Adventures in reading
The photograph: a close-up of a metal stag.
The story: while waiting for their exam results, two girls volunteer to do odd jobs at some of the local posh houses – and uncover a dark secret in one of them. This is a nicely paced story, with an effective sting in its ending.
Link: Preeta Samarasan’s website
This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.
We’re only in the middle of the run I had planned, but I am putting the Sunday Story Society on hold temporarily. The reason is that I’m in the process of moving house, so my internet access will be disrupted; but I can’t be sure at the moment when or for how long that will happen. As I don’t want to be organising a regular blog event if I can’t guarantee to be available to host it, I’m suspending the feature for now, and will bring it back when I’m in a position to run it regularly.
You can visit the Sunday Story Society page on this blog to access our previous discussions and sign up for an email alert when the Society is back up and running. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has taken part – I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Richard Weihe, Sea of Ink (2003/12)
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
Peirene Press’s Year of the Small Epic has so far brought us a grand domestic drama and a study of bereavement. The series takes a lighter turn in its final instalment, with Swiss writer Richard Weihe’s fictionalised biography of the Chinese painter Bada Shanren. He is born Zhu Da, a scion of the Ming dynasty; but political change and his father’s death lead him to join a monastery and devote his life to art, going through many names before settling on Bada Shanren, ‘man on the mountain of the eight compass points’.
Sea of Ink has eleven illustrations of Bada’s beautiful paintings, and Weihe includes descriptions of how the artist worked, his brush strokes and hand movements. This has the striking effect of creating a detailed impression which remains just that – an impression. Even though we can see the final paintings, there’s room for our subjective interpretation of Weihe’s words. The novella itself works in a similar way, its short chapters acting like brush strokes to create a portrait of Bada’s life which is necessarily a fiction, a construct.
The ultimate story told in Sea of Ink seems to me one of a man finding peace in life through finding (or accepting) his place – finding the world in the marks of ink and brush. The tone of the writing is quiet and reflective; I’d say this is ideal reading for an autumn night.
Robert Jackson Bennett, The Troupe (2012)
Over the last few years, Robert Jackson Bennett has been crafting his own distinctive visions of the American fantastic’s iconic tropes. For his third novel, he turns his attention to the magical travelling show. We meet George Carole, a sixteen-year-old vaudeville pianist as he leaves his current job to visit the troupe of Hieronomo Silenius, whom George believes to be his father. Silenius’s reputation precedes him, but no one ever remembers the details of his show. When George watches a performance, he finds out why: the Silenius troupe plays an extraordinary song that make those who hear it forget what they’ve seen – but it doesn’t work on George.
Falling in with the troupe, George discovers that this music is pat of the ‘First Song’, the one that brought Creation into being; peforming it is the only thing that holds back the ‘wolves’ who would seek to devour reality. Silenius’s band go from place to place in search of fragments of the First Song, which only those of the Silenius blood-line can carry (the song didn’t work on George because he is of that line). So begins a journey into the world’s mythic spaces, with reality itself at stake.
Bennett achieves a nice balance between the personal and cosmic focus. All the members of Silenius’s troupe are pretending to be something they’re not, and the theme of escape runs through the novel – escaping the past, and escaping the inevitable. The ending makes use of a risky technique (I appreciate this is vague, but want to avoid a spoiler), but Bennett pulls it off. His body of work continues to intrigue, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.
The photograph: a closed door with a ‘Lift Under Inspection’ sign hanging from the handle.
The story: a series of anecdotes about lifts – possibly true, possibly not. Just as Beard’s piece blurs the line between fact and fiction, so it effectively portrays lifts as simultaneously useful and threatening spaces.
Link: Richard Beard’s website
This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.
Tom Hunter from the Arthur C. Clarke Award has been asking for possible contenders that may not have been submitted so far. I take an interest in the fringes of sf and mainstream fiction, and was able to suggest quite a few. “These really all need to be in a blog post,” said Niall Harrison; so here they are, along with three that Niall suggested to Tom.
To be clear, I haven’t read all of these myself, and some of them will turn out in the reading not to be classifiable as science fiction. But they all sound to me like books that should be on the Clarke’s radar at this stage, so the judges can have the opportunity to make that call.
(EDIT 18/10 — two more books, by Peter Carey and Ben Marcus, added to the list)
Alex Adams, White Horse (Simon & Schuster)
A post-apocalyptic tale of a pregnant woman journeying through a disease-ravaged world.
Juliana Baggott, Pure (Headline)
Another dystopian novel, this one for a YA audience.
Adrian Barnes, Nod (Bluemoose)
A third story of society transformed, this time as a result of near-total insomnia.
Peter Carey, The Chemistry of Tears (Faber & Faber)
A museum conservator explores the story of an extraordinary 19th century automaton.
Jennifer Cryer, Breathing on Glass (Little, Brown)
The personal and professional dramas of two scientists aiming to grow pure stem cells in the lab.
Carlos Gamerro, The Islands (And Other Stories)
One of their titles was shortlisted for the Booker; could And Other Stories also have a Clarke contender in this novel of the Falklands War and virtual reality?
Harry Karlinsky, The Evolution of Inanimate Objects (The Friday Project)
The biography of the fictitious Thomas Darwin, who applied his father’s theories to the development of everyday objects. Recently longlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.
Torsten Krol, The Secret Book of Sacred Things (Atlantic)
More post-disaster fiction (the moon knocked out of orbit), set amongst a religious community.
Liz Jensen, The Uninvited (Bloomsbury Circus)
Children begin to attack their families at the same time as a spate of bizarre suicides occurs worldwide; an anthropologist tries to spot the patterns beneath it all. Reviewed by me here.
Russell Kane, The Humorist (Simon & Schuster)
A comedy critic with an intuitive understanding of humour, but no sense of empathy, discovers a formula for the ultimate joke – one that can make people laugh to death…
Alan Lightman, Mr g (Corsair)
Mr g creates the Universe – then has to grapple with the philosophical implications.
Evan Mandery, Q: A Love Story (Fourth Estate)
A man meets his ideal woman – and is then visited by his future self, ordering him to end the relationship. Reviewed by me here.
Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (Granta)
A new epidemic – children’s speech becomes literally toxic to their parents.
Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine (Simon & Schuster)
A woman faces the demands of domestic life while her astronaut husband is stranded in space after his ship is struck by a meteor.
Simona Sparaco, About Time (Pushkin)
A rich playboy without a care has to adjust when time begins to speed up for him.
Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles (Simon & Schuster)
A coming-of-age novel set at a time when the Earth’s rotation begins (and continues) to slow.
Juli Zeh, The Method (Harvill Secker)
A young woman seeks justice for her brother in a place where good health is enforced by law.
EDIT, 25/10 — More suggestions, from the comments:
Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre)
Peter Heller, The Dog Stars (Headline)
Lauren Groff, Arcadia (William Heinemann)
Mez Packer, The Game Is Altered (Tindal Street Press)
C.J. Sansom, Dominion (Mantle)
Sam Thompson, Communion Town (Fourth Estate)
The 2012 Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Hilary Mantel for her novel Bring Up the Bodies.
Now seems a good time to catch up on some of the other literary awards I’ve featured on here recently.
The BBC International Short Story Award went to Miroslav Penkov for ‘East of the West’
The SI Leeds Literary Prize went to Minoli Salgado for A Little Dust on the Eyes.
Congratulations to all!
The photograph: a view of bare trees against an overcast sky, seen through a barred window (possibly the same window as in the ‘Corridor’ photograph.
The story: a tour of an art exhibition, interleaved with extracts from the exhibition catalogue and other relevant texts. This is a deftly constructed story, hinting that more may be going on than meets the eye. Hussein reveals the full possibilities only gradually, and even then keeps the truth ambiguous.
Link: Aamer Hussein’s website / interview with Hussein on his story
This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.
The photograph: the top and centre of a set of stage curtains.
The story: Mousy playwright Lisa joins her glamorous sister Therese at the theatre, to see the former’s new play. This is a very short piece, but it vividly lays bare the tensions between the two sisters; and Rechner makes good use of sensory detail to convey the stuffy and intense atmosphere of the theatre.
Links: Mary Rechner’s website / interview with Rechner on her story
This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.
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Today we’re talking about “Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring” by M. John Harrison, a story which became the foundation of its author’s 1996 novel Signs of Life. To kick off, we have an extensive response from Nina Allan, which I’ll quote only in part here:
You could almost say that ‘Isobel’ is MJH in microcosm […] It bears many ur-Harrison trademarks: gaunt cityscapes in decline, disenchanted individualists in terminal disconnect mode, intimations of the marvellous. The language of the story manages somehow to be both resolute and dissolute, a gradual persuasion of the drab towards incandescence.
And here are some initial thoughts from me:
When I read this story, I still had the experience of Viriconium very much in mind; if that series moves towards the destruction of fantasy-as-escape, I see “Isobel Avens” as doing something similar. Of course, there’s Isobel’s dream of flying, which cannot be realised; and the fantastical surgery, which is no magic solution. But I also think this is a great portrait of an exhausted relationship: empty conversations; Mick Rose’s constant calls for the reader to “imagine this”, as though his relationship with Isobel happened to someone else. And there are some superb lines: “The years I lived with her I slept so soundly” – I love how equivocal that sentiment is.
So, what did you think?
Mike O’Driscoll, Eyepennies (2012)
This is the first in a new series of novellas from TTA Press, the publishers of Interzone and Black Static magazines. Eyepennies is named after a song by Sparklehorse, the musical project of the late Mark Linkous, who took his own life in 2010 (and to whom Mike O’Driscoll dedicates the piece). O’Driscoll’s protagonist is not strictly a fictionalised version of Linkous, but he is a musician named Mark who’s had a near-death experience.
Mark has been beset by bad dreams and waking visions, and this has taken its toll on his life and relationships. He withdraws into his music, feeling that a new album will provide the breakthrough that can lead to stability. But, listening to his previous albums for inspiration, he can hear sounds and voices in them that shouldn’t be there.
Eyepennies is a fine portrait of a person under psychological strain. O’Driscoll maintains the ambiguity over whether Mark’s experiences are supernatural or delusional in origin (and, indeed, over whether that makes any practical difference). The novella’s fragmented structure (reaching back into different periods of the protagonist’s life) further underlines the diffuse state of Mark’s mind. This is a good start for the novella series, and I look forward to future instalments.
André Maurois, A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles (1928)
Translated from the French by Charlotte de Koch
First published in 1928 (and now given a new edition by Turtle Point Press), A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles is a novella chronicling the adventure at sea of one Pierre Chambrelan and his companion Anne de Sauves.
Though they intend to cross the Pacific, a storm causes the pair to land on the privately owned island of Maïana, where life is devoted to the arts. The island has two castes of inhabitants: the Articoles, who spend all their time creating artworks; and the Béos, who use wealth from the island’s copious natural resources to support the Articoles. Pierre and Anne are kept on Maïana for several weeks, to see if the Articoles can draw on the pair’s experiences and personalities for material.
As well as a tale of seafaring, Maurois’s novella is a study of the dangers of insularity. The Articoles have become drawn into art so much that they have disengaged with the world and lost their empathy – their idea of madness is to think about life rather than art. Pierre starts off in his own (less extreme) state of disengagement: metaphorically adrift in life, living only for the romance of the voyage (Anne wanted to accompany him for similar reasons). His experiences on Maïana lead him to take stock, and find new connections with the world and other people. Yet here Pierre is, writing a journal of his voyage, just as the Articoles would – so perhaps he hasn’t left the past behind entirely after all. A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles is entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure.
(This review also appears on We Love This Book.)
Alison Littlewood, The Eyes of Water (2012)
This Spectral Press chapbook takes us to Mexico, where Alison Littlewood’s diver-protagonist Alex contemplates the gruesome death of his friend Rick. Far more skilled than Alex, Rick had been exploring one of the water-filled caves known as cenotés when something tore off his face. Alex learns that the Maya used the cenotés as places of sacrifice – and a vision of Rick encourages him to go exploring himself. There’s a nice sense of place about this story, particularly where the cenotés are concerned. Littlewood also constructs her plot skilfully, managing to tick all the event-boxes one expects to be ticked, whilst still leaving space for the denouement to head somewhere else.
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