Rat’s Reading

What a slog! Ten days to read this immense anthology. Too long. Too many works. I’ve now finished both Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies I bought a while ago. I don’t think I’ll be picking up any more. There were three really outstanding stories, but overall I just don’t think I like enough of the stories to bear with more of the Datlow/Windling Best Ofs. The three I like most were Onion, Struwwelpeter, and Gestella. His Own Back Yard follows closely after those. While I didn’t get most of the poetry, I don’t mind it so much because it’s usually short, and those who do like poetry get something they enjoy.

On to the stories.

The Hunter’s Wife, Anthony Doerr (from The Shell Collector)

A stalkerish hunter sees a magician’s assistant performing through a window. He follows her from town to town, and pesters her every year she returns until she marries him. She has the ability to see the dreams of others, as well as visions of the after-life for the recently dead. He dreams of wolves. He lives for the wilderness. But he is frightened of his wife’s ability, and she leaves. Twenty years later, he goes to a séance she conducts, still married but neither have seen the other in the intervening decades. It seemed well written, but I never connected with the character or story.

The Cowardly Coffin, Marin Sorescu (from Sept/Oct 2001 American Poetry Review, subscribe)

A whimsical (and pretty good) poem about a coffin that refuses to be buried, shooting up as if on top of a geyser when it’s dropped in the hole. Sorescu had cancer when he wrote this, which killed him shortly afterward. Considering I generally don’t like poetry, I’m kind of impressed.

In These Final Days of Sales, Steve Rasnic Tem (from In These Final Days of Sales)

I’m really not sure what to make of this story about a very bad salesman. I think there’s a lot of subtext that’s gone over my head. I didn’t connect with it at all.

To Dream of White Horses, June Considine (from Thicker Than Water)

Father and son each have a hard time coming to grips with mom’s suicide. Dad by ignoring it. Son by obsessing over it. At least from the son’s perspective. Until son meets a homeless girl who sees his dreams. I didn’t think this was all that profound.

Skin, Charlee Jacob (from Perihelion Broadside Series, Volume 3)

Narrative poem that I didn’t understand.

Prussian Snowdrops, Marion Arnott (from Crimewave 4: Mood Indigo) (2001 The Macallan Short Story Dagger)

Set in what apears to be pre-World War 2 Nazi Germany, a journalist is stationed in the countryside to let things cool off after he has offended the authorities. He stumbles on a scandal where the doctor in charge of the local insane asylum committed suicide in a spectacular fashion in Berlin, yet no one seems to know anything about it. And the denizens of the asylum have disappeared. Here’s the thing: Nazi Germany made no secret to it’s citizens that certain races and kinds of people were undesirable and treated them very badly. Among those persecuted were Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and the mentally ill. So why would any mistreatment of the insane be considered a scandal? It would be as if the Klu Klux Klan’s lynching of a black person in the 1920s were a scandal. Wrong, yes. But the U.S. tolerated this kind of atrocity. Nazi Germany tolerated it as well. So I don’t understand the premise of the story. Why would a journalist think the German public would make a stink?

The Honeyed Knot, Jeffrey Ford (from the May 2001 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, subscribe)

Another story I didn’t connect with. The college teacher Jeffrey Ford runs into some sort of fantasy stag after one of his students kills someone. Or something like that. I totally don’t get any of the symbolism.

Timmy Gobel’s Bug Jar, Michael Libling (from December 2001 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)

I liked this one! Did you ever trap bugs and put them in a canning jar with holes punched in the lid for air? Even with air the bugs never lived long. So a kid finds a bug jar from the previous summer, but it has more than bugs in it. There’s a miniature headless skeleton also in there. That can’t be anything good, can it?

The God of Dark Laughter, Michael Chabon (from April 9, 2001 The New Yorker, subscribe)

A small-town prosecutor investigates the death of a clown, the body being found shortly after a circus leaves town. Descriptions of this story call it Lovecraftian, but I wouldn’t know as I’ve never read Lovecraft. It does have lost tribes and obscure religions like you’d find in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so if that’s what makes it Lovecraftian I won’t argue. I liked the story.

The Adolescence of Orpheus, Kurt Leland (from the Spring 2001 The Beloit Poetry Journal, subscribe)

So I know reviewers theoretically aren’t supposed to employ ad hominem criticism. In other words, criticize the text, not the author. Who decided that anyway? Perhaps I should write up an opinion piece on that, because I’m not so sure I agree in the case of literature. Anyway, I didn’t like the poem. Just couldn’t get in to it. Side ad hominem (and why is latin italicized? time to Google® that question too) note: Windling’s introduction notes that Leland has written two books on speculative metaphysics. That’s a nice way to say Leland is loony. Either that or Windling gives some credence to the speculative metaphysics and didn’t want to cop to it. Cause when I go to Leland’s web site, it’s all about astral fucking projection! Yup, it has nothing to do with whether or not the poem is any good. I still want to know when I’m reading the works of the insane.

Trading Hearts at the Half Kaffe Café, Charles de Lint (from Single White Vampire Seeks Same)

I kinda liked this story. It’s a little on the unoriginal side, but it’s sweet nonetheless. Basically, arty bohemian girl answers a personal ad for a guy who happens to be a werewolf (well, technically a skinwalker, but I wouldn’t know what that was unless a story told me). Only she doesn’t know he’s a skinwalker. Things get hairy when some other werewolves show up. I liked how de Lint alternates perspectives. Again, not original, but it worked well.

Louise’s Ghost, Kelly Link (from Stranger Things Happen, download) (2001 Nebula Award, Novelette)

Louise and Louise meet weekly and gab. Louise #1 has a ghost. She tries to figure out many ways to get rid of the ghost haunting her house. On a superficial level, the story gets a little confusing at the end. I mostly like it, but it’s weird enough that I’m missing something.

Fairy Tale Pantoum, Ellen Wernecke (from The Louisville Review Issue 49, subscribe)

More poetry. Whoosh! That’s the sound of this going right over my head.

The Puppet and the Train, Scott Thomas (from Cobwebs and Whispers)

I didn’t find much about Scott Thomas on the web, mostly because the name is pretty common and I didn’t want to disambiguate. I liked this story quite a bit. Remember in Men in Black when one of the aliens turned out to actually be a robot run by another alien? That’s this story. A small town veterinarian in 1909 is called when a train hits an elephant. It’s a talking elephant even, owned by a circus. As the vet is poking and prodding, a man jumps out of the carcass and runs away. That’s the start of the story…

Crocodile Lady, Christopher Fowler (from Crimewave: Dark Before Dawn)

Pretty good horror/suspense tale about a teacher’s first day back at school after taking a decade plus off because her husband didn’t want her to work. Conflict with other teachers. Classifying kids. Figuring out she doesn’t have too much rust to be there. And then on an outing to the zoo one child disappears on the London Tube.

The Barbarian and the Queen: Thirteen Views, Jane Yolen (from Starlight 3)

Thirteen queens and thirteen barbarians. Thirteen little snippets of stories. All with tea. Interesting, and I’m still deciding if I like it or not.

Becoming Bird, Bob Hicok (from Quarterly West Issue 51)

A poem I got! And even think was kinda nice. Kind of an illustrated man sort of vibe from it.

Sop Doll, Milbre Burch (from April 2001 Realms of Fantasy, subscribe)

A Jack story, a class of stories I’ve never heard of. Jack rolls in to town looking for work and is hired by the mill owner to run the mill while the owner keeps the men away from his wife. The previous two men hired to run the mill ended up with their throats slit.

Plenty, Christopher Barzak (from May 28, 2001 Strange Horizons)

A nice story about going home again and remembering the people who were once important. In this case, it’s a nice old lady across the street who feeds our narrator and his roommate during the lean college years. He’s heading home for her funeral.

Bones of the Earth, Ursula K. Le Guin (from Tales from Earthsea)

This tale from Le Guin’s Earthsea world left me unimpressed. Not bad. Not great either. A Gontish wizard senses trouble, and enlists the aid of a former apprentice. The plot isn’t so much. Any enjoyment of the story really comes from the characters and their relationship. They’re decent, but not overwhelming to me.

What the Story Weaves, the Spinner Tells, Terry Blackhawk (from Calyx, Volume 20, Number 2)

More poetry.

Onion, Caitlín Kiernan (from Wrong Things) (2001 International Horror Guild Award, Best Short Story)

The first story in the collection that I really got completely in to. This was awesome! Gives a great sense of dread to the common trope of parallel worlds, without ever having any truly bad happen right in front of you. Everything is done through intimation.

Where the Woodbine Twineth, Norman Partridge (from The Man With The Barbed-Wire Fists)

Horror tale set just after the Civil War featuring a Confederate soldier that can’t quite forget the war. Again, not particularly inspiring to me.

Struwwelpeter, Glen Hirshberg (from SciFi.com)

I really liked this story, and it really irritated me as well. It’s set in Ballard, which is a plus, though it’s not quite the Ballard I know. Hirshberg has taken liberties with the location. That’s totally fine. It works well in the story. What I didn’t like about it was a couple of things about suspension of disbelief. Like a lot of horror stories, Struwwelpeter asks the reader to believe something that it just plain weird. No, not the supernatural. I mean the idea that a haunted house on the hill will be completely ignored by kids for ages and ages until the kids in our story come along. Aside from that though, this is an awesome story. Kind of a classic ghost story feel to it, even though it’s not an old classic. The kids in the story explore the yard of a haunted house type of place, and are scared away by the owner telling them they’ll wake the dead. Two years later they return to the scene, one of them determined to reclaim his superiority over the one place that affected him. Of course, it’s Halloween, and it’s dark, and they have a couple of girls with them.

Outfangthief, Gala Blau (Conrad Williams) (from The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women)

Well now, turns out that one of the stories in the so-called Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women is actually by a man. Gala Blau is Conrad Williams. So is it bad to use an ad hominem criticism here? I kinda wondered how a supposedly previously unpublished author was included in a prominent anthology. Not that new writers can’t appear in anthologies, but anthologies usually have people that have been published once or twice. I wonder if the editors knew. Anyway, this is actually a pretty decent, if pedestrian, vampire story. Sarah and her daughter Laura are running from loan sharks who own a rather large amount of debt owned by Sarah. In her flight, Sarah crashes a car. But something saves Laura in the night. The saviors, Manser (the criminal element), Sarah, and Laura all converge on a lonely house in the countryside at night.

Rites: Cleaning the Last Bones, Gavin J. Grant (from Dark Planet)

Poetry about animals picking the bones of something dead. Very eh.

Watch Me When I Sleep, Jean-Claude Dunyach (from Interzone, subscribe)

A re-working of the fairy trope. In this version, fairies are parasites that pupate in a person’s stomach, stealing the person’s intellect when they emerge. Seems like a fair number of fantasy short stories (especially vampire short stories) fall into the category of re-working a fantasy trope. My internal reaction is usually along the lines of Well, aren’t you clever? You have to imagine that with dripping sarcasm. That’s probably not fair to the stories, but it seems to be automatic in my case.

The Tattoo Artist, Patrick Roscoe (from Fall 2001 Descant)

A unique tattoo by a legendary artist becomes a burden over time instead of a boon.

Cleopatra Brimstone, Elizabeth Hand (from Redshift) (2001 International Horror Guild Award, Long Fiction)

An award winner it may be, this seemed to be a pretty run-of-the-mill revenge fantasy with a bit of a supernatural twist. I think I didn’t like it because so little was revealed of what went on in our protagonists head. If you are going to make the bad guy the protagonist, just simply iterating through his actions makes it uninteresting.

Grass, Lawrence Miles (from September 2001 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)

A short alternative history story about mammoths in the Louisiana Territory and Thomas Jefferson sending Lewis and Clark to find them.

If Death, a Preprimer, Sandra J. Lindow (from The Magazine of Speculative Poetry)

Poetry goths would like.

The Bird Catcher, S. P. Somtow (Somtow Sucharitkul) (from The Museum of Horrors)

How one child met a serial killer and blames himself. Not for what you might think tough. Not great, but pretty good.

Black Dust, Graham Joyce (from Black Dust)

Ghost story. By the numbers. Man talks to boy, turns out he died minutes before.

Annabelle’s Alphabet, Tim Pratt (from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 9)

Cute little story about a little girl, Annabelle, who dreams of flying.

Tom Brightwind, or, How the Fairy Bridge Was Built at Thoresby, Susanna Clarke (from Starlight 3)

A decent story, but one that seems to be overwhelmed by how little goes on. Clarke’s novel showed how lots of text can describe very little when the author is aping a Jane Austen feel for her writing. This is the same. Seriously, it’s a one-trick pony and shouldn’t be trotted out story after story (just like Gregory Maguire).

Gestella, Susan Palwick (from Starlight 3)

So far this is vying with Struwwelpeter and Onion for my favorite story of the collection. It’s a werewolf tale, with somewhat of a twist. It doesn’t really re-work the rules of werewolves, thank god. Just takes the trope and extrapolates some of its implications, then puts a human face on it and combines it with some human foibles. Vague enough? Okay, here’s the gist: werewolves age at a wolf rate rather than a human rate. A man and a werewolf woman hook up and fall in love. But she (Gestella) ages at a much faster rate than he does. Now run with that. It’s one fucked up, awesome story.

The Legend, Ray Gonzalez (from The Ghost of John Wayne)

I think this story concerns when a ghost haunts the person who killed her. I think. It could be the ghost is helping him instead. I can’t tell.

Oh, Glorious Sight, Tanya Huff (from Oceans of Magic)

John Cabot sails to America with a little bit of help from a magical flute and a ragamuffin he saves on the dock before sailing. Of course, being religious he thinks the magical flute is witchcraft. Good story!

Home Cooking, Daniel Ulanovsky Sack (from With Signs and Wonders)

After the death of their mother, a family discovers that Eustaquia has learned how to cook mom’s specialty dishes. Maybe I’m just a foodie at heart, but I liked this story even though I never quite figured out all the relationships in the story. I can totally understand bonding over food and associating certain meals with particular people, so that part totally sucked me in.

Queen, Gene Wolfe (from December 2001 Realms of Fantasy)

Two men show up in town to take an old woman to the coronation. The town’s wealthiest man helps them find her, and then serves them food before they all leave. Not a particularly exciting story.

The Project, Carol Emshwiller (from August 2001 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)

An interesting story, one without much in the way of overt fantastic elements. Harrier is a mountain man, though he suspects he may be a bastard son of the bigger lowlands people. Because of his size, he’s the foreman of the tribe’s Project, which involves moving large rocks for reasons I never quite figured out. But it’s really important to him. A mountain lion eats his child while he works on the Project. His wife is livid at his devotion, and sets off to stalk the mountain lion herself. Harrior discreetly follows and kills the mountain lion (as his wife wouldn’t be able to do it herself). But it seems Mrs. Wife has plans to head off the mountain, and Harrier can’t understand why. Despite not quite getting everything, I still found myself really getting into Harrier’s mind. It’s done so well I can understand his devotion to the Project even though I never figured out what the hell it was.

The Man in the Comic Strip, Liz Lochhead (from Winter 2001 Poetry Review, subscribe)

Again, I’m not so much on the poetry, but I do like hearing this reading of a version of the poem by the author, Liz Lochhead.

Strange Things About Birds, Scott Thomas (from Cobwebs and Whispers)

Short story where an older woman tells disturbing stories that involved birds that happened to her in her youth.

What We Did That Summer, Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg (from Redshift)

Pretty creepy story, but I totally didn’t get the ending.

Aesculapius in the Underworld, Ryan G. Van Cleave (from May 2001 Poem)

Didn’t get it.

Scarecrow, Gregory Maguire (from Half-Human)

A mostly decent story about assuming things from the perspective of a newly conscious scarecrow who is told stories by crows and foxes about how he came to be and what happened to the farmer who owned the field. And then he’s the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz and I got irritated.

The Bockles, Melissa Hardy (from The Uncharted Heart)

Always keep your word with magical creatures. This was so by the numbers I could count to ten using it.

His Own Back Yard, James P. Blaylock (from SciFi.com)

Heading down nostalgia lane, Alan stops at his old house while his wife and son are out of town. The house is boarded up. He digs up a coffee can time capsule he buried as a kid, which transports him magically into the past. In this case, he can go home again. Pretty good story.

Title: The year’s best fantasy and horror: fifteenth annual collection
Editors: Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling
Cover creator: Thomas Canty (artist)
Series: Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror; 15
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin / Holtzbrinck
Format: Paperback
Length: cxviii, 542 p. (includes supplemental material)
Publication date: August 2002
ISBN-10: 0-312-29069-1
LC classification: PN6120.95.F25 Y4

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