Alembical: "Harvest"

The third story in Alembical is from James Van Pelt, "Harvest". The story opens with the lines,

I bought Neil Young's Harvest CD on Friday, the day Merle Meecham killed both his parents. It was a mistake.

The narrator goes on to discuss why the mistake was purchasing the CD, not the Meecham boy murdering his parents. The killing almost feels like afterthought, except that the murder puts the reader on alert to stick through the mundanity.

"Harvest" follows Graham (our narrator, first person perspective) and his two friends, Linda and Rachel, as they discuss the killing just like everyone else in school. The friends talk about it and we get a sense of the town and of Merle. Linda is a Christian, Rachel a bit of a pagan with an interest in seances and contacting the dead.

There is not a strong supernatural element to the story, though it does crop up briefly a couple of times.

I wonder if a working knowledge of Neil Young's music and the song "Harvest" in particular would not add an extra layer of resonance to the story. It might. I don't have that knowledge, so i can't say for sure.

Regardless, "Harvest" meanders into Graham doing his own investigation of what happened to Merle and why that boy who was briefly was Graham's friend killed his parents. Everything in the story feels appropriate, that these are things real teenagers might do. "Harvest" comes across as authentic and compelling. Readers will want to know what happens next and readers will care about Graham and his friendships. At least, I did.

Mr. Van Pelt does an excellent job telling this story. It may not quite reach the heights of "America, Such as She Is", but it is easily the second best story in Alembical.

"Road Dogs", by Norman Partridge

Does telling the reader what kind of story “Road Dogs” is spoil the surprise of discovering what kind of story it is? Would knowing up front give a different expectation and reading experience than if one did not know?

I think it might, so with that tease, go read “Road Dogs” from Norman Partridge. The story is up over at Subterranean and is well worth checking out.

To give a brief overview, a man who is estranged from his sister returns home when he is notified that his sister was murdered. Gary believes that his sister was killed by her boyfriend Kale. The police claim it was an accident. Gary’s ex-girlfriend doesn’t want him to get involved and would rather he let the police handle it. But Gary can’t, because he knows it was Kale.

That’s the set up. What Norman Partridge does with “Road Dogs” is not to be missed. Top to bottom, the entire story has an edge to it, the characters an air of hardness, of violence in the past and promised for the future. It’s a setting that you would not want to walk into, except from the safety of being on the other side of the page. Everyone else is at risk.

There is set up, an "oh shit" moment, and then violence.

It is dark and it is dangerous and it is good.

Which, having read his World Fantasy Award nominated Dark Harvest, is exactly what one would expect from Norman Partridge.

World Fantasy Awards 2007 - reading updates, nothing much really changes

I’ve knocked a few more World Fantasy Award nominees off and here is what I’m thinking right now:

Novel: The Lies of Locke Lamora. I’ve now read Lisey’s Story and Lies, so I’m not really on firm ground here. Lisey’s Story was a bit of a disappointment and despite the WFA nomination I would suggest Lisey’s Story will be remembered as Minor King, rather than Major King, but as we can imagine, I might be wrong about that. Still have no intention of reading the Gene Wolfe novel, but I would like to read the Kushner and the Valente. Will probably get to the Valente first since the Kushner is technically the second in a series, though I don’t think (but may be wrong) that I -need- to read the first entry. Regardless, Lies is one of my favorite reads of this year.

Novella: "Dark Harvest". This isn’t even close. “Map of Dreams” was far better than I had anticipated, “Botch Town” was...well...disappointing, and I never quite gave “Ghost Train” a fair shake because I was burnt out on the Diogenes Club by the time I reached this story in the collection. This leaves the Wilce novella, which is in the forthcoming entry in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (as well as in another Year’s Best collection that I saw at my local library). Despite this, Dark Harvest is still an outstanding piece of fiction, one I would put up in the novel category over the thrice as long Lisey’s Story.

Short Story: “The Way He Does It”. This time I’ve read three of the five, with the other two, I believe, in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. I didn’t like “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” when I read it as a Hugo nominee and I have no interest in revisiting it now. “A Siege of Cranes” from Twenty Epics did not capture me at all. If the WFA folks are busy nominating stories from Twenty Epics they should have chosen Mary Robinette Kowal’s “The Bound Man” from that same anthology. I know I’m biased towards Kowal, but that’s because her fiction is damn good. I love the title of Christopher Rowe’s story, so I hope it is good when I get the chance to read it. I wrote about Jeffrey Ford’s story before and this is a Ford that I can get behind.

Novel:
Lisey's Story, Stephen King
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, Catherynne M. Valente
Soldier of Sidon, Gene Wolfe

Novella:
"Botch Town", Jeffrey Ford (The Empire of Ice Cream, Golden Gryphon)
"The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train", Kim Newman (The Man from the Diogenes Club, MonkeyBrain)
Dark Harvest, Norman Partridge (Cemetery Dance)
"Map of Dreams", M. Rickert (Map of Dreams, Golden Gryphon)
"The Lineaments of Gratified Desire", Ysabeau S. Wilce (F&SF 7/06)

Short Fiction:
"The Way He Does It", Jeffrey Ford (Electric Velocipede 10 Spring '06)
"Journey Into the Kingdom", M. Rickert (F&SF 5/06)
"A Siege of Cranes", Benjamin Rosenbaum (Twenty Epics, All-Star Stories)
"Another Word for Map Is Faith", Christopher Rowe (F&SF 8/06)
"Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)", Geoff Ryman (F&SF 10-11/06)

Dark Harvest, by Norman Partridge

Dark Harvest
Norman Partridge
Cemetery Dance: 2006

Holy Shit! I knew Dark Harvest was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the Novella category, but I certainly did not expect it to be this outstanding! Midway through the novel(la) I wanted to pick up the book, wave it around, throw it at people and insist that they read it right this very moment, even before I had a chance to finish it.

Here's the deal. It's 1963 in a small Midwestern town. Doesn't matter which one. They're all the same, except this: Five days before Halloween all the boys between 16 and 19 are locked in their rooms. Five days. They are fed nothing but orange juice. The older boys knows what is coming. For the sixteen year olds all they know are the stories, the legend:

You can't really blame him, can you? I mean, think about it. Remember when you were a little kid, the first time you noticed your older brother locked up tight five days and nights during the last week of October? Remember the first time you heard that the whole deal had something to do with a pumpkin-headed scarecrow that runs around on Halloween night? It wasn't exactly easy to believe that one no matter how scare you were, was it?

Not until you experienced it yourself, of course.

Until you were the guy locked up in your bedroom.

Hot damn! The narration here is reminiscent of a Joe Lansdale or Stephen King at his leanest and meanest best. It's all Partridge. He's not telling a story, he's driving it home to your living room and making you live it, feel it.

This may be a Halloween story and one which should be read with the lights turned low as the clock is about to strike midnight, but it's a chilling damn story any time of the year. Dark Harvest weaves a couple of viewpoints together in this suspenseful and World Fantasy Award nominated novella.

Dark Harvest is an outstanding publication, a tight, explosive story laced with violence and fear and small town ways. Dark Harvest is filled with horror and regret, secrets and lies.

Thank goodness Dark Harvest picked up the World Fantasy Award nomination. Otherwise, I would likely have missed it and my reading would have been the poorer for it. Not often do I read something and wish like hell I wrote it. I bet a lot of professional ad published writers read Dark Harvest and thought the same thing.

Read it. Now.