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juushikaTitle: The Ammonite Violin & Others
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Published: Burton: Subterranean Press, 2010
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 108,032
Text Number: 312
Read Because: fan of the author, purchased from Amazon
Review: In twenty short stories, Kiernan takes her reader from stranded selkies to serial killers, through metamorphoses to an imprecise, overwhelming brush against the paranormal. The Ammonite Violin & Others is a collection damned by its narrow theme, but ultimately none the worse for it. A certain amount of repetition is unavoidable in single-author collections, but these stories share more than that: in theme, context, sometimes even in detail (such as delivery tropes and physical descriptions), each story resembles the others. This is partially the fault of arrangement, which places stories so that each echos or draws on an aspect of the one that proceeds it no matter how different they may ultimately be. As a result, the collection flows to excess and the stories blur together—especially in the first half, which makes for a weak start. In large part, however, it's that this is a carefully selected group of similar stories from a single author, and their shared focus can't help but grow redundant.
Yet it's a theme worth collecting. It's about metamorphosis, as a loss of self via a transformation into another, as an unavoidable result of encountering the Other. It's about sexuality as a transformative force, about sexuality as a uniting force even when the individuals involved are transformed; about the enticement of danger, and the erotic aspect of darkness. It's about identity as defined by form, and changed by transformation, and transformed by the sexual relations that unite individuals. It's lush, dark, disgusting, erotic, violent, and lyrical. It digs claws into the edges of darkness, but sees through the haze of a dream. It's often a glimpse, a vignette; it often overlooks resolution to see instead the delicate, intense moments that come before. (Jeff VanderMeer's introduction is overblown and congradulatory, but nonetheless a powerful and apt investigation of the theme.) Story by story, The Ammonite Violin & Others is often strong and occasionally devastating; the titular story may be the best, but I was also fond of "The Voyeur in the House of Glass," "Skin Game," and "Anamnesis, or the Sleepless Nights of Léon Spilliaert." If there was ever a collection worth taking story by story, one a sitting and perhaps two a day, this is it. It's only as a collection that it suffers—and so it's worth owning, and I highly recommend it, but it's not without fault.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Published: Burton: Subterranean Press, 2010
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 108,032
Text Number: 312
Read Because: fan of the author, purchased from Amazon
Review: In twenty short stories, Kiernan takes her reader from stranded selkies to serial killers, through metamorphoses to an imprecise, overwhelming brush against the paranormal. The Ammonite Violin & Others is a collection damned by its narrow theme, but ultimately none the worse for it. A certain amount of repetition is unavoidable in single-author collections, but these stories share more than that: in theme, context, sometimes even in detail (such as delivery tropes and physical descriptions), each story resembles the others. This is partially the fault of arrangement, which places stories so that each echos or draws on an aspect of the one that proceeds it no matter how different they may ultimately be. As a result, the collection flows to excess and the stories blur together—especially in the first half, which makes for a weak start. In large part, however, it's that this is a carefully selected group of similar stories from a single author, and their shared focus can't help but grow redundant.
Yet it's a theme worth collecting. It's about metamorphosis, as a loss of self via a transformation into another, as an unavoidable result of encountering the Other. It's about sexuality as a transformative force, about sexuality as a uniting force even when the individuals involved are transformed; about the enticement of danger, and the erotic aspect of darkness. It's about identity as defined by form, and changed by transformation, and transformed by the sexual relations that unite individuals. It's lush, dark, disgusting, erotic, violent, and lyrical. It digs claws into the edges of darkness, but sees through the haze of a dream. It's often a glimpse, a vignette; it often overlooks resolution to see instead the delicate, intense moments that come before. (Jeff VanderMeer's introduction is overblown and congradulatory, but nonetheless a powerful and apt investigation of the theme.) Story by story, The Ammonite Violin & Others is often strong and occasionally devastating; the titular story may be the best, but I was also fond of "The Voyeur in the House of Glass," "Skin Game," and "Anamnesis, or the Sleepless Nights of Léon Spilliaert." If there was ever a collection worth taking story by story, one a sitting and perhaps two a day, this is it. It's only as a collection that it suffers—and so it's worth owning, and I highly recommend it, but it's not without fault.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
