New Collections: Short Stories and Secret Histories

Susanna Clarke, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" (title short story from The Ladies of
Grace Adieu and Other Stories Bloomsbury, October 2006).
Alan DeNiro, Skinny Dipping In the Lake of the Dead (Small Beer Press, May 2006).
Maureen F. McHugh, Mothers and Other Monsters (Small Beer Press, May 2006).
Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt, editors Flytrap Issue #5 (Tropism Press, May 2006).
Jenn Reese, Tales of the Chinese Zodiac (Tropism Press, May 2006).

Traditionally, many systems of scholarship have attempted to integrate all knowledge into a Magnus opus or one great work. Medieval scholars maintained that God had created the world itself as His book, while the Moderns of the first half of the twentieth century attempted to unify all of history, science, and literature into a continuous story, free of ambiguity and internal contradiction. Many literary critics still maintain that the novel is the supreme literary form, and that all of the great books can be arranged into a single definitive canon -- one long literary conversation, as it were, between all the great authors.

I've always found this to be a rather procrustean standard for judging literature, lopping off or stretching thin whatever doesn't suit the current literary fashion. One aspect of this literary class system which I find particularly irksome is that it reduces my favorite literary form, the short story, to a random assortment of leftover parts or mere apocrypha. On the other hand, perhaps that is precisely why I prefer the short story: in its focus upon a single character, it has always represented a wild stab at distinguishing the eclectic from the canonical, the personal history from the official record.

If the establishment of canon represents the attempt to write literature's official record, then the short story represents a secret history. If the novel represents a conversation, then the short story is a secretive smile, an ironic lift of the eyebrow, a flirtatious sideways glance.

"The Ladies of Grace Adieu" by Susanna Clarke, is a perfect example of this. Clarke is best known as the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (a book notable for having provoked more contradictory commentary amongst the GMR staff than any other in recent memory).

Jonathan Strange was itself a secret history of magic and fairy set in England during the reign of Mad King George, and "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" returns to that same world. It includes all the elements which made the novel so fascinating -- the understated prose style, the catalogues of imaginary books, the ominous library that seems to guard its own secrets. While "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" begins in the sedate Jane Austen-tone of Jonathan Strange, however, it slowly takes on the darker tone of a work by one of the Bronte sisters (with just an additional touch of macabre, a la Shakespeare's "MacBeth").

Similar to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the title characters of "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" are drawn together by their shared interest in magical knowledge. However, while I often failed to sympathize with the characters of Strange and Norrell due to their self-absorption, the three ladies of this story seem much more interesting as characters. Indeed, as the ladies of Grace Adieu critique the scholarly failings of Strange and Norrell, they offer their own feminist retelling of the narrative which Strange and Norrell created within their original histories of magic. Clarke thus manages to create a secret history of her own secret history, which is meta enough to make my head spin. Have no fear of the metafictional aspects of this story, however: stylistically, the conciseness of the short story form means that the subtleties of Clarke's prose come across with a bell-like clarity, taking on an elegance of form which was at times missing in the original novel. While I, like many readers, found the novel to be slow going, I finished this forty-page story in a single summer afternoon while sitting outside drinking lemonade. The only cloud in my sky occurred when I reached the end and realized I would have to wait until October to read the other nine stories.

Alan DeNiro, Skinny Dipping In the Lake of the Dead (Small Beer Press, May 2006).

Have you ever asked someone for a book recommendation and then immediately dismissed the answer because you didn't recognize the author's name, only to discover months later that everyone was talking about that same book?

Alan DeNiro's Skinny Dipping In the Lake of the Dead is, in my opinion, going to prove to be that kind of book.

"Our Byzantium," the first story in the collection, begins like a tale told by Borges, with a group of Byzantine knights inexplicably invading a small college town. From the very first lines, lost love becomes entangled with lost empires and the loss of personal direction. One of the characteristics of DeNiro's literary style evocative of Borges is DeNiro's reluctance to over explain the mysteries of the story, allowing the complexity of the prose to create linguistic labyrinths in which the reader must take an active role toward interpretation. Yet DeNiro also uses his background as a poet to create imagery almost unbearable in its vivid intensity: "I live inside the jade of protocol. My door opens from your hand. There are other doors, somewhere. You walk out of one of them."

Many of these stories unfold like dreams, startling in their detail but elusive in their meaning. Yet, the prosaic as well as the poetic features in these stories as characters attempt to create a detailed but incomplete record, like a dream book of their own histories. Objects such as a college entrance essay, maps, postcards, outdated computer disks, the provenance of a chess set, all become documents which convey the fragility of histories.

Indeed, the attempts of characters to locate their place in the historical and cultural record fades in and out of these stories like an overheard conversation, perhaps no more humorously than in the title story, which reads like Catcher In the Rye as retold by Rudy Rucker. Two other stories which stood out for me were "Quiver," which returns to the first story in the collection but retells it from a different perspective, and "Salting the Map," another story reminiscent of Borges in that it examines how personal experience redraws the geography of the imagination.

Maureen F. McHugh, Mothers and Other Monsters (Small Beer Press, May 2006).

The literary creation of Frankenstein's monster is often used as a metaphor to illustrate how technology subtracts something indefinably human from the world we live in. Yet, as we find ourselves living in a biotechnical age where technology itself has come to represent what lies beneath, we need new metaphors which can help us come to grips with the ways in which such technologies influence our sense of self. In this collection of stories, Maureen F. McHugh explores the subject of technology and identity, demonstrating that technology can only be a lens for what defines us as human, that is, our intimate relationship with the world around us and all the beings with whom we share that world. It is not technology which transforms us into monsters, but the danger of losing our sense of compassion toward ourselves and others in the face of monstrous choices. Perhaps no other story underscores this link between technology and compassion more than "Frankenstein's Daughter," which explores the relationship between a cloned child and the rest of her family. Another story worth mentioning is "Presence," in which a woman must decide whether to allow her husband, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, to undergo a radical operation which will allow him to function, but will change his personality into that of a stranger.

Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt, editors Flytrap Issue #5 (Tropism Press, May 2006).

Flytrap is a twice yearly 'zine from Tropism Press, except when it isn't because the editors were on their honeymoon (see the pictures of Hawaii which illustrate this issue). Such eclectic elements are part of what makes this zine so reminiscent of the early days of SF zines.

Another element which evokes the lure of zines is the often playful tone of many of the works. Most of the contents are one to three pages in length, allowing one the casual variety of a summer picnic. However, since I am concentrating on short stories, I will mention three which stood out for me. In "Sailing to Utopia" by Ruth Nestvold, a series of emails provides the record of a female character who has set out to explore an alternate world which is comprised of not one utopia, but multiple Utopias. Since each of these utopias is based upon a particular literary work (most notably Herland), the story becomes a critique of how any ideology, no matter how seemingly perfect, can ultimately prove to be "too much of a good thing." Meanwhile, in "The Apocalypse: A Pamphlet," by Meghan McCarron, we follow the attempts on the part of a self-published "culture critic" to distribute her pamphlet on apocalyptic literature. As the pamphleteer points out in her analysis, apocalyptic literature concerned as it is with "the end of thins as we know them,” proves to be a lively method for examining "the evangelical crazy in each of us." Another lively work from this issue was "Life Among the Obliterati," in which Nick Mamatas provides one of the best answers to the question of "where do writers get their ideas?": namely, unashamed eavesdropping.

Flytrap 5 may be purchased through Tropism Press Web site.

Jenn Reese, Tales of the Chinese Zodiac (Tropism Press, May 2006)

This small chapbook presents a number of short short stories through the motif of the animals used to symbolize the Chinese zodiac. Whimsical and funny, each of these stories provides a twist on familiar themes, and each story is as small and intricate as an origami flower. I would recommend these highly original stories for any reader who is drawn to stories based in Chinese mythology.

This chapbook may also be purchased through the Tropism Press Web site. For those who enjoy works with a Chinese theme, I would also point the reader toward the author's web site which includes the Prologue and first chapter from the author's upcoming book, described by the author as "a contemporary action-adventure kungfu romance (with tigers" (to be released in October, 2006, by Juno Books).

[Kestrell Rath]