Fourtold

And now, book talk—Michael Stone’s Fourtold, to be precise, a collection of four dark and strange and lovely novellas.

There’s a subtlety to his style, a disarming straightforwardness (not to be mistaken for simplicity) that makes you think you know what you can expect from these stories. You can’t– not to ruin the surprise. You think you’re getting something easy to digest, but it’s building these opulent castles in your mind while you’re carried off by the story. I don’t know where he learned this trick, but if he could bottle it and sell it, I’d buy a whole case or three.

His characters are odd, and in their oddity immensely true-to-life—not the kind of sculptures that unnerve you by being a little too perfectly human, but the kind that you never notice aren’t real in the first place. They have all the bumps and scrapes and wrinkles, and you come to know them almost as if by accident. He’s made it somehow plausible that it’s my next door neighbor with the mouth in his forehead and the trip to a particular clinic, or chewing (yuk!) ex tabs to keep the sleep disorders at bay. They’re flawed and sometimes ridiculous, and I cared very much about what would happen to the surprisingly brave Solomon Barley, desperate Kasper Clark, and all the others. That’s the most important thing for me when reading—if I don’t care about the people you can have the most brilliant plot in the world and I won’t get through it. No worries here on either count.

And I laughed at the most unexpected moments. The novellas, serious though their themes are, and uniformly dark, still refuse to take themselves completely seriously. I’ve read a lot of new books this year, but this is the one I would be sorry to have missed.

A few little words about each, then, to round this off—I’ll steer away from explaining too much of what they’re about; you can get excellent reviews at Book Smugglers or Cate Gardner’s awesome blog that have done that better than I could.

San Ferry Ann

Displaced WW1 ex-pats, medicine man and fire eater—this one is prime example of how oddities of character are made endearing without a reader knowing what’s just happened. A series of strange events and meetings propel massive character evolution here. This also has to be one of my favorite titles of all time, I think, for a worthy tale from a weird place.

The Reconstruction of Kasper Clark

A story about a man with a mouth in his forehead, and adventures in reconstruction at one crazy clinic. Oh the allegory I could make of this one if I were only a little more pretentious! I got entirely too much enjoyment out how truly bizarre this one was—and I don’t mean the kind of bizarre that’s trying too hard to be edgy, I mean the kind of bizarre we’ve all seen in our dreams, but never quite articulate properly.

The Terra Cotta Warrior

As you might expect from the title, there’s a bust up with one of the Emperor’s tomb guardians involved. This one has some of the most simultaneously terrifying and hilarious action-packed visuals I’ve ever read, I’m totally convinced. Two words for you: polo mallet. I kept laughing and thinking it was terrible to laugh at this horrific series of events. And that’s what makes it so much fun.

The Lemon Man

This one made my heart pound. When our esteemed author learned of my sleep issues, he said I’d like this one; he was right, it’s my favorite of the four. Narcolepsy, sleep paralysis, and heaven. It’s honest, it’s scary, it’s beyond strange, and when I was done I felt like someone had just beaten the hell out of me. Which sounds like an odd thing to say as a compliment, but I do mean it as such, and violently.

Something really interesting, too: everyone who reads it seems to have a different favorite. I think that speaks to the overall awesome of the collection, don’t you?

There’s a paperback release on the horizon for this one, and you can keep tabs on it over at the author’s blog, where he’s just announced a contest to win a free autographed copy. I also recommend this telling (and often hilarious) interview from Book Smugglers, if you’re not already convinced that you need this book. Or even if you are.

(I totally want the Lemon Man prequel/sequel, personally.)

Hm, I was going to talk about some steampunk too, but I’ve gone on quite enough for one day. Breathe your sigh of relief, my friends. Enjoy the silence while it lasts.

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Now playing: Franz Ferdinand – Ulysses
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