Last night I finished reading Ellen Datlow's INFERNO.
http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Ellen-Datlow/dp/0765315599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242924929&sr=1-1Trains are a good place to read short stories. My general problem with both short stories and train rides is that neither are long enough, usually, to accomplish much. I say "usually."
On most of my train rides I end up staring out the window, hoping to cultivate what my father calls, "a fertile boredom," that will eventually chafe me into a restless act of creation. But some days, I'm in a fever of productivity. And some short stories, I find, rather than making me want to kick something in unfulfilled frustration, can instead create perfect sinkholes in reality, sucking you down into infinitesimal and terrible worlds that last the length of a nightmare.
So with Datlow's INFERNO.
First I want to speak on the layout of the thing. I'm not a girl to notice overarching structures unless it's staring me in the face, batting its eyelashes and winking desperately. But for once, the subtleties did not elude me. It was perhaps a few stories in when I noticed the thread, a thin, gossamer thread, that linked one story to another - even though each story was written by a different author, probably incognizant of what the others were up to. Sometimes it was a word. Sometimes a phrase. Or a theme. Corpses. Statues. Dead children. Demonic children.
The first story, RIDING BITCH, dealt with a guy and his girlfriend. Of course, the girlfriend's a corpse and the guy's mostly out of his mind. The writing is surreal, poetic and very masculine. The motorcycle talk, I admit, was a bit over my head.
After that came MISADVENTURE. The structure of this was so solid, you could build a house on it. The protagonist, of whom I was skeptical at the beginning, grew more and more interesting, and by the end I had that shivery feeling in the pit of my stomach. A friend of mine recently termed it "ghost envy."
I will not go very deeply into each and every story, although I enjoyed them all. Some more, some less. Like most anthologies, a gamble. I will, however, look more closely at a few pieces, if for whatever reason they happened to catch my particular attention. (I feel a little bit like Eliza Bennett's obnoxious cousin Mr. Collins, saying that.)
Laird Barron's THE FOREST was written with an appealing formality, in exquisite - almost overwhelming - detail from the first person narrative. His one-line character descriptions were the best part for me, like little razor blades I kept stumbling on. For example: "Their nicked up faces wore the perpetual scowl of peasant trustees." And "Nadine shone darkly and smelled of fresh cut hayricks and sweet, highly polished leather." Here, too, we have an interesting story-structure, that seems at first like a flat expanse of vanilla-white, then folds slowly - very slowly - into itself, like origami in reverse.
In MONSTERS OF HEAVEN, I realized how sad a smell or a sound can be. Perhaps the last paragraph of that story was the most frightening.
We have our first female author of the collection on page 102, and she is Elizabeth Bear. Her writing is both lyrical and gross, pulling no punches; I liked it. At about this point, I began to notice how beautifully linked the stories were, and how much sense their progression made.
In THE UNINVITED, I met the first narrator I really liked. His voice was easy-going, cool - I didn't mind following him into Bizarre-O Land, even if he did end up moralizing a bit by the end.
13 O'CLOCK - the second of the "disappearing children" stories. Warm characters, felt very human, very NORMAL. I was interested in meeting their hell. Later, I felt that too much was being explained, like a heavy hand that kept patting me. This was one of the few stories in which I thought the beginning was stronger than the ending.
LIVES was just... lovely. Cold, sick and lovely.
GHORLA should have been written when Hitchcock was still around. He'd have had a BALL with this one. There are some very cool P.O.V. transitions, eccentric characters, almost a campy scene of foreshadowing that has you rubbing your palms together in anticipation. Showing here:
"One more thing," Staines said, "why the bolts on the outside of the guest-room doors?"
"Oh that," Browning replied, "just a mistake. We never use them. They should have been fitted on the inside. Cowboy locksmiths - you know how it is..."
FACE, by Joyce Carol Oates. I mean. It's JOYCE CAROL OATES. Nothing wrong here. Or - everything wrong, but in the RIGHT way! Something in her prose always makes me sick to my stomach. Last time I read a short story of hers, I had the worst nightmare in pretty much a decade. FACE didn't quite bring me to that level of cold sweat, but it's good for a deep shudder or two!
AN APIARY OF WHITE BEES, by Lee Thomas... Totally the sexiest scary story in the first half of the book. A narrator both sympathetic and a bit despicable. You like him because of that. You root for him, even knowing HIS DOOM HANGS UPON HIM. "Pearl-colored fluid." Indeed.
THE KEEPER, by P.D. Cacek. The holocaust is horror enough, and any story set in its midst automatically takes on a mantle of blood and gravitas. Add little girls and ghosts? A very strong, very sad, very creepy story.
BETHANY'S WOOD reminded me of a film that hasn't been made yet. It had all the angles of a film, all the splatter and scare, all the emotional irrationality I expect from a movie. It was very entertaining, in a technicolor sort of way.
THE EASE WITH WHICH WE FREED THE BEAST. We get inside the monster's head, and it is howling dark in there. Sucker punch of a piece.
HUSHABYE - the protagonist is actually a HERO! Normal guy, heroic! Of course, damaged by the end, but at least he fought and won. That time.
PERHAPS THE LAST. An interesting walk into the daydreams of a museum guard. The most horrific part of this story was the "quiet desperation," as (I think) Dryden put it. Bloodily beating hearts are interesting and all, but more the idea of mortality's own boring, inexorable timepiece, each tick "ultima forsan."
STILL LIFE. A REFRESHING female perspective!!! And a damned good story. But this one I don't feel like spoiling for you. You won't look at a human statue the same way again.
THE JANUS TREE was my favorite. The following stories, THE BEDROOM LIGHT and THE SUITS OF AUDERLENE were good, strong, deserving of a re-read - but I was perhaps still unfairly occupied with THE JANUS TREE. Maybe I still am.
Once again: DATLOW'S INFERNO
Go on. Descend.
http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Ellen-Datlow/dp/0765315599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242924929&sr=1-1