| Black Static, Issue 10, May 2009 | ||||||||
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A review by Jonathan McCalmont
With non-fiction elements this good, the short fiction seems almost a bonus. Which is just as well as the
selection in May 2009 issue is decidedly hit and miss.
The first story is Christopher Fowler's "Piano Man." It contains a standard of writing that is frankly
shocking from an author with close to thirty published novels and collections to his name. "Piano Man" is a
gruesome catalogue of bad creative decisions. For example, New Orleans is a city that cries out for bold
and fresh writing. Writing that can eclipse a cliché-ridden public persona fermented by decades of lazy
writers in search of a bit of cheap exoticism. Writing that can reflect the fact that, in the wake of
Katrina, the city has become a kind of crucible for a government and White middle-class that allowed thousands
of Black people to rot in poverty during one of the longest periods of economic growth in history. As you
might expect from a 50-something white bloke from Greenwich, Fowler completely fails to engage with any of this.
His presentation of New Orleans, much like the other ideas that drive the story, are pure and unchallenged
cliché without the smallest hint of originality or freshness. The story's prose is also deeply
problematic. Good Horror should raise the hairs on the back of your neck. It should allow you to brush up
against the uncanny and the Other. It should transport you. It should unnerve you. "Piano Man" achieves none
of these things. Instead of being atmospheric or evocative Fowler's writing is awkward and littered with the
kind of lead-footed exposition that destroys tension by boiling away all ambiguity and uncertainty and replacing
it only with the familiar, the generic and the predictable.
Though a radically different kettle of fish to Fowler's offering, Gary McMahon's "The Chair" is, in its own
way, no less formulaic. It is one of those stories that ignores characterisation and plot in favour of
atmosphere. Atmosphere very carefully constructed through the use of thematically appropriate set-dressing,
a refusal to explain anything and an unadorned and controlled prose style. Atmosphere thus created, it is
then projected onto a mundane object in order to suggest that the story's painstakingly erected layers of
existential blurring emanate directly from that object thereby creating a feeling of cognitive dissonance
and mystery.
As far as these kinds of story go, "The Chair" is not half bad. McMahon effectively creates a sense of
unhappiness and impending doom by layering alcoholism upon depression upon child abandonment upon dank winter
shadows. At times these threaten to tip over into the comical when McMahon over-eggs the pudding with a
clumsy simile ("the darkness that took its place was hard and flat as sheet metal," "it felt as though he
were crapping a rainbow") or an overblown image of misery ("she usually stood for a few minutes at the
bottom of his bed, weeping"). However, these few slips and a pervasive
sense of déjà-vu aside, "The Chair"
is a nicely written and atmospheric tale of death and depression that has enough striking imagery to keep
you reading and engaged.
The issue continues to improve with Scott Lambridis' "Washer Woman." Most Horror stories are, in one way
or another, portal stories. They are about travelling from one world to another. Or, as one critic once
put it "travelling from town to the country." These voyages are usually motivated by a story within
a story -- a legend, myth, rumour or fragment of forgotten lore that actually turns out to be terrifyingly
true. Think of Lovecraft's strange statues and forgotten diaries, the urban legend of Candyman (1992)
or the Biblical realism of The Exorcist (1973). Lambridis adapts this structure by resisting the
urge to explain what is going on until the very end. This allows him to spend the first half of the story
creating a world so full of despair and madness that it comes across as being cloaked in the same psychotic
fog as that of Apocalypse Now (1979). The comparison is apt as the story revolves around a group
of American soldiers awaiting reinforcements in some hideous but unnamed European war that sees the local
villagers periodically trying to storm their bunker. The few remaining soldiers are at their wits end as
the world keeps getting stranger and stranger. Technically, Lambridis' prose is elegant and he uses it to
construct some beautifully creepy images in a story that is simply flawless in its pacing. However, the
most pleasing element of the story is also its most problematic area as Lambridis' dialogue is wildly
uneven. The story begins with a string of expletives delivered by someone speaking in one of the most
embarrassing approximations of Ebonics I have seen outside of the career of Sacha Baron Cohen. It is
genuinely cringe-worthy. But then Lambridis comes out with a beautifully memorable line :
In contrast, Maura McHugh's "Vic" is a much more subtle affair that relies on suggestive ideas and discordant
human emotion for its effect. The story is about Vic, a lonely little boy who spends his life in the old
converted workspace that his parents put aside for him as a bedroom. He never goes outside but he has grand
ideas of what is out there. Ideas about a boy who plays basketball and a girl who loves butterflies. His
parents treat him as though he is a fragile object and, in many ways, he is as he is covered in scars and
prone to suddenly bleeding for no apparent reason. the story essentially straddles two different
interpretations -- the first is that Vic is the unwanted child of abusive parents. They stick him in an
old workspace to sleep, they never let him out, he is covered in injuries and when things go wrong his
parents talk about being able to "begin over." However, a more fantastical take on the story is that it is
a take on the story of Pinocchio in that Vic is a child who has been created by his parents. They do not
let him out for fear of being caught, he is covered in injuries that are prone to opening because he has
been crudely stitched together and the talk of "beginning over" is to be taken quite literally, his parents
could just try to build a new child. What is common to both interpretations is the sense of the child
being an object who serves the needs of the parents but whose best interests or desires are completely
unimportant. The story is nicely written with its themes and ideas offered up by means of suggestion
rather than description while the story is filled with a very YA-friendly feeling of sentimentality and
childish optimism about the outside world. Of course, in the context of the story, the hope is largely
empty. Thereby making it that much sweeter.
James Cooper's "Because Your Blood is Darker Than Mine" is also reliant upon the perspective of a young
character. In this case, Lilly, a young girl who lives in a house with her creepy brother Michael, her
disinterested mother, her interloping lover 'Uncle' Pete and Grandma, a skilled seamstress who sewed
herself an artificial husband when the old one gave out on her. The use of a child as protagonist is
noteworthy as it is quite a common choice in certain kinds of story. Child protagonists sometimes acquire
a reputation for being, at the very least, YA-friendly but I think the choice is more significant
than that. Using a child as a protagonist is also a way to preserve the innocence of the perspective an
author offers onto their own world. A child's world is more morally and psychologically simplistic and
much of the world is new and difficult to fathom. Therefore, by writing about the world through the
eyes of a child, an author can make more of the ambiguities in their stories and accentuate any
strangeness the child might encounter.
We can see Cooper using this technique in his descriptions of Lilly's family; Quirks such as Michael's
fondness for collecting animals and putting them in polythene bags or the tendency of Lilly's mother to
disappear, off with her boyfriend might seem quite banal if seen through the eyes of an adult, but through
Lilly's eyes, Cooper can make these events seem quite fantastical in their sinister quirkiness. The
problem is that, while Cooper undeniably has some neat ideas, he never really does anything with
them. Instead of tying all of these little ideas together in order to build to some kind of conclusion
or sketch out some kind of thematic point, Cooper leaves his ideas isolated and adrift from each other
until the story reaches an ending lacking in affect, tone, symbolism or impact. "Because Your Blood
is Darker Than Mine" is the longest story in the magazine but because it fails to make good use of
the ideas it contains, it feels disproportionately baggy and lacking in content.
Aside from being the third story in a row to have a child as a protagonist, Shannon Page's "East Lick"
treads similar ground to Pat Cadigan's "Truth and Bone" from Ellen Datlow's recent
anthology Poe (2009). It is a coming-of-age story where the birth pangs of womanhood (periods,
boys, parents) are projected against a more fantastical narrative of someone coming into a set of
supernatural powers. To her credit, Page tries to downplay these aspects of the story despite the
pun-based title. She has a cooky neighbour talk about being able to braid one's hair if one really
wants it and there's some stuff with a Ouija board and seeing someone's death but unfortunately, when
the real powers manifest themselves (in an admittedly low key fashion), they do not come as much of
a surprise. This means that the meat of the story lies in its more mundane elements.
While Page's short bio suggests that she might well have mined her own childhood for some of the
details of this story, Laura is ultimately too generic a creation to be truly memorable or interesting
to read about. The lack of individuation to Page's characterisation is not improved by the story's
competent but unremarkable prose and dialogue. "East Lick" only really comes to life towards the end
when something genuinely and viscerally unpleasant takes place. Page seems to relish the details of
this event and tries to then tie it back to the details of Laura's life but this suggestion is never
explored fully resulting in a piecemeal story that never comes together as anything particularly special.
Jonathan McCalmont is a recovering academic and cynic who produces criticism and commentary for a number of different venues including his blog Ruthless Culture. He is also the editor of Fruitless Recursion, an online journal devoted to discussing works of genre criticism. He lives in the United Kingdom so that you don't have to. | |||||||
 
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