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.