Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Rating: Highly Recommended

I would have loved Pretty Monsters when I was a teenager. Heck, I loved it now that I’m farther away from my teenage-hood than feels comfortable.

While I’ve read what’s called “high fantasy” with elves and dragons and such trappings, I’ve always preferred the “magical realism” school of fantasy. Stories that depict events that seem normal until, suddenly, they aren’t. Here, you find obsessive teen-age poets, summer camp outcasts, wannabe soccer professionals and more than one surfer. Nary an elf and hardly a sorcerer to be seen.

The magic here, and I will call it magic, is the way she slowly and naturally gives information that changes the way you see what’s happened so far. Several pages into the first story, there’s a line that sums up what goes on in this book.

Anyone might accidentally dig up the wrong grave. It’s a mistake anyone could make.

–From The Wrong Grave

I mean, how could you not love that line?

All of these stories are pieces I wish I’d written. And when I say the collection is uneven, I merely mean that some stories are merely “really really good” while others are amazing. For me, the best were “The Surfer,” “Magic for Beginners,” the title story and the aforementioned “The Wrong Grave.” In all of these, Link pulls off the nearly impossible trick of establishing a believable set of characters and situations, and then veering off in odd but unforced directions. What you think you see or know changes gently, rather than settling for sudden surprise twists.

A warning, though: if you like easy answers and endings that reveal all and tie things up in a bow, this is not for you. In a lesser writer, the endings of some of these stories would be frustrating. You’ve come so far in a story, and to find that what you thought of as the “big question” to be answered will remain a big question can frustrate some readers. But when you reread these stories (and rereading them is part of the fun), you’ll see how the stories change in a second reading. And people with no patience for metafiction, in which the story itself addresses the way in which it is telling the story, will hate this.

Me, I loved going back and looking at the stories. And the stories within stories. And trying to answer the question of whether something happening is fiction within a fiction, or even fiction within fiction within fiction. I don’t remember the last time I felt the need to re-read something immediately, and rediscovering that almost teenage enthusiasm for something new.

If I’ve piqued your interest, you can read some of these stories online at Kelly Link’s website.

If you think you know Daphne Du Maurier and haven’t read her short fiction, you’re in for a surprise. Outside of Rebecca, made into a creepy but strangely denatured film by Hitchcock (Hitchcock replaced premeditated murder with an unfortunate accident), I never could get excited about her novels.

One of the results of a turbulent, doomed relationship was my discovery of these amazing short stories on the girl’s bookshelf. I remember sitting on my cheap couch in my crummy post-student apartment and reading a collection of Du Maurier’s stories in a single sitting. I got to bed very late, and had uncomfortable dreams. These stories are hard to classify: they have elements of horror, supernatural, and mystery without truly being any of the above. And the short story format seems to suit Du Maurier, making her prose more spare and adding a tautness to her storytelling.

Finding these stories in print has, up to now, been a challenge. I found my copies in a Dublin bookstore: Ireland seems to keep interesting books in print longer than the US does. Different collections have come in and out of print since then. This collection is just a sampling of  a larger body of short stories, and I hope for your sake that they put out further volumes. But get this one now, while you can.

As a sampling, this is an outstanding selection of creepy, evocative stories. It starts off with two stories made into successful movies. Don’t Look Now, a tale of loss, sexual tension, and a possible spectre in a red coat. Nicholas Roeg made this into a great film, though I much prefer the story (full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Roeg’s films in the slightest). The Birds was Hitchcock’s second adaptation, though it borrows the set up and little else from the story. As long as you don’t come in expecting the characters from the film, you’ll find this story is the equal of that film.

Kiss Me Again, Stranger was the story that gave me uncomfortable dreams after my first reading. Du Maurier shows rare expertise in taking a story of a working man’s meeting with an intriguing girl from the mundane to the unsettling. The tension of the protagonist’s wanting this girl while fighting some dark suspicions is gripping. I’ve never looked at pretty strangers in the same way again. And once I quickly ended a date in which the girl had a similar attraction and similar “wrongness” about her.

There isn’t a bad story here, and the collection ends with the extremely satisfying Monte Verita. Though I was glad to see it included, I was surprised to see it chosen over some more obvious possibilities. Obviously, the anthologist was as taken by its mysterious and uneasy tale of a mountain climber’s disappearance and the secrets behind it.

For you who haven’t read any of these short stories, I regret that The Old Man is not included. I’ll never forget the whiplash twist of that story. I wish I could reread it without knowing what comes in the final paragraph. If you enjoy these stories, hope for another volume, or seek out an anthology containing the story (there are a few).

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Rating: Recommended
Buy this from Amazon.com

I’ve loved Bradbury since I was a a young teen. Often, the stuff you loved at that age doesn’t hold up on re-reading. You look back on many youthful enthusiasms with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment. So I’m pleased to report that this classic still worked for someone a good deal older and less wide-eyed than the kid who read this book back in… well, a long time ago.

This isn’t so much a novel as a cohesive short story collection that spans man’s colonization of Mars from first landing onward. You can read it alongside the brilliant Fahrenheit 451, in which we get to see some of the events in this book from an Earth-bound perspective.Bradbury has written poetry, though I’ve never found it very palatable stuff. Which is odd, considering the sheer poetry of the language he uses in his stories. Rocket Summer, a story I don’t really remember from my original reading, is particularly beautiful, a meditation on an Ohio winter briefly made summer by a rocket launch. Another beautiful vignette that struck me both then and now is The Green Morning, in which a Martian Johnny Appleseed wakes to find his efforts rewarded beyond his dreams.

There are also some classic horror tales here. Mars is Heaven and Usher II stand beautifully on their own but have more resonance as part of the greater whole this book provides. Usher II also ties the book in with Fahrenheit 451. It’s also a real treat for Poe fans.

There is also Way In the Middle of the Air, a study of racism in 1950s America. African Americans migrating en masse to Mars deeply upset the racists who despise them. After all, when you define yourself by your hatreds, you’re nothing without the object of your hate. It walks a fine line, and I think it does so successfully. Yes, it’s written by a white man from small-town America, but he doesn’t fall into the deadly “magical Negro” trap. This story has been pulled from certain editions of the book, so find a copy that includes this one.

Near the end you’ll find the haunting There Will Come Soft Rains. Bradbury uses Sara Teasdale’s poem about nature covering over evidence of humanity after a war. The circumstances of the poetry reading are chilling and stick with you for a long time.

“I will look forward to more photos of Mars. Number Seven, coming up hopefully, will read, in large canal letters across the whole surface of the Red Planet: Bradbury Was Right!” — Ray Bradbury

Bradbury wrote that when NASA was getting early exploration photos of the red planet. Sadly, it doesn’t look as if he was right. But of all the fictional planets Mars (from Wells to Burroughs and beyond), Bradbury’s is the Mars I’d most like to visit. His visions of abandoned fragile cities left by gentle, golden eyed inhabitants stuck with me for decades. And rereading  this book has recharged those beautiful dreams.

Rating: Try It, You’ll Like It
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I was sad that John Allison decided to bring his long-running Scary Go Round to a close. But I was delighted to discover that his new strip, Bad Machinery, is every bit as charming. Not only that, it contains some of the characters from the original strip, along with a group of great new characters.

I think you’ll have no trouble getting into Bad Machinery, though the longer you read it, the more rewarding it is. You can enjoy individual strips for their little touches and witty dialogue, but it works better when you get to know everyone and their bizarre situations.

Allison took a big chance with the change from Scary Go Round. He’d built a cast of eccentric and appealing characters and thrown them into all sorts of madness. Camping holidays in Wales interrupted by bears, a journey to Atlantis that breaks the prime directive (a little Star Trek reference there), wars between charity shops and antique shops, and more. You really have to read it to believe it. A great comedy strip with great characters.

Bad Machinery takes place in the same fictional Yorkshire town of Tackleford, England. We’ve jumped forward several years, and though we see some of the Scary Go Round cast in the new roles time has cast them in, the main characters are school children. They’re shaping up into a very appealing cast, and the idea of  pitting two groups of wannabe detectives/problem solvers against one another is very promising. The main cast seem very carefully placed on that cusp between fearing and fancying the opposite sex, which seems the very best place to stage a battle of the sexes.

The general haplessness of these kids is also wonderful, and wonderfully believable. While the situations might become surreal, there’s something very believable when two of the girls are locked in a shed and don’t have a phone on them because it’s “for emergencies.”

Like Hex Libris this is a story comic, so if you follow my strip, you might really enjoy this one. Please, just don’t enjoy it so much that you leave me for it. You can see other comics, just please come back to me.