief, but the skillset required isn’t exactly out of her reach. But it doesn’t take long for Graine to realize there’s more going on here than the attempted ruination of a recipe, and as such the grifter gets a chance to con the Scat who is attempting to con her. She just needs to do it in a way that doesn’t cost any of her loved ones their lives, including herself, or leave the Scat with any knowledge he’s been taken for a ride, either. So, do the job—without doing the job.

Malan’s story zigs and zags as Graine figures out more of what’s really going on, tries to figure out an angle, and then puts a plan in motion to make sure everything turns out well for her. The result is a really charming little caper of a tale, with a solid set-up, execution, and reveal that I really enjoyed. Plexis is a place where a lot of money changes hands among many alien races, and Graine was a great example of the kind of people often found in those environments. I was rooting for her from the get-go, even knowing she’d be the type to cheerfully grift me out of everything I had.

Short Stories 366:192 — “O Crime, In Thy Flight,” by Eleanor Cawood Jones

[image error]So, to say this particular story from Crime Travel was my cup of tea would be understating, but let me paint you the set-up: after giving birth, Charlotte finds she’s developed an odd ability: when she touches someone’s clothes and thinks about something they lost when they were wearing those clothes, she knows where the missing item is. This kind of psychometry story has me from step one, honestly, and add in the husband who doesn’t like that she’s not “normal” and I’m basically ready to champion Charlotte to the end of time.

Charlotte has kept her ability secret from most everyone else, but poor timing put her in range of a police officer, Sam, and he realized pretty quickly that her awareness of where someone missing was—because in his case it was someone with dementia who’d wandered off—was something that could be used for good. He comes to her with another crime, and she helps him, and a partnership of sorts is formed where she helps out with her gift, remains anonymous, and crimes are solved. Then one day Charlotte needs a hallowe’en costume for her daughter, and she decides they could dress up as pairs, and she tries on an airline hostess outfit and wonders briefly where the original owner of the uniform might be and—bam.

Her gift launches into overdrive, and Charlotte finds herself reliving the past, along for the ride in the body of the woman in the uniform, and witness to murder to boot. This hasn’t happened before, and Charlotte has no idea if she can get back to her own time, assuming she’s not trapped as a silent witness in this person’s body forever. The catch-22 of Charlotte and her husband comes to hit her square in the face: her gifts are growing, and she’s been holding them back and trying not to use them overmuch to keep her husband happy, and now it might have doomed her. By the time everything plays out, I had a lot of hope for Charlotte and her decisions about what she needs to do, and honestly, I’d love to read more shorts with the character.

Short Stories 366:191 — “The Sherriff of Penbreigh,” by Jess Faraday

[image error]I mentioned last week that I basically leapt both feet into this story right after the conclusion of the previous one in Shadow of Justice. I did so because, quite literally, Simon Pearce, the gay constable I’d come to know and love through all the stories in this collection thus far, had finally hit an insurmountable obstacle and basically had to bolt to maintain his freedom and his life. I needed to know if Jess Faraday was still going to grant him some form of happiness, and I needed to know right away.

And thus we come to Penbreigh, where Simon Pearce has finally stopped running, and where he’s managed to get a job doing the same thing he was doing before, acting as a lawman, but this time it’s in a small rural community. To whit: the first thing he needs to do in this particular story is recover a stolen chicken. Only during the recovery of said chicken, Simon finds a body, and things get complicated, fast.

The small-town feel of this story is lovely, and for those who—like me—were left wondering about the villains of the previous tale, there’s a few lines to let you know how that turned out, and I appreciated them. More, we see Simon growing again, coming to terms with how many of his problems have come from his own choices, and we finally meet Elizabeth Bell, the doctor whose monographs Simon has been reading since the first tale, and who is a delightful sapphic character and new friend to Simon. The mystery of this particular tale is spun tightly, and I enjoyed seeing Simon lower his guard a bit with a few of the people in his new village home.

Short Stories 366:190 — “Dress Rehearsal,” by Nicole Zelnicker

[image error]As I read my way through the stories in Nothing Without Us, I kept coming across a sense of tone, or an angle of perception that left me smiling, even when the topics of a particular tale weren’t uplifting, and it took me a while to get why it was happening: they were inhabited by the characters, rather than situations happening to characters intended to invoke pathos or—God forbid—to inspire.

“Dress Rehearsal” is a perfect example of this: Lizzie is visiting, and her sister wants her to visit their mother in the hospital before she goes home. There’s an underlying “before it’s too late” in there, and it soon becomes clear what’s going on: Lizzie’s mom has a disease for which the treatment often leads to cancer, and Lizzie has the same disease. Her sister does not. Her mother is in the hospital, time is limited, and Lizzie has only a certain number of days to drop by, but… hasn’t yet.

In the hands of a different author, it would be all to easy to read Lizzie as afraid, or neglectful, or the whole tale to come off supersaturated with sadness. Instead, Lizzie simply is, and she navigates this complex series of moments—her mother’s illness and how she is likely to share the same fate—alongside a new fling and a few interactions with her sister. And in the end, as the tale draws to a close, it struck me once again the character in this story, like in so many of the stories in this anthology, is navigating their life with a healthy dose of snark, found joys, and quiet moments to gather strength when they need it.

Short Stories 366:189 — “Mauve,” by Craig Laurance Gidney

[image error]Another moving—and also painful—tale from Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction, “Mauve” splits our point of view between two characters. On one hand, Gidney gives us a boy who has just moved to an old house far away from his friends and the life he knew because his mother has died and his father is not handling it well at all (and takes a job so far away to start over). The other character is a Black housekeeper, the titular “Mauve,” set to take over the role for an odd man for whom her mother worked before her.

The narrative begins with the boy finding an old, hand-sewn blanket and finding it oddly cool and soothing despite the heat, and learning he can—if he allows himself a certain shift in place—slide into the landscape of the blanket itself: with fields of purple flowers and beautiful starry skies. And, eventually, a glimpse of someone else there, too. Learning from a neighbour about the housekeeper who once lived here with her employer (and vanished) makes where the story is heading not a surprise, but the reasons and how the two eventually come face-to-face through the magic woven into the blanket is a painful, harsh moment then buoyed up with a single hopeful statement.

I love stories where time folds in on itself, or there’s a place to escape worldly evils, and the idea of the blanket is just so wonderfully handled in “Mauve.” That the two characters involved are both trying to escape pain, are both isolated and alone, and how that plays out between them is the perfect embellishment on the pattern of it all. It’s a gorgeous story.

Short Stories 366:188 — “What is a Volcano?” by Lesley Nneka Arimah

[image error]Oh, holy flying heck this was wonderful. Found in What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, and told as a kind of parable or folk tale, “What is a Volcano?” has a narrative that begins with the god of ants and the goddess of rivers having a disagreement that escalates, but while the goddess of rivers sees it as a kind of one-upmanship, or perhaps a minor rivalry more amusing than truly vehement, the god of ants is quickly furious at how no one seems willing to care about his feelings, and as such, launches a centuries long bitter hatred that cumulates in a horrific (if somewhat accidental) act.

“What is a Volcano?” builds slowly, rising on moment after moment of loss and pain and fury, and there’s also this ongoing emotional story of how loss and anger entwine so completely, and can consume everything when there’s no opportunity for closure or resolution. More, the idea that all this damage is done from such a small, pathetic source (for the god of ants is very much a pathetic, self-interested creature) underscores a few more truths about who so often deals violence, and how little they care about collateral damage.

There are so many layers in this story I can’t possibly do it justice, but I can—I hope—make it clear that if you’ve not picked up What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky yet, that you should. Even more, if you’re at all an audiobook fan, I have nothing but praise for Adjoa Andoh, who performs the book to absolute perfection, and who, in this story, uses her skills of cadence and emotionality to draw you along so completely. I think I’ve said this a few times now, but this book is one of those books that keeps earning the dog a longer walk, because I just wanted to get to the end of the story now, rather than waiting for later.

Short Stories 366:187 — “No Man of Woman Born,” by Ana Mardoll

[image error]The penultimate story in No Man of Woman Born is also the story that shares the title with the collection as a whole, and as I’ve been saying throughout this collection, each story seems to nudge up my enjoyment factor a little bit more. Here, we meet Innes, a young boy who has a complicated relationship with the prophecy that declares no man of woman born can kill the particular evil king who rules the land. He deconstructs every nuance of the prophecy: is he a man if he’s still yet a boy? When does that line cross? And he also eyes it in a different way: will his being a man (if he indeed becomes one) hinder the actual hero who might bring down the king someday? Can he still help, or will his involvement in any way be enough to discount the efforts of any others, since no man can accomplish the task.

The joy of the narrative in this story is watching Innes tackle the complexities of gender alongside prophecy and his own potentiality, and then how Mardoll takes Innes’s story and shifts it just so to change that same potentiality one more time before the tale draws to a close. And unlike the other tales in the collection so far, this one is far, far more open ended in the sense that the answer remains as tentative and full of potential, rather than a simple declaration of “this was the right answer all along.” Given the topic, I really enjoyed that thematic choice: that this is a story more about Innes trying to figure out his place and what things mean than it is about defeating a large evil. But if you want to, you can consider what Innes learns as what would likely come next, and walk away just as satisfied.

It’s a particularly clever tale in a collection that’s been full of different and really enjoyable stories of transgender and nonbinary heroes in fantasy, and I definitely enjoyed it both as its own tale, but also as a kind of anchor (though the title) to the collection as a whole.