Yesterday, December 18 2009, was one of those rarest of days when everything is right with the world. The office end-of-semester lunch was fun, the reception for a retiring colleague was lovely, and fat soggy snowflakes bombarded my car on the way home in the evening. But
even better than the snow (!), prompted by a shout-out in the Guardian's
Decade's Best Unread Books list, I stopped by the Williamsburg Regional Library and picked up a book by new-to-me author Margo Lanagan. I finished nearly all of it last night, taking time after each story to look out my window at the incredibly still-falling snow and think carefully about what I'd just read. At 4:30 I was wide awake, thinking again about the stories, and I got up to finish the book in a still white but now rain-soaked morning. Now I want to read everything else Lanagan has written, and I decided this would make the perfect subject for the inaugural post for
It's not what you're like.
Each of the ten stories in
Black Juice is a weird and gorgeous gem. In every one of her tales, Lanagan creates a world fraught with violence, terror and death that the characters take in stride. The
Guardian piece makes the dead-on comparison to the works of Angela Carter, and I would say that there are similarities to the fantastical stories of Kelly Link as well. Lanagan's book is classified as Young Adult, and these are old-school fairy tales where people die and the endings are always complicated and not always happy. Some incredible things happen, but they are presented in such a way that the reader must take them at face value, on their own terms.
Every story is narrated by a storyteller that starts out as subservient and weak in some way. Throughout the course of their story, each of the children, servants, circus elephants, poor and disturbed make a journey that proves their resilience and power to themselves if to no one else. Death hovers over nearly all of these quest tales.
Singing My Sister Down, the much-anthologized first story in the collection, makes it clear that you're not in Disneyland and sets the tone for the rest of the book. The child's narration of the daylong public execution of his sister is as beautiful as it is harrowing in its exploration of redemption, cruelty, and acceptance.
Throughout the stories, men tend to be portrayed as abusive, evil, oblivious. Notable exceptions are the understanding Lord in
My Lord's Man and the "wedding" photographer in
Wooden Bride, both of whom show respect gentleness at crucial moments. On the flip side, women are often victims with cores of steel, like the resolute Bonneh in
House of the Many who refuses the advances of the ruling Bard and raises her crippled younger child alone when her firstborn sets off on his own journey.
Though there is not one clunker in the collection, after this initial read two of my favorite stories are
Red Nose Day and
Yowlinin. The first probably strikes a chord because of my irrational fears of a) clowns and b) being killed by a wacko with a high powered rifle firing from a mile away. Snipers shooting clowns - it was written for me! The themes of family, loyalty, betrayal and loss are beautifully woven into what is essentially a very bloody buddy tale. All I'll say about the wonderful
Yowlinin is that it will appeal to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider.
I have long been a champion of the contemporary short story, with a go-to list of old friends that I revisit as my soul requires.
Welding with Children (Tim Gautreaux),
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (Amy Bloom),
Somehow Form a Family (Tony Earley),
Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry (Elizabeth McCracken), and Link's
Magic for Beginners are a few titles that never leave my nightstand. As soon as I get my hands on my own copy,
Black Juice will join their ranks.
