Spencer is a heck of a storyteller and has an undeniable way with words. A very readable collection of oddities from a pro,...
Spencer (The Ocean and All Its Devices, 2005, etc.), best known for his Lovecraft-ian tales, offers an intriguing collection of nine stories and one poem.
In “The Tenth Muse,” an author, Marshall Harrison, is invited to interview the famously reclusive Morton Sky, whose only novel became an instant classic when it was published. Marshall’s family lived next door to Sky when he was a child, and he’s excited to speak with someone he so admired, but Marshall must confront the darkness in his own past, and Sky, desperate to write something new, will do anything for inspiration. The oddly sweet, fairy-tale flavored “Come Lurk With Me and Be My Love” features a man named Wally Bennett, who falls for a beautiful girl named Flower, and she’s not quite what she seems. Wally will follow her anywhere, even to her ancient father’s lair deep inside a mountain, bringing new meaning to “will do anything for love.” In the genuinely creepy “Penguins of the Apocalypse,” an alcoholic father is approached by Derrick Thorn, a “large pear-shaped man, smooth-faced, hairless as a cave salamander,” whose “face [is] oddly blurred.” Thorn offers up a bargain, setting off a chain of catastrophic events. Is he real or imagined? That’s for readers to decide. “Stone and the Librarian” is a fever dream that will delight fans of classic lit. A being called the Librarian, a shadowy figure from the future, insists society has been brought down because of a lack of empathy and the “absence of humanity” and that salvation lies only in works of great literature. A world of zeppelins and old-fashioned adventure awaits readers in “The Dappled Thing," and Spencer gets back to his Lovecraft-ian roots in “How the Gods Bargain,” “Usurped,” and the poem “The Love Song of A. Alhazred Azathoth.” The title story is a terrifying and poignant tale of an unconventional therapist whose new patient awakens something in him, resulting in salvation for them both.
Spencer is a heck of a storyteller and has an undeniable way with words. A very readable collection of oddities from a pro, sure to please old fans and new readers alike.Pub Date: July 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59606-831-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
In a word: magnificent.
Retrospect and resolution, neither fully comprehended nor ultimately satisfying: such are the territories the masterful Munro explores in her tenth collection.
Each of its eight long tales in the Canadian author’s latest gathering (after Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, 2001, etc.) bears a one-word title, and all together embrace a multiplicity of reactions to the facts of aging, changing, remembering, regretting, and confronting one’s mortality. Three pieces focus on Juliet Henderson, a student and sometime teacher of classical culture, who waits years (in “Chance”) before rediscovering romantic happiness with the middle-aged man with whom she had shared an unusual experience during a long train journey. In “Soon,” Juliet and her baby daughter Penelope visit Juliet’s aging parents, and she learns how her unconventional life has impacted on theirs. Then, in “Silence,” a much older Juliet comes sorrowfully to terms with the emptiness in her that had forever alienated Penelope, “now living the life of a prosperous, practical matron” in a world far from her mother’s. Generational and familial incompatibility also figure crucially in “Passion,” the story (somewhat initially reminiscent of Forster’s Howards End) of a rural girl’s transformative relationship with her boyfriend’s cultured, “perfect” family—and her realization that their imperfections adumbrate her own compromised future. Further complexities—and borderline believable coincidences and recognitions—make mixed successes of “Trespasses,” in which a young girl’s unease about her impulsive parents is shown to stem from a secret long kept from her, and “Tricks,” an excruciatingly sad account of a lonely girl’s happenstance relationship with the immigrant clockmaker she meets while attending a Shakespeare festival, the promise she tries and helplessly fails to keep, and the damaging misunderstanding that, she ruefully reasons, “Shakespeare should have prepared her.” Then there are the masterpieces: the title story’s wrenching portrayal of an emotionally abused young wife’s inability to leave her laconic husband; and the brilliant novella “Powers,” which spans years and lives, a truncated female friendship that might have offered sustenance and salvation, and contains acute, revelatory discriminations between how women and men experience and perceive “reality.”
In a word: magnificent.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4281-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
IN THE NEWS
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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