Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munroe

Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munroe

Alice Munroe has a terrific ear for the quiet emotions that motivate average people. This collection of thirteen short stories about the relationships between Canadian women speaks volumes in just over two hundred pages. Their secret fears and hopes and misdeeds large and (mostly) small are laid bare here if you’re patient enough to just listen; they’ll tell you all about their lives, and reading about them will enrich yours.

I’ll happily read everything Mrs. Munroe has written, and I only hope that it’ll help me get a little closer to being able to listen as carefully as she does to all the things people don’t say.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Munro won the nobel prize for literature in 2013 based on a body of work, but Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is a good place to start an exploration of her efforts.

She’s been called a “master of the [short story] form” by folks like Salman Rushdie. She’s written more than a dozen books of short stories which seem to mostly deal with small-town relationships, the uncertainty in the space between lovers, and the unpredictable cul-de-sacs of life.

This collection is beautiful and beautifully written, with a density of insight on personalities and character which is reminiscent of a more generous, less sexually-aggressive Kundera. (Even typing this, I worry that so imprecise a comparison does Munro a disservice.)

The stories all circle themes of the unknowability of the future and the lifelong impact of chance intimacies. Munro sees deeply into the secret heart of each of her characters, then presents them spread out for the reader in a way that makes you think about how little you probably really understand about the people you’re closest to…. And by extension how difficult it is to really see inside the motivations of more casual acquaintances.

Munro is eighty-two years old, and has declared that she is done writing. It’s a shame, because her ability to turn an emotional microscope on her characters is powerful. The good news for the rest of us is that she’s written quite a lot in her life – so there’s lots for us to learn.

I plan on picking up everything else by her I can find the next time I’m at Powell’s.

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood

Collection of short stories about various Canadian writers. The language is good, as is the storytelling, but so much of this is lost in the shroud of history. Unless you have strong thoughts and memories of the Toronto writers scene in the seventies and eighties, I’m afraid many of these tales may lack punch.

Still, if you’re a student of Atwood, there’s plenty here to like, and it doesn’t feel like a waste, even if you can’t help but recognize you’re missing the punchline a lot of the time.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

Howard penned the original Conan mythos back in the Nineteen twenties, almost a hundred years ago now. He was a Texan, and one of the very early American writers of the fantastic, usually mentioned alongside his friend and mentor H.P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, Howard was published primarily in Weird Tales an early pulp magazine which catered to the macabre, the swashbuckling, and early sci-fi.

In this collection of republished tales, Howard addresses werewolves, dream-serpents, more werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. It is possible that at the time these tales felt innovative; my mental chronology of fiction from the time just isn't quite tight enough to be able to say for certain. But they all feel like retreads.

Harder to deal with than their lack of fresh content is the decrepitude that infects Howard's language, making each paragraph a wooden, plodding affair, in which subjects and verbs seem as soggy and downtrodden as the settings and characters within. I'm willing to give some fair amount of blame here to the simple passage of years; it’s equally challenging to fight through, say, Natty Bumpo tales. Language has evolved, and some types of construction used regularly here seem as if they would be better to have remained buried. However, since there are some writers from equally long ago whose prose remains supple, Howard must ultimately shoulder some of the blame.

As a result, this collection isn't so much dreadful as it is dreadfully boring. Even as vacation reading, it was a challenge to plow through.

Born Bad by Andrew Vachss

Born Bad by Andrew Vachss

Collection of short stories, sketches really, about sexually predatory criminals, their victims, and those avenging angles inside and outside of the legal system who try to bring Vachss brand of justice to the lot.

The language ranges from good-Vachss to poor-Vachss, all clipped, all street, all hood. The stories are… really only interesting if you’re trying to round out a complete study of the Vachss canon, which I was.

Otherwise, skip this one and go straight for the first few Burke novels.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman excels in the short story form. When his ideas get to run amok, but only for a few pages, he comes up with a number of gems. Some work better than others, but the whole treat is still delicious. This book motivated the Halloween 1000 word story challenge that the Doctor and I undertook in October, which resulted in two stories you've probably never read entitled The Altar of Crows and The Dust Man’s Birthday Party.  Turns out, writing truly short fiction is a fantastic way of honing craft skills. 

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Four stories. One in which a man kills his wife in 1922 and tells us about it later. Another in which a writer is brutally raped and gets revenge. A third of a man who wishes the ills of his world onto his best friend. A fourth in which the wife of a serial killer discovers the awful truth…The first and the last of these are the best two.

I enjoy Stephen King, and have devoured almost everything he has written so for me, these stories were a treat. But if you’re not a fan, or are just getting started, there are at least ten other books of his I’d recommend first.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace


I’d started a writing project this summer in which I wanted to tell a collection of tales of short relationships between a man and a number of different women. Maybe this was a way of capturing the fantasy of various girls I wish I’d gotten to know better earlier in life. Or maybe it’s just a subject that is interesting. But because I wanted a fantasy or supernatural angle, I wanted to make at least one of them a witch, maybe more. Not a mysoginist “all women are evil” witches, but instead a way of sort of celebrating the mysterious and magical diversity of various feminine personalities. (Though I did want to include at least one bit of serious darkness – if you’ve ever done much dating, you’ve got a story or two to be sure – and not all witches are about love spells and pet kittens.) Carried away with my own cleverness, I decided to title the collection Brief Interviews with Supposedly Fun Witches I’ll Never Do Again in a sort of homage to one of our postmodern masters.

This little project led me to reopen David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, a collection of spliced together short fiction relayed as interviews with people who are, as the title suggests, generally not very nice in one way or another. I was reminded of how enchanting DFW’s linguistic hi-jinx and chicanery can be to word worms like me, and in short, what a dazzling writer he could be at times.

Since the men here are not named, but instead identified only by subject or case ID information and a location, and since the stories are arrayed in an order designed to slowly ratchet up the hideous, rather than grouped by subject, part of the puzzle is figuring out who is who here.

Even after more than a decade and a helluva lot of zeitgeist, Brief Interviews holds up quite well. DFW was a master of the craft, albeit it not for everyone. His self indulgence and focus on relationships and the nuances of self-absorption read like paeans from a pre 9/11 world. He regularly loses sight of the forest of the narrative, and can be found climbing the tree of some particular metafictional angle or footnote. But none of this obscures the obvious (and now somewhat over-celebrated) brilliance, of a man who loves language, has terrific gifts with construction, and sees many things clearly.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

Short story collection in which a number of tales feature aging and sickness as themes. There are a few good stories here, a few stinkers-- the one about the port-a-potty comes to mind—and a few that are standard King fare. I always enjoy his readability and the straightforwardness with which he approaches storytelling.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Good collection of horror shorts by the author of Heart Shaped Box. A few of these stories are actually quite good. I particularly enjoyed the poignancy of “Pop Art”, which reminded me of the best of George Saunders. “The Cape” had some good writing in it. “The Black Phone” was tightly wound, if a little obvious. And “Bobby Conroe Comes Back from the Dead” was a piece with a lot of emotional nuance. Overall, I give this one an A. Nice work, Mr. Hill. I’ll certainly read the next thing you publish.

The Box by Richard Mattheson
Yep, now I know there is a Cameron Diaz movie of this released just in time for Halloween. Lots of people told me this when they saw me reading the book. Hopefully the movie is better than this retread collection of old short stories that were all published several decades ago. Mattheson is a decent storyteller, and I’ve enjoyed a few of his nuggets in other places, as I’ve mentioned here before. Unfortunately, most of these are just plain bad. This is a collection of eight or so short tales that have either been widely published elsewhere, or should have been left in a bottom drawer. Sentient organs, jazz encounters told in verse, walking suits of clothing, etc. Moving on.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
This collection of terse, heartbreaking little stories are mostly about infidelity. Carver’s vision of the desolation of suburban America is distinct and his eye for detail is superb, though it tends to only light upon the melancholy. Twelve stories here chronicle the dissolution of marriages and relationships and the fallout of same. Carver’s dialog and ear for language is superb; hardly a word rings false in this collection. Sad stories from the sixties which chronicled the dissolution of the idealized American marriage.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

This delightful little tale about a boy named Nobody represents the best of what I think Neil Gaiman does well. The idea is fun. (“What if a little boy were raised by the ghosts in a graveyard?”) The prose is easy to read and playful. The story is both light hearted and macabre at the same time. And Gaiman manages to play with some fun tropes without appearing clichéd. (Like Slias the never-called-vampire-vampire, or Gulhiem, the city of the Ghouls.)

Great, short little novella, without much lasting meaning, but with lots of fun imagery.

Demonology by Rick Moody

Bit of a snoozer, this one, I’m afraid. The title looked good, the cover imagery was provacatve. The core notion wasn’t bad, which was, “let’s tell some semi-zany stories that deal with modern social angst in our North American consumerist culture.” So far, so good. But, unfortunately, Moody just lacks the zeal and writing ability of, say, George Saunders, who did the same thing better.

I’ll admit that not a single story in this collection sticks in my mind. And that should tell you something.

Six Stories of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I suspect there is a reason that most of these tales never really got much mainstream interest. While they are entertaining, occasionally silly, they qualify as little more than pieces that reveal a bit of the character of the age. Little depth here, and they add little to the understanding of the life of this already overanalyzed writer.

Pastoralia by George Saunders


Hooray! A new treat! Saunders short stories are a real breath of fresh air! Like so many new writers I’ve enjoyed over the years, I owe this one to Terry, so thanks!

Pastoralia is a rollicking treat – much like In Persuasion Nation. Again, we’ve got the same mismatch of characters in unusual situations. From the domestic squabble between a fake caveman and woman in a living diorama, to the poignant romantic misadventure of a loveless misogynist, there’s a lot here.


CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders


CivilWarLand in Bad Decline is even better than Pastoralia. Unfortunately, I seem to have loaned my copy to the slow reading MotherTucker a few months ago, so I don’t have it here to reference. But, off the cuff: another collection of short stories which are so weird and fast paced that they can be dizzying. The writing has a particular style which I would probably describe as intentionally forced and conversational. (“You would not expect me to take you there, would you? No you would not.”) Such that the reader is constantly in a strange sort of one way conversation with the narrators, or is listening to these sorts of one-sided conversational monologues. The title track to this book, CivilWarLand, is heartbreaking in its way – telling the tale of a Cival War themepark which falls prey to urban decay in a rather unusual manner. The whole piece ends up being a comi-tragic lament for our civilization in decline. Solid work, Mr. Saunders!


The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders


Eh. Maybe I was just getting tired of Saunders by this point, but the socio-political commentary of “The Brief and Frightening Reign” ended up coming across just as a sort of silly-stoned experiment. The plot in brief: Two nations made up of very small populations of strange mechanical creatures clash along a border. Phil, a nobody with delusions of grandeur ends up misusing mob rule and becoming a sort of demagogue. Under his brief, frightening reign the citizens of the lesser of the two countries have their rights badly trampled. In a sort of anti-IMF parody, they are loaned resources as such usurious rates that soon they are all homeless and have no country left. You get the idea. It’s silly satire but without the usual Saunders wit and pathos.


I Am Legend by Richard Matheson


With images of a Will Smith trailer running in my head, and hopeful visions of one of my favorite horror novellas finally brought to life, I loaned this collection of short stories to The Professor during our fall trip to Tofino. She didn’t get a chance to read it on that trip, but I snared it and read it again, for the first time in ten years or so there in the beautiful bar room of the Wickannish Lodge, surrounded by twisted tree-trunks worn smooth by wind and water.

Mattheson’s most famous work has inspired generations of horror writers. Stephen King speaks reverently of him in On Writing, and, I think, Danse Macabre as well. The stories are edgy as hell for the time they were written, mostly in the 1950s. You’ll feel echoes of Twilight Zones and other pop-horror and sci-fi tales on each page. In some ways, this book forms a backbone cannon for modern pulp grist as much as do Poe and Lovecraft.

The title story bears no resemblance whatsoever to the crap that Will Smith peddled on the silver screen this Christmas. It’s bleak, fascinating, post-apocalyptic and gruesome. And it contains one of the finest ending sentences of any horror story I’ve ever read:

“A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”


Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen


A cute lawyerette in H-town this summer recommended this novel to me over cocktails in a treehouse one sunny afternoon. A week later, my mother recommended it as well. So I picked up a copy at Half-Price Books. I enjoyed it but wasn’t blown away. It was cute…

The novel involves the framework story of an old man, fading into the convalescent senility of the elderly in a nursing home. His memory is sparked by a rivalry with one of his fellow residents, and he recounts for us a love story wrapped up in a post-Great Depression circus tale. The framework story doesn’t work particularly well for me. An identical trick was used to better effect in the framework tale from The Green Mile, and a similar one worked beautifully in The Blind Assassin. By this time around, it feels like it was lifted from a “framework story template guide.”

The main narrative is engaging. Details of circus life, the wickness both petty and great in which the owner of the bigtop and his minions engage provide some compelling villains. There’s sufficient sex and alcohol to keep things at least a little lurid. An elephant is the hero of sorts, which is cool. Overall, when the narrative sticks to the past it’s quite deft, if a tad predictable.

Nice work, Mrs. Gruen. I’d read another of your novels.

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

“Slap it up your wack!”
Saunders has written a collection of hyperactive, highly post modern short stories which fall somewhere between Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, and Chuck Palahniuk. They shout, sing and dance their way across the pages, and are, frankly, delightful, funny, sad and cynical. Characters include ghosts, Jesus freaks, puppets, a Slap-O-Wack bar, market research subjects, monkeys, salesmen, television show characters, and even a talking orange.

Some of the tales are a bit tedious, or make their points with all the subtlety of a meat cleaver, but others are complex and beautifully written. The one about a bad Christmas among Chicago’s working class and the tale of the two old women both come to mind.

Generally, the social commentary rails against consumerism and advertising, but there are a host of other modern dilemmas that crop up here in various guises, some deep and involved, some quickly sketched from the notebook of a 10th grader infatuated with Ad-Busters.

Lots to like here, and I’m eager to read more of what Saunders has written.

In the Flesh by Clive Barker

Misfit Teens beat up a homeless guy and steal something from him that they shouldn’t. A rich misogynist descends into an urban labyrinth of monstrous femininity. And so on… These are more great Barker short stories from the eighties. I only wish he’d written more.

The Inhuman Condition by Clive Barker
A delightful collection of horror shorts from the eighties by Clive Barker. Start with Books of Blood, but wander through these dark halls when it’s time for more.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

I first came across Carter’s good name in a eulogy written by Salmon Rushdie in a fairly recent book of his essays entitled Borders. I’ve not finished reading Borders yet, but I was sufficiently captivated by his descriptions of Mrs. Carter’s prose, language, and storytelling, that I ordered up a copy of The Bloody Chamber.

Angela Carter tackles a small collection of fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber. She twists them each to her own ends, usually to play with notions of gender roles, but not in an obvious or dull way. Consider, for example, two different retellings of Beauty and the Beast; one in which Beauty herself transforms into a beast, and another in which she is figuratively beastly towards him. Snow White here involves a fantasy girl, birthed from lust, snow, and a couple’s disenchantment with one another. There are vampire queens, gambling cobblers, rapacious Arabian princes, and so on. The subject matter is a delightful flight of fancy.

But it’s Carter’s language which really glows. There are no dull sentences here, no moribund clichés, no plodding paragraphs. Carter’s words pair off into couples and waltz about beneath the glittering crystal chandeliers of her descriptions; her verbage is active and interesting, her adjectives uncommon. And while, yes, Mr. Rushdie, she does only slightly too often pair off words like “eldritch” or “coloratura”, and while, yes, Henry Holt, she does overwrite many passages into a poetic bouillabaisse rather than more straightforward prose, the language itself is still delightful to read. The Professor would say here that part of the fun is just letting all these fun phrases dissolve on your tongue like acid or a snowflake. And I’d be forced to agree.

Carter is (as Holt complains) a bit prurient on occasion. If phrases like “her cunt split open like a fig” upset you, then some of these stories likely will too. But with a name as obviously provocative as The Bloody Chamber, what would you expect?

Good stuff, Mrs. Carter. I can tell you had fun writing these stories, and I’m eager to read more of those offerings you left with us before you left for some version of Valhalla, where golden eldritch Valkeries punish Loki and sodomize Eric the Red with bountiful cornucopias of amberwine and icemead… Or wherever it was you went… :)