The Perfect Fairy Tale

Some stories are beautiful in their simplicity and brevity: "LadyFaraway".

I heard a voice last night...

What happens when your ex-girlfriend accuses you of snoring when you know you don't? Why you go out and buy a recording machine to prove her wrong of course. What happens when you play back the machine and hear voices where there should be silence?

Find out, in one of my favorite short stories of the year: "Whisper".

"Snow"

I had spent my life waiting for something, not knowing what, not even knowing I waited. Killing time. I was still waiting. But what I had been waiting for had already occurred and was past.

One of my favorite stories in the American Gothic Tales anthology is John Crowley's "Snow".

"Snow" is set in a world, where the rich can afford to document their entire lives via camera for future generations. It tells the story of a man who seeks the memories of his deceased wife through eight thousand hours of video.

By that time it had transmitted at least eight thousand hours (eight thousand was the minimum guarantee) of Georgie: of her days and hours, her comings in and her goings out, her speech and motion, her living self---all on file, taking up next to no room, at The Park. And then, when the time came, you could go there, to The Park, say on a Sunday afternoon; and in quiet landscaped surroundings (as The Park described it) you would find her personal resting chamber; and there, in privacy, through the miracle of modern information storage and retrieval systems, you could access her: her alive, her as she was in every way, never changing or growing any older, fresher (as The Park's brochure said) than in memory ever green.

But the narrator soon discovers that there is a flaw in the system, and begins to understand the exact nature of the video that has been recorded.

"Snow" examines memory through the apparatus of technology. It dissects the way that we access our memories, and reveals to us the ephemeral nature of our lives.

There is no access to Georgie, except that now and then, unpredictably, when I'm sitting on the porch or pushing a grocery cart or standing at the sink, a memory of that kind will visit me, vivid and startling, like a hypnotist's snap of fingers. Or like that funny experience you sometimes have, on the point of sleep, of hearing your name called softly and distinctly by someone who is not there.

5 Highly Recommended Short Story Collections

It's interesting to reflect as this year comes to end, how much I've become enamored with short story form. Since an early age, I have always preferred the novel to the short story. But as I have grown to love form and style as much as I love plot and character, short stories have become increasingly appealing to me.

This year there were numerous collections that I have found immensely rewarding, and still more that are on my to-be-read list. Here are a couple of them

Things That Never Happen - M. John Harrison. Possibly my all-time favorite collection and certainly the one collection that was most influential in making me love the form. This is a work in fantastic fiction, but many times what is fantastic in the stories takes a backseat to the very realistic characters that inhabit Harrison's slightly sinister England.

M. John Harrison stories are usually amorphous which does not mean that he lacks clarity in his craft. Like many good things in literature, this collection takes effort on part of the reader. It does not make the stories any less enjoyable as an experience, but one can not expect to be provided with the answers at the end.

There is something about Harrison's writing that is intensely terrible, haunting and realistic as well. Harrison never writes of people who are whole. His characters are broken human beings, who are aware and in many ways disastisfied with their state. They are constantly seeking something---perhaps meaning, perhaps magic in their lives. Yet this need or urge, even when the character succeeds, is never rewarding, but in turn haunts them. There is something terrible about existence, and I feel that Harrison captures this in his stories. There is great power and emotion in his writing, and it's written with absolutely beautiful prose. Go here for a better description of his work.

Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link
Magic for Beginners is notches higher than her first collection Stranger Things Happen, which was lauded by both mainstream and genre critics. I'd highly recommend, "The Faery Handbag", "Stone Animals", and "Lull".

The Lottery: And Other Stories - Shirley Jackson
I have always been fascinated by Shirley Jackson, and I find it somewhat tragic that the only thing I ever read by her in high school was The Lottery. Her ghost stories are equally fantastic. The Haunting of Hill House is easily the most terrifying example of the classic haunted house story. Read it and see why.

The next two are books that are on my TBR list.

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara - Ben Fountain

The Dead Fish Museum - Charles D'Ambrosio

Magic For Beginners

I'm reading tidbits and excerpts from Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners. Kelly Link writes beautiful short stories that can be described as fantastic in nature---usually mixing elements of myth, magic, and surrealism. Link's first collection of short stories featured several stories that were inspired by fairy tales and myths. Her second collection, while inspired thematically by many of the same things, steps away the reworkings of fairy tale and into her own territory.


"The Faery Handbag", the first story of the collection and winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, tells the story of a girl, her grandmother, and a boy who has vanished. I struggle to put into words a cohesive description of the story because the magic lies in the writing and not in the plot. The voice of the writing, is haunting, wistful, and slightly tense, as the protagonist tries to balance what she knows to be true of her grandmother with reality. It's truly original, and a haunting piece.

Be warned that if you are looking for resolutions or endings in Link's collection, you will be disappointed. As in real life, there are no true resolutions or answers. You are left to imagine of what is to come, what will be, and why.