Canavan’s Comments (group member since May 15, 2018)

Canavan’s comments from the Spells, Space & Screams: Collections & Anthologies in Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Horror group.

“Skinder’s Veil”, Kelly Link

(view spoiler)[Ellen Datlow’s anthology ends on a high note with Kelly Link’s fairy tale-like account of a young student house sitting at a remote cabin whose owner has a very strange set of rules that must be followed. As with many of Link’s stories, I find myself puzzling over specific details, but find the whole to be rather ingenious and elegant. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

“Tiptoe”, Laird Barron

(view spoiler)[In Barron’s excellent story, our narrator takes a careful look back on his seemingly idyllic youth only to discover that it wasn’t so idyllic after all. Part of why I liked this tale is the the way in which the author skillfully allows the accumulation of small details to gradually reveal the awful truth about the narrator’s family, not just his father, but brother and even to a lesser extent his mother. (hide spoiler)]

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“Sooner or Later, Your Wife Will Drive Home”, Genevieve Valentine

(view spoiler)[An interesting, if not altogether successful story whose title is inspired by a misogynistic 1964 ad by Volkswagen. In Valentine’s story, a series of women, all with names that are variations of Elizabeth (a call-out, presumably, to Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest) rather depressingly demonstrate the vulnerabilty of women to male violence over the course of time (although the final vignette seems to hint that on occasion the tables may be turned). (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

“Special Meal”, Josh Malerman

(view spoiler)[“Special Meal” depicts a dystopic society in which mathematical knowledge is punished. This kind of story seems somehow timely given that many nations are currently witnessing a surge in anti-intellectualism. In reading Malerman’s story, I was reminded of elements of Jackson’s “The Lottery” — viz., the vulnerability of the individual to the larger group enforcing irrational norms. (hide spoiler)]

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“Pear of Anguish”, Gemma Files

(view spoiler)[Files gives us a perceptive story about the psychological perils of navigating adolescence. Files’s touch when it comes to the supernatural elements in the tale (scrying mirrors, etc.) is light and ambiguous, but still rather chilling. Her descriptions of self harm, bullying, and toxic friendships are rather harrowing and feel real and true. (hide spoiler)]

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Lena said: No! You can’t end it there! Jesus!

The novella was expanded into a novel entitled Last Days . A worthwhile read.

“The Door in the Fence”, Jeffrey Ford

(view spoiler)[One of the author’s typical oddball stories. I like the way Ford often melds the fantastic and the mundane, but for some reason this particular tale didn’t capture my imagination in quite the way some of his previous efforts have. By the time we reach the cage match, Rita’s story had become a bit too outre for me. (hide spoiler)]

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“Refinery Row”, Stephen Graham Jones

(view spoiler)[This is a nice story, although I’ll admit I’m a little fuzzy on precisely what Jones is trying to say about guilt and the desire to atone for past mistakes. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“The Party”, Paul Tremblay

(view spoiler)[Something bad is going to happen at a party. Hmm. I tend to like some ambiguity in my stories, but this one may be a bit too open-ended for me. (hide spoiler)]

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Lena wondered: I think in head full of ghost it was glass in the food but was it glass in we have always lived in the castle?

I haven’t read the former, but I seem to recall that poison (arsenic?) was used in We Have Always Lived in the Castle .

“A Trip to Paris”, Richard Kadrey

(view spoiler)[There are a number of ties here to Shirley Jackson, including the obvious one involving use of poison. I liked how Kadrey kind of interweaves the ideas of spectral vengeance and delusional thinking. Roxanne has a healthy dose of paranoia, but it’s not all in her head — it seems fairly clear that some supernatural agency (as evidenced by the mold and the garlic salt) is actually at work. (hide spoiler)]

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“Take Me, I Am Free”, Joyce Carol Oates

If anyone could be considered as the modern day incarnation of Shirley Jackson, it might be the very prolific Oates. For that reason, I came away from this short piece both impressed and yet a little disappointed. Impressed because it surely succeeds in achieving its intended effect; disappointed because I was hoping it might have something a bit more substantive to say about the toxic environment in which the characters are embedded.

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“Hag”, Benjamin Percy

(view spoiler)[Of the stories I’ve read thus far in this anthology, “Hag” strikes me as the one least like a Jackson tale. It starts out well enough, but then seems to get bogged down in a lot of semi-stale folk horror tropes: big storm, no communications with the outside world, human sacrifice, etc., etc. This isn’t a bad story, but I was hoping for better. Maybe I wasn’t in the proper mood. (hide spoiler)]

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Lena said: That was great and on point Canavan!

Thanks, Lena!

“Money of the Dead”, Karen Heuler

(view spoiler)[Here we have another story that I am forced to admit I like more than either Fiona or Lena did — a lot more, in fact, in spite of the fact that it’s an unremittingly grim bit of business. The author has been writing (mostly short fiction) since about 2006, but this is the first thing by her that I’ve read. Based on my reaction to “Money”, I’ll probably read more of her stuff and, in fact, I was a tad embarrassed to learn, after a bit of poking around, that I actually own one of her story collections, 2018’s The Clockworm and Other Strange Tales.

The premise here, as noted by Fiona, is not new. If Laura had only read Pet Sematary, she might have been spared her ordeal. I think Fiona is also onto something when she highlights the story’s interest in grief. Laura seems to believe that her actions are driven by a yearning for a lost love, but as Alberto later points out, the greater truth is that they are motivated by regret and doubt. I’ll end by noting that I loved the really bleak and chilling last line in story. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

“Something Like Living Creatures”, John Langan

I liked this very short Langan story more, I think, than did Lena or Fiona. I was actually fine with the ending. In fact, I think to have extended the tale would have weakened its effectiveness. (view spoiler)[There’s a kind of matter-of-fact banality to the evil Langan depicts (the girlish giggling, for example) that’s quite mesmerizing. Are Mother’s cat’s-eye glasses a call-out to Jackson’s? (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

“Quiet Dead Things”, Cassandra Khaw

(view spoiler)[This is, I suppose, a kind of gruesome meditation on the moral perils of insularity and tribalism. Sort of a version of “The Lottery” on a larger canvas. With an eye on present-day events, it’s a social critique that sometimes struck me as a bit too “on the nose”. (hide spoiler)]

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Saw a movie yesterday and caught up on a few things today…

Hawkeye, Season 1 (2021) ✭✭✭✭
Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jon Watts (2021) ✭✭✭✭
The Wheel of Time, Season 1 (2021) ✭✭✭½

“A Hundred Miles and a Mile”, Carmen Maria Machado

(view spoiler)[I found this story a bit hard to judge. My problem isn’t with the writing per se (I typically like the author’s prose), but with the fact that any real appreciation or understanding of it has to be grounded in a fairly nuanced familarity with the events in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, viz., the iconic “cup of stars” episode. (In a 2017 interview in The Atlantic, Machado discussed the meaning and personal importance she attached to this scene.) (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

“In the Deep Woods; The Light Is Different There”, Seanan McGuire

McGuire is one of those writers who rarely disappoint me. (view spoiler)[Here she relates a story of a woman fleeing an abusive ex. There is a kind of fairy tale-like quality to the writing here, although in this sort of fairy tale, brutality and happy endings can exist side by side. (hide spoiler)]

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