20 stories (from Banshee, Copper Nickel, etc) in 3 sections There's running text between the stories. Some of the fears in the sequences were independently published.
Home
- Last one to leave please turn off the lights - prefaced by a note saying that the author wrote the book in an isolated Icelandic retreat. It has a section for each of 4 fears - First: making houses out of a tooth, hair, fingernails, then any other spare parts. Second: finding a flat unpleasant and wearing a dolls house over her head. Third: having a baby to solve agoraphobia - “She needed to be able to touch the sides of her world“ - the grown child bricking her in. Fourth: clearing her grandfather's house out, spreading his ashes which are gold flakes that cover the items in his house so it's difficult to leave.
- Things my wife and I found hidden in our house - She and wife Alice move into the house of Alice’s late gran. They find various kelpie-related objects
- My house is out where the lights end - She visits the farmyard where she grew up. It's abandoned. Each room stirs memories, though she doesn't go down to the cellar - "she's not a f**king moron". Her father told her that Nature is dangerous. He sang to the sunflowers. She digs under a crucifix that was a scarecrow, finding teeth, hair and bones.
- Sleep, you black-eyed pig, fall into a deep pit of ghosts - Ellen visits friend Jeanette in her new, isolated Finland house. In the night there are rumoured to be creatures that surround people. Jeanette lives with Ash, destroying Ellen's hopes. Ellen waits in the night. (No)
- Girls are always hungry when all men are bite-size - The pre-story text says "My wife is not my first reader any more ... She hasn't heard anything I've said for a long time". A mother dresses up her daughter Ellie in Victorian clothes to lead a seance. This time a hot guy is opposite her. We switch to his PoV - he's there to expose her tricks. Cherries appear from thin air. He pays for private sessions. Each time the house seems smaller. He can't discover the tricks, even when he gets her to sit on his lap in her underwear. Even a full cavity investigation reveals nothing. At the end Ellie regains control "I swallow him in one go. he doesn't even touch the sides of my throat ... Around me the house falls silent". (The best piece yet)
- Birds fell from the sky and each one spoke in your voice - Sidney's old house was burnt down. He's the first resident in a new estate. He fusses with curtains. He sees his reflection in the night window. His shop sells things from 1990 to 1999. A man comes in asking for an old Nokia. The shop has no phones. Sidney's little brother was stolen from the baby sitter's house. The family had been given a phone to receive tip-offs from the public. The man comes into the shop again, talking about phones that have contacted the dead. Next time he comes in, Sidney gives him an old phone. Sidney had hidden from the baby-stealer behind curtains. (I like this too)
- The city is full of opportunities and full of dogs - She lives in Spain, working as head librarian in a library with no other workers and no books. There's an empty glass case which one day will contain the body of a famous writer. She speaks poor Spanish. She wakes in the mornings with smudges on her skin. Dogs and men follow her. One morning everyone has gone.
The child
- My body cannot forget your body - The pretext says that the narrator and her wife tried for a baby. She's scared of babies. The story has a section for each of 4 fears - First: Her stretching stomach cracks open. It's stitched shut. A little finger appears. It's stitched shut again. Second: A baby can be born in many parts - several pieces of fruit for example. Third: a baby born with no skin. A baby made of glass. Fourth: Milk is poured into Colette. She has 12 babies. She's inseminated with petals, then diamonds. More babies. Alison is inseminated with green milk, then teeth, then livers. Alison only loves the final baby.
- Stranger blood is sweeter - Sarah wonders where Juno goes in the night. She wakes with bruises. One night she follows her to a place where women fight. Sarah asks Juno why she watches and fights. She doesn't say. Next night when Juno sneaks out, Sarah follows - "She goes out into the shadows and she find the thing she wants. She fights it. And she f**ks it. And she eats it."
- Good good good, nice nice nice - War has been over for 2 years. Sabrina collects pods - like mermaids purses. She opens one. A baby is inside. It will become a soldier. She has a 10 month old baby at home, Jamie, who is always crying. She shuts him up with whisky. One night she takes Jamie to the pods. She finds an empty one.
- The only time I think of you is all the time - The narrator's mother died young. Brigitte is a presence, a ghost. The narrator can only escape her by dipping in the dirty garden pond. It's such a relief. She holds herself underwater. That's how her mother died.
- We can make something grow between the mushrooms and the snow - Richard and Caroline make notes about houses - one made of mushrooms (where she got pregnant), in a wood, a cave, bird house, island, and finally on a glacier (which she likes)
- Half sick of shadows - Parents and a child visit a theme park. They leave the child behind. Back at the car, they wonder why the car-park is strewn with dolls. (No)
- The only thing I can't tell you is why - Thomasin has given birth. She repeatedly thinks that the baby is dead though he cries, feeds, etc. Her husband does much of the childcare. At the playground she tells other mothers that their children are dead. She watches her son go to university, marry, buy a house, knowing all the while that he's dead (No)
The past
- I'll eat you up I love you so - The pre-text says that there was a baby but there isn't now. Nor is there a house or wife any more. The past is consoling. The story has a section for each of 4 fears - First: While Evangeline was pregnant with the male narrator she replaced the photos in the house by symbols of transformation. Then for the narrator's sake she ate insects that symbolised transformation. After the boy was bullied at school, insects helped the wounds heal. Then insects ate the boy to feed their own young. Second: Clarice was made to eat a gold apple each day by her child-carer, Mrs Dainty. After being twice widowed, Clarice changed her name to Mrs Dainty. She becomes a child-carer. She gives the child wax ball wrapped in gold. Third: Veronica is pregnant. Her husband's a doctor. She eats horsehair, giving birth to Seth and a hairball, Tawny. She preferred Tawny to leaky, smell Seth. Seth plugged his orifices with bits of Tawny until his mother liked him. But he missed Tawny. Fourth: a child's so cute it's eaten by relatives.
- The world's more full of weeping than you can understand - Mostly footnotes. Dorothy sees a show on a pier where a woman's cut in half and not put back together.
- Sleep long, sleep tight, it is best to wake up late - A questionnaire about sleep and night panics
- Exquisite corpse - Delilah puts make-up on stationary Stokeley. Stokeley wants to reciprocate but Delilah does herself while they do magazine questionnaires together. They visit an museum of statues with real hair from corpses. When Stokeley was 10, her mother died after being in a coma for 2 months, her hairs still growing. Her father's faeces stink the house. She doesn't want hair. She thinks of Snow White in her glass coffin. She plays at vampires with her friends. During a sleepover Stokeley's friends see she's not breathing. They call her father. One of them revives her.
- Sweeter than the tongue I remember - In the pretext she loses track of time in Iceland. In the story, she's single, vividly dreaming of men. She tried to avoid sleep when the sex became non-censensual. Her friend recommends a doctor who dates her and takes her home for sex. She moves in. While he's out, her dream man knocks at the door.
- Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by - Drunk, she's snatched by a man and driven away. She wakes in a well. He hoses her to clean her of mud and drugs, and takes her to his house every so often. Having learnt not to be submissive, she eventually gives up fighting. One day he lets her go. He has to push her out of the kitchen. She tries to flag down cars. They avoid her. Eventually a car stops. It's him. She gets in.
I liked it more than I expected. The pieces weren't too long for me, and there were sufficient ideas to hold my interest (e.g. the glass coffin for the famous author) even when the story as a whole didn't grab me. Among the themes is querying the significance that should be attached to dreams and other non-conscious experiences.
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