The Juice is Worth The Squeeze – A Review of Six Months, Three Days by Charlie Jane Anders
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six months, three days found in Even Greater mistakes by charlie jane anders November 3, 2021 9:00 am 3 Comments Facebook Twitter WordPress Short Story List As Good As NewRat Catcher’s YellowIf You Take my MeaningThe Time Travel ClubSix Months, Three DaysLove Might Be Too Strong a WordFairy Werewolf vs. Vampire ZombieGhost ChampagneMy Breath is a RudderPower CoupleRock Manning Goes For BrokeBecause Change Was The Ocean and We Lived by Her MercyCaptain Roger in HeavenCloverThis is Why We Can’t Have Nasty ThingsA Temporary Embarrassment in SpacetimeThe Bookstore At The End of AmericaThe Visitmothers Six Months, Three Days WHAT IT IS ABOUT?
Doug and Judy have both had a secret power all their life. Judy can see every possible future, branching out from each moment like infinite trees. Doug can also see the future, but for him, it’s a single, locked-in, inexorable sequence of foreordained events. They can’t both be right, but over and over again, they are.
Obviously these are the last two people in the world who should date. So, naturally, they do
REVIEWCharlie Jane Anders is a writer that I discovered last year and immediately fell in love with. I enjoyed The City in the Middle of the Night, and I had to investigate all the other things she has written as a matter of course. I am so glad I did. Anders is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer and a Hugo nominated fancaster with her partner Annalee Newitz. You can find her excellent podcast here. I bought a hardback copy of her short stories after checking out and reviewing As Good As New. Now, she has a new book of short stories coming out called Even Greater Mistakes.
As Good As New exudes pure positivity even in the face of tragic or exhausting circumstances. It is a quality that I find quite a bit in Anders’s writing. She has a way of finding the good, the beautiful, the heartfelt in places where finding those things is hard. Even in the direst of circumstances, there is always good and always something beautiful even if you can’t see it, and Anders calls it out; she shows us.
“Well,” Judy says. “There are a million tracks, you know. It’s like raindrops falling into a cistern, they’re separate until they hit the surface, and then they become the past: all undifferentiated. But there are an awful lot of futures where you and I date for about six months.”―
There are many wonderful short stories in Even Greater Mistakes. Six Months and Five days is short story with the same sense sense of optimism that I have come to associate with Anders.
Six Months and Three Days is a love story, of a sort. It is an exploration of what happens when two individuals, one who can see his future, and another who can see all futures meet and fall in love? It is a literal definition of a rock and a hard place.
The story is charming, and we know right from the beginning how it is going to end. But, the ending is not important. It doesn’t matter how Doug and Judy end up getting there; it is the six months and three days of life that happen before the final moment, which I think Anders wanted to highlight.
Yes, we can know all the answers. Yes, we know there will be lots of pain in this relationship. Yes, we know exactly how it is going to end. However, there are many beautiful moments, moments of love, and life that are worth celebrating even if you have already seen them in your mind’s eye; you haven’t experienced them.
The juice is worth the squeeze!
Check out the full story collection, but read Six Months and Three Days for sure.
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Beth Tabler
Elizabeth Tabler runs Beforewegoblog and is constantly immersed in fantasy stories. She was at one time an architect but divides her time now between her family in Portland, Oregon, and as many book worlds as she can get her hands on. She is also a huge fan of Self Published fantasy and is on Team Qwillery as a judge for SPFBO5. You will find her with a coffee in one hand and her iPad in the other. Find her on: Goodreads / Instagram / Pinterest / Twitter
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