"The House That Ate the World" (which is not the name of a short story)
Richard Bowes writes some wonderful short stories.
"The Margay's Children" is the sort of Bowe's story that especially appeals to me - it brushes up against his love of New York City, his development of realistic complicated characters in a seemingly mundane setting and his drop-in of sudden and unexpected fantasy. We can call it urban fantasy and if you are familiar with Charles de Lint, for example, then you will know what I'm talking about. This is out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye kind of fantasy, subtle and careful.
It is my favorite kind of fantasy.
In many ways, "Margay" is a typical multi-generational family saga. There is much here of mothers and daughters and some of what that entails. Writing in the first person, the narrator, Richie, identifies himself as the godfather of Selesta, daughter of his old and dear friend Joan Malta. Selesta likes cats which is the thread of the larger story about the Malta family that the narrator slowly unravels.
There are Richie and Joan, who knew each other in their youth as "hippies" and Selesta who is young as the story opens but then it college as it continues. There is Ruth, Joan's mother, and her mysterious first husband (Joan's father) who went missing. Ruth is a pistol - she lives in "The House That Ate the World" (Joan's name for it.)
There is a bit of a falling out and a coming together, as mothers and daughters do. There is sitting on porches and children playing in the water and the announcement of a pregnancy which brings excitement and also some trepidation.
Cats figure into this story. Remember that.
What Bowes does so well in "The Margay's Children", as he does in so many other stories though, is lull you into the scenes on city streets and country porches, in places that would be utterly at home in any realistic novel or story. He lets you see just how easily lives can be different or more than you might expect; how the fantastic hides so easily within the mundane. He is revisiting a fairy tale here but you can read it without knowing that and enjoy it just the same.
Richie and Joan have been friends a long time, he is Selesta's godfather, and yet there is much he does not know. Secrets full everything in our lives and in our world; always there are the secrets.
Finally, what I love the most about "The Margay's Children" is that it is not horror. It is a warm family story at the end as it is at the beginning, which is exactly what I wanted it to be. Bowes would have ruined it by bringing in a true monster; nice to see he didn't take the easy way out.
[You can find "The Margay's Children" in The Queen, the Cambion and Seven Others.]
