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.

Welcome, Chiron.

Welcome, Cranberry.

Fiona said:

Oh, well done Lena! You do so much for this group, what a great bit of recognition :)

Corinne said (in part):

I am so surprised you/we got featured after only 3 months.

Wow. I feel like I’m a member of the “in” crowd. :-)

Shera asked (in part):

Was anyone else aware of "Life's not all beer and skittles"?

Yes, although I have absolutely no recollection of where I first encountered the phrase. Probably television. I get the impression it’s more commonly used and understood in Britain than in the U.S. (but don’t quote me on that). In looking at Ngram, use seems to have peaked in the early 1900s.

“Unprotected”, Simon Rich

A friend recently pointed me in the direction of Simon Rich’s 2013 collection, The Last Girlfriend on Earth , a collection of surreal and absurdist stories that focus on male-female relationships. The lead-off story, “Unprotected”, recounts the life of a condom. If the subject matter strikes one as rather sordid, the story is anything but — it’s whimsical and rather sweet.

An earlier version of the story appeared in The New Yorker and can be read on-line here. An audio version, read by the author, appeared on Ira Glass’ This American Life and can be found here.

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Edit: Fixed New Yorker link.

Ronald:

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve enjoyed your daily posts on this thread.

“Some Wait”, Stephen Graham Jones

This is a story that fell flat for me on almost every level. Thematically, it seems hyper-focused on the the Pied Piper fable — so much so that Jones’ story explicitly mentions it about a zillion times. On the other hand, the story seems to wander off on numerous odd tangents that the reader thinks are going to somehow be integral to the story, but which instead drop off to the wayside, unresolved — computer games, chemical pollution, mob action, horror movie tropes, etc., etc. And I’m not even going to detail my annoyances with the story’s style and grammar choices. Finally, the payoff, when it unfolds in the last few paragraphs, is totally unconvincing. Grief just doesn’t work like that.

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Corinne said (in part):

We Have Always Lived in the Forest by Nancy Holder in Shadows 10 I read this before 2012 which is when I joined GRs so I had no one to talk to about it!!! Help, LOL

Now that I have a bunch of Short Story Groupies, who wants to read this with me and tell me what the F it's about?

I’ll take a stab at it. I’ll try and get to it tomorrow or Friday.

Lena said:

I know, he’s always been great that way.

Thanks to both Lena and Corinne for the gracious compliments and apologies for taking so long to respond!

“Spinning Silver”, Naomi Novik

Novik’s novelette is, of course, based on “Rumpelstiltskin”, which appeared in the 1812 edition of Children’s and Household Tales , collected by Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm. (view spoiler)[There’s quite a bit going on in “Spinning Silver” and, to be honest, I’m still in the process of unpacking my thoughts about it. One of the threads running through the story has to do with anti-Semitism, (although it’s never made glaringly explicit — I don’t think Novik once uses the word “Jewish”). I found that interesting inasmuch as some (but not all) scholars see in some of the details of “Rumpelstiltskin” indications of anti-Semitism (i.e., in this view the titular character is seen as the prototypical Jewish moneylender with evil designs on Christian babies).

The story also delves into ideas of female agency and empowerment. Three of the story’s female characters, Miryem, Irina, and Wanda (whose narratives roughly parallel one another) all find their lives controlled and/or constrained by men, Miryem, for example, by her father and later by the Staryk. All three make bargains/compromises in order to gain some measure of independence, although the end results are not entirely without negative consequences.

It’s impossible to talk about this story without talking about money. Novik’s feelings about it seem complicated. While conceding its obvious utility (nice, after all, not to starve or freeze to death), she doesn’t ignore its powers to corrupt. (hide spoiler)]

Novik expanded this novelette into a 2018 novel of the name.

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Corinne said:

I’ll be out of groups for a bit. Need a little less tracking or you know what happens to me and my profile. Just wanted to give a heads up in case ppl are wondering where chatty Corinne went.

Looking forward to your eventual return, Corinne, when things are on more of an even keel. 😊

“Familiaris”, Genevieve Valentine

Valentine’s story is based on a Bavarian fairy tale called “The Wolves”, originally collected by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the 19th century. In 2009 some 500 unpublished Schönwerth folktales were uncovered by Erika Eichenseer; in 2015 some of these, including “The Wolves”, were translated into English and published in The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales . In an introduction to the collection, translator Maria Tatar repeatedly refers to Schönwerth’s tales as “raw”, a perhaps polite way of saying that, compared to those collected and revised by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, they could be pretty darned cruel. One certainly picks up on that with “The Wolves”. The moral seems to be that if you’re a woman, you’re screwed no matter what you do. Amazingly, Valentine takes this really dark story and doubles down — her story is even darker than the original. The anger and despair it embodies are palpable. On some level I can appreciate that Valentine opted to not pull any punches, but, if I’m being honest, that didn’t translate into a particularly enjoyable reading experience.

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“The Briar and the Rose”, Marjorie M. Liu

I was initially a little confused when reading the author’s afterword. Liu, in her discussion of the Sleeping Beauty fable (on which her own story is based), references the title character’s rape while sleeping/unconscious. I certainly didn’t remember that from the sanitized 1959 Disney film! Nor, for that matter, is it to be found in the 1812 version collected by the Brothers Grimm. But, as it turns out, her violation is described in older, Gallic versions of the story.

Focusing on Liu’s tale, my initial reaction was similar to Lena’s in at least one respect — it meanders quite a bit. I thought it could have used a bit more pruning. I was, however, won over in some measure by the concluding pages. I know it didn’t sit well with some readers (who found the conclusion rushed), but I actually liked the way in which Liu chose to artfully leapfrog over any description of a climatic confrontation between Carmela and the Duelist. And I liked the language found in the tale’s concluding paragraphs, especially in the last line: “Storytellers have a long reach.”

A spoilery aside: (view spoiler)[I found myself wondering while reading this story whether the nickname “Duelist” is meant to be a pun of sorts. The story is, in part at least, about dual identities. The most most obvious instance is that of Carmela and Rose, who share the same body. But we also have the Briar versus Duelist dyad. (“She was called Briar, but only on Sunday.”) (hide spoiler)]

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“The Other Thea”, Theodora Goss

I suspect I liked Goss’ story more than did some of the other posters. (view spoiler)[Fiona, Lena, and Corinne all seemed to implicitly criticize (if that’s the correct word) the story for being a YA piece. Personally, I’ve always found this category problematic since it seems to rely on two defining features, one being the inclusion of an adolescent or child as the primary POV character (does that make The Goldfinch a work of YA fiction?); and the other being how the book is marketed.

The Goss story derives from “The Shadow”, a fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen. I was not familiar with this particular tale, and found it quite dark, but very compelling in it’s implications about human behavior. In an essay cited by Goss in the author’s afterword, Ursula K. Le Guin offers a perceptive analysis of the Andersen story (although I don’t buy into all the Jungian stuff) and, by extension, of the use of fantasy fiction to explore/explicate the human condition. (As an aside, I found Le Guin’s interest in the story kinda neat, since one of her more famous works, A Wizard of Earthsea, incorporates this theme of the shadow self.)

As for the Goss story, my one complaint might have to do with the story’s resolution. While I thought the use of the sewing idea found in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan both appropriate and clever, I somehow didn’t like the idea of Thea forcefully appropriating her shadow; I somehow thought the re-integration should have been reached through persuasion. (hide spoiler)]

“The Other Thea”, Theodora Goss
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“The Shadow”, Hans Christian Andersen
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“The Child and the Shadow”, Ursula K. Le Guin
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John said (in part):

Hello all, my name is John. Was recommended this group as I read a lot of the short story zines.

Welcome, John.

“Crossing the Line”, Garth Nix

This story is not in the anthology under discussion, but I thought to bring it up in this thread because it is closely related to the included Garth Nix story, “Penny for a Match, Mister?” “Line”, which I paged through last night, turns out to be the origin story for Rose Jackson, one of the central characters in “Penny”. If you liked “Penny”, I would suggest looking at “Line” (collected in Fearie Tales, edited by Stephen Jones, 2013). “Line” is an okay story; my feelings about it (both pro and con) pretty much mirror those I had for “Penny”.

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Jim said (in part):

I'm really pleased to stumble across this group.

And WhiteneyMarie said (in part):

I am so happy to find this group.

Welcome to both of you!

“Penny for a Match, Mister?”, Garth Nix

Competently written, but (for my tastes, anyway) largely uninteresting. (view spoiler)[The story is tenuously connected to the rather maudlin Hans Christian Andersen tale, “The Little Match Girl”. (So tenuous is the connection, that I was not surprised to learn in the author’s afterword that elements/ideas used in the Nix story were based at least in part on his faulty recollection of the Andersen one.) I am not a particularly huge fan of revenge yarns in any case, but this one is particularly unsatisfying, because — when you get right down to it — the person desirous of vengeance who triggers the entity from across the Line is not the somewhat sympathetic Lili (who largely sleepwalks through this narrative), but her rather disagreeable and unlikeable brother. Why should the reader root for his interests to be served? The other character of some interest, Rose Jackson, seemed to me to be rather hastily sketched and cartoonish. Again, I was not surprised to find that the same character appears in an earlier Nix story (“Crossing the Line”, collected in Fearie Tales, edited by Stephen Jones, 2013), leaving me to wonder whether that story fleshed out her character in greater detail. (hide spoiler)]

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Corinne said (in part):

One is free here (Word Doll) if anyone wants to check it out

I’m going to try and look at that one this month, Corinne. I see that it also appears in The Doll Collection , Ellen Datlow (Ed.) (2015).

“The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest”, Charlie Jane Anders

The story title struck me as a bit twee, and I therefore went into this reading experience with a bit of a show-me attitude, but I walked away thinking that it’s thus far my favorite piece in the collection.

(view spoiler)[First, my one complaint. In the Author’s Note, Anders describes the genesis of this story as more literal-minded, constructed through the lens of the science fiction genre. Anders wisely abandoned that approach, but (and here’s my complaint, although it’s really more of a quibble) not completely. There’s a thread running through the story about “the former human world” and how scientists had at some point in time endowed various things with sentience (presumably as a mechanism by which to explain the presence in the tale of a talking sausage). Anders expands a bit on that basic building block, but it’s largely left ignored and unexplored. I thought that aspect of the story was both distracting and unnecessary. I was perfectly okay with the notion of talking birds and sausages and would have been fine had Anders not rationalized their existence by appeal to some hand-wavy sf ideas.

What I liked about this story... I’m really uncomfortable with the fairy tale that underlies the Anders story. As the author points out, it basically touts a don’t-make-waves and stay-in-your-assigned-lane kind of message: The sort of “moral” one can easily imagine the haves in life preaching to the have-nots. What I thought was kinda neat was the manner in which Anders takes that same framework and subtly shifts it so as to emphasize a more positive message — less a doctrinaire adherence to the rules than an emphasis on individuality and the formation of ad hoc families. (Given the author’s background and beliefs, I had to smile a bit while reading a passage in which we are told that our bird “would get grumpy whenever anyone would try and label him”.) But alongside that positive note, the story retains something of that negative element. Bird at least initially sees the imposition of new rules, regulations, etc. in the wider world as benign, paralleling the experience within their own family unit. “...we have an order to everything. They just want the same thing, on a larger scale.” Sausage’s experience with the dog disabuses Bird of this notion. What is left unclear is whether Anders believes that the macro-level appropriation of the ideas in question will always yield the same twisted outcome. Anyway, as Anders notes in the afterword, it’s “complicated”. (hide spoiler)]

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