‘In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland…’ states the dust jacket for Stone Mattress, her latest collection of short stories. Let me start by saying that they are not kidding around…

In this collection, Atwood presents a cautionary assortment of lives lived and loves lost. They are tales of the doomed, both virtuous and unredeemable, of nasty scheming and back stabbing, of people whose lives have been shattered through carelessness or animosity. They are catalogues of hurts, small and large, and examples of the character that might be built from such events.

Three of the nine tales are interlinked, offering different perspectives on a shared chapter in the lives of the same group of people. The events of their time together have affected the course of each life and preoccupy their thoughts in the present day.

The six remaining works range in subject matter from the macabre to the melancholic. The fourth presents the case of a young woman who is a medical anomaly, living in a small village amongst people who view her as a monster. In the fifth, a recently divorced and opportunistic man seeks adventure.  The sixth tells of a trio of friends who believe that a violent and charismatic woman from their past has reincarnated as one of the group’s pet dog. The seventh is a Poe-like tale of an impulsive contract between student housemates which restricts the success of one. And in the final tale, a group of senior citizens living in an aged care home become the focus of a terrorist group. As can be clearly seen here, dark subject matter and dark humour abound.

As a group, these stories deal with themes of ageing, frailty, social stigmas, isolation – chosen and imposed – and small worlds. A common thread lies in the motif of imminent or sudden death. All of the characters are facing death in some form: their own mortality, the death of a friend or loved one, the end of love, putting to death old grievances, or even murder.

Another theme underpinning the action lies in the character’s motivation. They have all reached some sort of crisis point –either inevitable or beyond their control. For some, this is due to an imposed condition like disease, impairment, or the effects of time, which then affects their actions. For others, their own characters have led them to a moment of action which defines the framework of their lives. Some view their situation with self-pity, while others are stoic in the extreme, but all are very self-focussed and inward-looking.

Each tale has that atmosphere of danger, the slightly skewed vision and fatalistic creepiness that makes for a true dark tale. Surprisingly, there are also moments of bright optimism and the sort of ‘blinkers-off’ humour that develops when life is stripped of all its romantic trappings. A sense of seeing things as they really are, through the illusions that people conjure. Examples of this may be found in the characters’ observations of life and their own situation, or of the foibles and actions of others.

So, why has Atwood chosen to call them ‘tales’ rather than ‘stories’? In her Acknowledgements, she refers to this collection as evoking ‘the world of the folk tale’ as opposed to a story, which implies that the events take place ‘within the boundaries of social realism.’ To me, her delineation between the two terms best describes the overall allegorical flavour of these dark sagas, peopled by narcissists, braggarts, and plotters of nefarious deeds.

I’m ashamed to admit that this is the first of Margaret Atwood’s books that I have read, and I feel horribly unqualified to review it. So look no further than the praise on the back cover from Germaine Greer, Michael Ondaatje, and John Updike for an idea of her milieu.

But if, like me, you are coming to this book from purely a punter’s perspective, what I can say with certainty is this: Margaret Atwood writes exceptionally well. Her prose is economical and yet it reads like the most intricate lace. How she manages to weave in so many details and still make it seem uncluttered was both a mystery and a joy to me. The wonderful and varied atmosphere of tension throughout showcases her deft control of the pacing.

I would place Stone Mattress as being accessible to any reader with the exception of younger teens, for whom the subject matter may be beyond their experience of life.

As parables of age and loss, these tales work extremely well. They force you to consider the ‘stuffing’ of life – the petty, often pointless views and opinions that fill up lives and amount to nothing in the end. Stone Mattress confronts the reader with the sad truth that by the time most people realise this it is usually too late. Most wisdom is learned in hindsight, which can be either blessing or curse.

 

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a masterful work of speculative fiction, which recollects an unnamed narrator’s childhood, which he is reminded of upon visiting a property known as the Hempstock Farm.

The novel relies on a framing narrative where the narrator is driving around the town where he grew up. He is inexplicably drawn to the property where his childhood home once stood, and then further along the lane to the Hempstock Farm and the pond that his friend Lettie had referred to as ‘her ocean’.

Framing narratives that surround a recollection generally work to instil confidence in the reader that the characters will remain safe from harm within those memories. However, Gaiman manages to destabilise this belief as events unfold, successfully creating discomfort and mystery for the audience. This destabilisation is increased by the unreliability of the narrator.

There are several factors contributing to the unreliability of this text’s unnamed narrator. Firstly, the fact that he isn’t given a name works to distance him from the reader and makes it more difficult to trust his narrative. Anonymity can sometimes give a person the freedom to be honest without judgement, but can also cause a person to lack the accountability required for them to tell the whole truth. This uncertainty is combined with the idea that many decades have passed between the narration and the narrated, and the impact of time can cause memories to shift and change. The story is told predominantly from the perspective of a child, and the memories of a child are often skewed by a misconception of time and space. The narration is made more unreliable still through the recurring theme of memory; it is highlighted that different people remember situations differently, and the inference that the Hempstocks have the power to change and manipulate time to suit themselves makes it difficult to determine what actually happened and what has been altered. The unnamed narrator has duplicate memories of some events, so it’s impossible to determine which are the ‘true’ events and which were changed, or didn’t happen at all.

The contrast between adult and child in this text is apparent through the shift of time and also through language use. Characterisation is achieved through the language utilised within the narration and dialogue. The Hempstock family has a slightly different dialect than the unnamed narrator and his family, and this is different again to the language used by Ursula, the opal miner, and other secondary characters. This highlights the age difference between characters, as well as their differing social contexts. It also works to separate the unnamed narrator in the framing narrative to him as a child in the recollections, while showing similarities between the Hempstock woman that he meets at the farm and those in his memories, adding to the mystery of who the Hempstocks are and how long they have been at Hempstock Farm.

Mystery is an important element in this text and is introduced through the strange, unexplained and magical themes. More importantly however, the mystery is continued through the questions that remain half-answered or entirely unanswered, even after the novel is finished. Throughout the book, it’s accepted that certain areas and people have magical properties or inexplicable traits, and the importance of these elements is described without their origins being explicitly stated for the reader. In this novel, Gaiman refuses to hold the reader’s hand, revealing the idea of different worlds, immortality and a magical ocean without truly explaining how or why these things exist, or if they were really any more than the fantasies of a child with a passion for reading about and creating stories.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a magical tale, with setting descriptions and characters that transport the reader to the lane where the unnamed narrator and the Hempstocks once lived. But its these mysteries and unanswered questions that truly cause this narrative to linger with the audience and encourage a second read-through.

I was thrilled to learn FableCroft Publishing had picked up Book Three in Jo Anderton’s Veiled World Trilogy – Guardian.

I’d already read and loved books one and two– Debris and Suited—and was really looking forward to finding out how Anderton would manage to tie up such a complex storyline. But before I begin, a little disclaimer–I’m intentionally vague with this review. Being the last in the series, it’s all too easy to drop spoiler-bombs for the first two books, and these stories are far too good for that.

The Veiled World trilogy is big. I don’t necessarily mean in page numbers (though they’re all decent sized books, just not door-stops), I mean in the sheer scope of story. I’ve mentioned before that Anderton is a master world-builder, and she well and truly proves it here in the final instalment when protagonist Tanyana begins to slide across the veils–or through the doors–to even more worlds: worlds that are still connected to the one she shares in Movac-under-Keeper with Kichlan and her Debris collection team–Tanyana’s home.

As with Suited, Jo Anderton kicks this novel off with a deft recap of the last book. Rather than a “Previously…in The Veiled Worlds” type of summary, she manages to give the reader swift and unique catch-up by means of a report from a character whose thoughts we don’t usually get much of. Not only is this a clever tool to jog the reader’s memory, but it places the story smack into what we once believed was nothing more than the mythology of the Veiled Worlds.

In my review of Suited, I wrote about the fantastic character development from book one to two. So many novels with complex world building drop the ball when it comes to giving the reader characters they can really care about. Anderton has again pushed further than I expected. I felt comfortable with both Tanyana and her supporting cast–maybe too comfortable–and loved the way I was propelled forward alongside the characters as they were forced to keep moving, keep fighting, with little more than hope to keep them going. The Veiled World trilogy is written at a frantic pace, and the character development keeps up with the plot. These are people who can’t be unchanged for what they have seen and endured, both mentally and physically (oh, the physical!) Even after a long break between reading books two and three, I slipped straight back into an emotional investment in Tanyana and…and I’m so not going to say who else (I did say no spoilers).

Tanyana herself undergoes the biggest changes, and it is her strength and growth of character that impressed me most. Over the course of three books, she has grown from a talented and privileged member of society (though maybe a little too privileged?), to scraping the bottom of that same culture, to becoming the strong and deserving champion.

I felt Guardian was more science fiction than fantasy, and definitely more cyber than anything else. This is a little change from the first two books, though the mythological elements still hold this story together at the end of the day. Jo Anderton slips the reader information like jellybeans (or Lindt chocolate–whichever is your poison), only the smallest morsel at a time, which makes it hard for the type of reader who likes to problem solve ahead of time. I found the author to have great control over what she wanted us to know and when we could know it.

My single frustration with Guardian was with the evil Puppet Men. As antagonists, I found them to be a little too nebulous–though that could well have been Anderton’s intention, as I’m sure Tanyana felt the same.

There’s tragedy, relief, and still plenty of ‘a-ha!’ moments. I’ll give fair warning…there will be tears, so have the tissues handy. After three books, it’s impossible not to lose it a little when a story like this comes to an end. For this reason, even though Guardian could possibly be read as a stand-alone novel, to get the most from it, I recommend reading Debris and Suited first if you haven’t already done so.

 

Guardian

Book Three of the Veiled Worlds Trilogy

By Jo Anderton

Fablecroft Publishing 2014

ISBN – Print: 9780992284442 (RRP: $16.99)

ISBN – ebook: 9780992284459 (RRP: $7.99)