Reading Room – StoryADay

Casper by Gwen Kirby

It made me want to come back for more stories from this anthology…

The Reading Room is a log of my “writer-as-reader” reactions to the short stories I’m reading now.

The author captures the voice and interior voice of teenage girls really well. In this story three teens are working at a store that resells items from lost baggage — the major industry in their town (!).

These girls don’t work at the most popular lost bagagge store, the one that draws all the visitors. Their is a down-market, knock-off version of it.

Each girl has her own place in the social pecking order, her own dreams for the future, and all this unspools quite naturally.

Interestingly, Kirby ignores the common wisdom that a story has to have a strong point-of-view character and that shifts in perspective must be clearly offset; that an omniscient narrator is a no-no….and it works. I’m going to have to go back and read this again to see why.

OPENING LINES

Kirby is a master of pulling me into the story.

“The girls of the Unclaimed Baggage Dept—Greenleaf, Alabama’s second-best and only other unclaimed baggage story– found Casper in a lime green suitcase.”

Look at the details!! It’s not just a store, it’s the “Unclaimed Baggage Depot–Greenleaf, Alabama’s second best and only other unclaimed baggage store.” It’s not just a suitcase, it’s a lime green suitcase.

We don’t know what or who Casper is. We have to keep reading.

Imagine if this read

“One Monday morning in summer, the girls who worked at an unclaimed baggage store found a [SPOILER ALERT] taxidermized albino wallaby in a suitcase.”

Still an intriguing premise, but ho-hum execution. You’ll have to work MUCH harder to get me to keep reading.

THE MIDDLE

We zig zag between the girls’ hopes and dreams as they first figure out what to do with Casper and deal with the consequences of their actions.

Each scene builds up a stronger picture the girls, individually, and in relation to each other and their town.

CLIMAX AND RESOLUTION

….was a bit unexpected and I’m not sure how I feel about it. My favorite way to feel about a short story!

THE ENDING

Takes us solidly into the perspective of the girl who is most active in the climax, and gives us a really interesting perspective to chew on (from her point of view; her reaction to events) as we close the book or turn the page. I wouldn’t call it a ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ ending, but I was satisfied.

It made me want to come back for more stories from this anthology…but not yet. I want to savor this one for a moment.

Find this story in Sh*t Cassandra Saw by Gwen Kirby

[Reading Room] Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland

This collection is a great example of what modern speculative fiction can be: fascinating, compelling, peopled by sympathetic (and not-so sympathetic) characters; surprising and familiar, inspiring, filled with mystery and a sense of discovery for the reader…and I love it when stories are connected, so I enjoyed piecing together the connections between some of the stories in the collection.

[Reading Room] There’s No Such Place As Bedford Falls by Joanne Harris

The Reading Room is a series of posts analyzing short stories I have read, with a writer’s eye.

This Christmas story was first published in the UK’s The Telegraph newspaper in 2007.

Opening Line

It’s six in the morning, and Santa’s on the blink.

This certainly fulfills my need for an opening line to be intriguing. (The phrase ‘on the blink’, means ‘malfunctioning’ for those not raised in the UK!)

Of course, the story very quickly delivers on the line. The Santa in question is a light-up decoration (hooray, for a double-meaning for the phrase ‘on the blink’! I’m seeing blinking lights now). Continue reading “[Reading Room] There’s No Such Place As Bedford Falls by Joanne Harris”

[Reading Room] A List of Forty Seven Lies by Steven Fischer

I keep a spreadsheet of short stories I’ve read. I make a note of titles, authors, where I found the story and a short comment about the story, to make these posts easier.

My notes, on reading this story, simply say: “Wow”.

A List of Forty-Nine Lies is a pretty intriguing title, and the story delivers immediately.

My name is not Levi. I am not afraid. The machines that hover in swarms over the streets cannot read the thoughts inside my head.

I am not running from them. I have nothing to hide.

Continue reading “[Reading Room] A List of Forty Seven Lies by Steven Fischer”

[Reading Room] Needle In A Timestack by Robert Silverberg

Cute and slightly terrifying story of two men competing for the same woman, but this time they have the power to go back and change the past.

(Compare this to Geoffrey A Landis’s story where nothing the time-traveler did in the past could affect the future in any way.)

Silverberg does a great job of creating signposts for readers that make the effects of time travel seem almost mundane (one character tastes cotton in his mouth when the past has been changed, another gets a persistent twitch under the left eye…).

As writers today, we wouldn’t have a character stop to explain why the gadget in their pocket was buzzing (We wouldn’t write, “My phone buzzed again. It did that every time a friend send what we called a ‘text message’ from a similar device, over the wireless cell network…” No, we’d just say, “My phone buzzed. Alan again.”)

Similarly, these characters simply mention the significance of the sensation the first time and then use it in the story to signal to the reader that someone’s been time-traveling again.

It was nice to read a story with potentially disastrous technology that wasn’t completely dystopian. It did seem a little shallow at times, though, because I’m so used to ‘realistic’ takes on doomsday technologies in current stories. Not sure how I feel about that, being an upbeat and optimistic person who likes a laugh, but felt a little cheated by this story.

How Stories Age

It’s funny how stories age. I guess we can’t worry too much about that. We just have to write the best stories we can, and keep writing them as we change and age. Some of our work will survive. Some will become embarrassing. And that’s OK.

As something of a side note, it’s interesting to go back and read older short stories and find things I wasn’t expecting.

For example, I’ve never worried too much about the sex (or gender) of the person who wrote a story or of the main character. I’ve never worried too much about older social attitudes that we have, thankfully, left behind, showing up in stories where we couldn’t expect the author to have a more modern outlook.

But in spite of not going around looking for these nits to pick, I am increasingly impatient with stories in which the women are cardboard cut outs. I don’t know if I should curse Alison Bechdel for bringing it to my attention, or simply shrug and accept that there’s so much good writing out there no that DOESN’T fail the Bechdel test, that it’s OK for me to be more picky.

I’m not willing to cut myself off from a world of literary history, just because the writers weren’t inclusive (or not-horribly-racist), but I can’t seem to help having a niggling, deep down dissatisfaction when a good writer excludes half the population or is clueless about basic human dignity.

Again, I’m glad these stories were written, and I won’t not read them because they aren’t inclusive. The writers were working with what they had. Some were better than others. But me? I’m certainly becoming less likely to read and praise them just because somebody tells me I should.

Read this story in The Time Traveler’s Almanac

Do you worry about reader or posterity when you write? How do you feel about stores that have aged badly in one respect, while still having other features to recommend them? Join the discussion in the comments.

[Reading Room] Ripples In The Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis

I found this story in The Time Traveler’s Almanac, (Ann & Jeff Vandermeer, Ed).

This is one of the best time travel stories I’ve ever read, and I’m a huge fan of the sub-genre.

Although this story was first published in 1988, I haven’t seen anyone else treat time travel and it’s consequences like this. In fact I’m amazed no ones turned this into a script [1. Assuming they haven’t] (it’d be perfect for Black Mirror). Continue reading “[Reading Room] Ripples In The Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis”