Miracle and Other Christmas Stories | |||||||||||||||
Connie Willis | |||||||||||||||
Bantam Spectra, 336 pages | |||||||||||||||
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A review by Rich Horton
The Christmas story seems a natural in Willis' hands. She is, ironically for a writer so noted for
science fiction, perhaps most at home chronicling the absurdities of contemporary life. Few SF writers
have so often dealt with the contemporary workplace: with Dilbert's subject matter (perhaps most
notably in her short novel Bellwether). She is also at home in the kitchen, preparing Holiday
dinners or washing up after them. And, almost uniquely among SF writers, she
deals with ordinary contemporary religious observance.
So often SF writers are so focused on events of epic scope that they forget these
details. Religion in SF is the Kwisatz-Haderach, or ominous temple priests. But here we have "Inn,"
about a choir member in a fairly typical American Protestant church, and "Epiphany," about a Presbyterian minister.
The high points of this collection are the opening and closing stories. We begin with the title
story. "Miracle" is a romantic comedy, a familiar form for Willis. The narrator is a single woman
working in a 'typical' office. Christmas is coming, and she's worried about what to get for the person
for whom she's Secret Santa, and what to wear to the office Christmas party, and how to attract cute Scott
Buckley's attention. Then an angel, or spirit, turns up in her living room, and throws all her plans into
disarray. With the help of fat Fred Hatch, the only other person at the office who likes
Miracle on 34th Street more than It's a Wonderful Life, she finally sorts things out,
and gets her heart's desire. It's funny and heartwarming.
The closing story is more serious. "Epiphany" is new to this collection, and it's wonderful and moving. A
Presbyterian minister has an epiphany in the middle of a sermon, and decides that the Second Coming has
just occurred, and he needs to travel west to find Jesus.
He sets off in the middle of January, and runs into snow and bad roads and accidents and Nebraska. His
atheist friend tracks him down and tries to drag him back. It's a quiet story, mostly about the people
involved. It's interesting to see how the same sort of madcap coincidences and problems that are
played for laughs in her other stories are used here to other effect. This is one of Willis' best short stories, and
that's high praise indeed.
The other new story is "Cat's Paw," a novella about a great detective, Trouffet, who is summoned to
the Suffolk mansion of Lady Charlotte Valladay for Christmas, and supposedly to unravel a mystery.
Lady Charlotte is a leading sponsor of research into primate intelligence, and she has several enhanced
higher primates as servants. She has summoned Trouffet and his assistant, and some journalists, and an
animal rights activist who opposes her research.
This volatile grouping leads to a murder, and Trouffet is forced to solve it. The story is mostly
comic, but there is a serious core to it. It's not bad, but the mystery element is quite strained,
and the whole setup is a bit too artificial.
Other highlights are "Inn," about a choir member
who encounters a mysterious couple on Christmas Eve, looking for shelter, and "Adaptation," about a
divorced man and his difficulty with seeing his daughter, filtered through an encounter with the
Spirits from A Christmas Carol. "Newsletter" is fun to read, about a plague of niceness,
which might have sinister results, but it comes off a bit strained, as well. "The Pony" is a brief,
moving, story about getting what you really want for Christmas, and "In Coppelius' Toyshop" is a
horror story about an unpleasant man, lost in an F.A.O. Schwarz analogue.
Willis is almost always at least fun to read, and often very moving. Even though this collection
is restricted to Christmas stories, it reveals her wide range just as well as her previous collection does.
Definitely worth reading, at any season of the year.
Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton. |
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