After reading Tender Morsels, I was determined to hunt down more of Margo Lanagan's work, and the library was good enough to supply me with some of her short story collections. I picked up this one first for the simple reason that it had a medal on the cover (2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards), thus proving that I am easily swayed by awards and other cheap tricks.
'Singing My Sister Down' has become quite well known; it's a quiet, ruthless story that has real overtones of horror for me. A young boy and his family head to the tar pits for a ceremonial picnic and singing session during the hours of his older sister's ceremonial execution. Lanagan's skill in building up a society that has alien customs but familiar interpersonal dynamics is displayed beautifully here, as the family's bickering and love and shared grief are played out against the strange, slow, slow ritual of death.
I found 'My Lord's Man' to be the weakest story of the bunch, not because it isn't well written but because it doesn't have as much of a narrative as the others. It paints a clear picture of three people and the complicated ways in which they relate to one another, judge one another, and forgive one another. But it feels -- not quite incomplete, but lost. As though it needs to be part of a larger whole.
'Red Nose Day', on the other hand, was my favourite. The story of a pair of assassins that slowly expands and expands into something weirder and deeper, it's got the perfect balance of tension and instant strong characterisation. It's a truly bizarre, chillingly imagined tale that reads like Terry Pratchett by way of Stephen King; you're not sure if it's a joke, but you certainly don't feel like laughing. In fact, you feel like backing away gently and hoping it doesn't notice.
When I was quite young my grandfather, who's spent a lot of his life in places like Sri Lanka and India and Bangladesh, wrote and illustrated a wonderful book for me, from the point of view of a labour elephant who had a lot of strange adventures with his handler. It was the first thing I thought of when reading 'Sweet Pippit', which tells the story of a group of elephants in search of their favourite human, who has been arrested and taken away from them. Once again Lanagan mixes recognisable human culture with the fantastical creation that is the elephants' customs, personalities, and powers. And I think that if elephants had names for themselves, they would absolutely be things like Booroondoonhooroboom.
I'm still not sure what to think of 'House of the Many'. Without a doubt it's incredibly well put together, once again abandoning normal fantasy tropes for the scarier and closer-to-home details of a cultish group of people controlled by a single man, seen through the eyes of a small boy. (Margo Lanagan, like Diana Wynne Jones, seems to have a fondness for child narrators.) But I think I was hoping it would lead up to something bigger.
I really liked 'Wooden Bride' but again felt that it could be more effective if it was part of something longer. Maybe because the idea of it -- 'bridehood' as an event that has nothing to do with men and everything to do with girls coming into their own, all the trappings of a wedding blurred into myth and meaningless ritual -- was something that made me yearn to see a wider context, instead of a short vignette that gives the bare bones of the concept and not much more.
'Earthly Uses' is a really fucking creepy story about a boy who lives with his abusive grandfather, and is sent to fetch an angel to heal his dying grandmother. Except 'angels', in this story, are definitely not the shining intermediaries we associate with the word. Gah. I still get shivers thinking about this one, which I suppose means it's a very effective piece of storytelling.
I let out a cheer when I worked out that 'Perpetual Light' was recognisably set in Australia; most of Lanagan's stories are set in unnamed and/or unrecognisable cultures, and there's a sad dearth of Australian urban fantasy or sci-fi in general. To be honest I'm still not entirely sure what parts of it are about -- I'd need to reread it, I think -- but there are definite themes of environmentalism and family, a much more science fiction feel than any of the other stories in the collection, and a kind of mild, dusty dystopia that I loved because it was based firmly in the NSW bush. I also thought the narrator, Daphne, was a great character. I would happily read novels worth of this particular world.
'Yowlinin' was another favourite of mine, largely for the narrator -- a half-wild girl abandoned by her village because her parents were killed, a girl fiercely proud of her independence and scornful of everyone else, but also with a bit of a crush on one of the village boys -- and partly because I think it had the most effective pacing and plot. Like 'Earthly Uses', it features the kind of magical creatures that you're likely to have nightmares about.
'Rite of Spring', about a boy who participates unwillingly in a harsh and dangerous ritual that is needed to bring about the start of spring, is another one that has a strong sense of myth to it, with the struggle of human beings against the grudging elements, and the idea that our rituals and beliefs have real consequences.
All in all, this collection left me with both a wild jealousy for Lanagan's powers of imagination and language, and a desire to snap up all her other books as soon as possible.
I found 'My Lord's Man' to be the weakest story of the bunch, not because it isn't well written but because it doesn't have as much of a narrative as the others. It paints a clear picture of three people and the complicated ways in which they relate to one another, judge one another, and forgive one another. But it feels -- not quite incomplete, but lost. As though it needs to be part of a larger whole.
'Red Nose Day', on the other hand, was my favourite. The story of a pair of assassins that slowly expands and expands into something weirder and deeper, it's got the perfect balance of tension and instant strong characterisation. It's a truly bizarre, chillingly imagined tale that reads like Terry Pratchett by way of Stephen King; you're not sure if it's a joke, but you certainly don't feel like laughing. In fact, you feel like backing away gently and hoping it doesn't notice.
When I was quite young my grandfather, who's spent a lot of his life in places like Sri Lanka and India and Bangladesh, wrote and illustrated a wonderful book for me, from the point of view of a labour elephant who had a lot of strange adventures with his handler. It was the first thing I thought of when reading 'Sweet Pippit', which tells the story of a group of elephants in search of their favourite human, who has been arrested and taken away from them. Once again Lanagan mixes recognisable human culture with the fantastical creation that is the elephants' customs, personalities, and powers. And I think that if elephants had names for themselves, they would absolutely be things like Booroondoonhooroboom.
I'm still not sure what to think of 'House of the Many'. Without a doubt it's incredibly well put together, once again abandoning normal fantasy tropes for the scarier and closer-to-home details of a cultish group of people controlled by a single man, seen through the eyes of a small boy. (Margo Lanagan, like Diana Wynne Jones, seems to have a fondness for child narrators.) But I think I was hoping it would lead up to something bigger.
I really liked 'Wooden Bride' but again felt that it could be more effective if it was part of something longer. Maybe because the idea of it -- 'bridehood' as an event that has nothing to do with men and everything to do with girls coming into their own, all the trappings of a wedding blurred into myth and meaningless ritual -- was something that made me yearn to see a wider context, instead of a short vignette that gives the bare bones of the concept and not much more.
'Earthly Uses' is a really fucking creepy story about a boy who lives with his abusive grandfather, and is sent to fetch an angel to heal his dying grandmother. Except 'angels', in this story, are definitely not the shining intermediaries we associate with the word. Gah. I still get shivers thinking about this one, which I suppose means it's a very effective piece of storytelling.
I let out a cheer when I worked out that 'Perpetual Light' was recognisably set in Australia; most of Lanagan's stories are set in unnamed and/or unrecognisable cultures, and there's a sad dearth of Australian urban fantasy or sci-fi in general. To be honest I'm still not entirely sure what parts of it are about -- I'd need to reread it, I think -- but there are definite themes of environmentalism and family, a much more science fiction feel than any of the other stories in the collection, and a kind of mild, dusty dystopia that I loved because it was based firmly in the NSW bush. I also thought the narrator, Daphne, was a great character. I would happily read novels worth of this particular world.
'Yowlinin' was another favourite of mine, largely for the narrator -- a half-wild girl abandoned by her village because her parents were killed, a girl fiercely proud of her independence and scornful of everyone else, but also with a bit of a crush on one of the village boys -- and partly because I think it had the most effective pacing and plot. Like 'Earthly Uses', it features the kind of magical creatures that you're likely to have nightmares about.
'Rite of Spring', about a boy who participates unwillingly in a harsh and dangerous ritual that is needed to bring about the start of spring, is another one that has a strong sense of myth to it, with the struggle of human beings against the grudging elements, and the idea that our rituals and beliefs have real consequences.
All in all, this collection left me with both a wild jealousy for Lanagan's powers of imagination and language, and a desire to snap up all her other books as soon as possible.
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