Grounded in familiar territory, Heather Birrell has created this incredibly tricky collection of stories that will either satiate or exhaust its audience. Other times, the stories put on the appearance of being completely and confusingly separate of each other while hiding their ties just below the surface. Sometimes, the authors make it extremely easy and connect the dots from story to story for you - every story might contain the same narrator ( Jesus' Son) every story may take place in the same town ( Volt) every story is a fantastical fable ( A Hollow Cube.).
One of the things I like most about reading short story collections is the hunt for the connections. Keep fighting the good fight and putting kick-ass literature out in front of our faces.ģ Stars - Recommended to fans of short stories that take a look inward and aren't always obvious Many thanks to Lazy Fascist Press for constantly feeding my addiction for challenging indie fiction. This goodreads review, by SP Miskowski, sums the collection up better than I could ever hope. Beware the enemy, even when it turns out to be you. It's one that doesn't take itself too seriously while at the same time impressing upon the reader not to take it too lightly. If you think A Pretty Mouth sounds like a lot of fun, it is. And the final story finds us knee-deep in Roman times where it all begins with the earliest Calipash, who has been shipwrecked on an island populated with strange barbarians, becoming the unfortunate recipient of this unshakable curse. A school aged Calipash and his band of bad-ass buddies appear in the title story, in which mad-scientist experiments and bawdy displays of power determine the fate of their hopeful classmate Henry. Then we've got the Bronte-like " The Hour of the Tortoise", a creepy Gothic Victorian tale of a young lady called back to the residence of a dying Calipash, who finds herself in possession of a strange trinket that binds her to the family mausoleum in the most unexpected way. So we've got Jeeves helping our twenty-seventh Lord Calipash to solve the perplexing problem of the strange sea creature that lives in the bowels of the hotel in which they are relaxing. And once I knew it was the actual Wodehouse men, the story took on a whole different meaning for me! But as I read on, and confessed my confusion to the story began to come into sharper focus and I quickly caught a whiff of what Molly was cooking up. How could I possibly know that when I'd never read one before? I just assumed Molly was poking fun at it by naming the valet after the famous savant manservant. Now, promise you won't laugh when I confess that I had no clue this was a sick twist on the ACTUAL Wodehouse stories. For example, the opening story, "Dolor-on-the-Downs", pairs its current (and financially floundering) Lord Calipash with, of all people, Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. Let me start by saying that the more you know about the literature for each time period Molly visits, the more fun you'll find yourself having and the more sting her satire will carry. Beginning at the end and working their way backwards through time, each story introduces us to a new generation of Lord Calipash's and slowly pieces together the curse that has dogged their bloodline for generations. Black magic and treachery abound in these creatively manipulative tales. In this collection of interconnected stories, we are forced to bear witness to the dark and twisted history of the high-class Calipash family. This time I was wowed and cowed by Molly Tanzer's A Pretty Mouth.
I've reviewed enough of their quirky, accessibly bizarre fiction to know that whatever they put out, I'm going to want - no, need - to get my greedy little hands on it. They've brought it before and will continue to bring it, forever and ever, amen. And this should not come as a surprise to anyone. Ĥ Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who enjoy sick twists on classic lit Many breweries have Pale Ales, so choose yourįavorite, and relax into I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin. The text doesn’t offer much in the way of whatĮxactly The Pale is, so I’ll pull from the name and offer Pale Ale as a suitable drinktrack for the Kiss Me, Judas -y parts of Iĭidn’t Mean to be Kevin. Judas – Will Christopher Baer’s Phineas Poe trilogy, which starts with Kiss Me, Judas, contains references to aĭrink simply called The Pale. Non-existent), the drink still carries enough weight in the world of the Hallucinogenic properties of Absinthe are grossly overstated (re: Story opens with a dreamlike awakening, something I would liken to the romance associated
However, by means of the name alone, I think an Old Fashioned would be a good drink to This makes anĪlcohol reference difficult. Gatsby – Prohibition reigns in the world of Nick Gatsby.
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