Oct 19 2020

Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse

One of the things I was most impressed by in this first novel of Rebecca Roanhorse’s new epic fantasy series is how effortless it all feels. She’s created a brand new universe using the indigenous cultures of the Americas as its basis, and there isn’t a single moment of self-conscious telling instead of showing. It’s a wonderful repudiation of the default Euro-Mediterranean settings of most English-language adult epic fantasies, centering an under-explored/represented facet of world history in a way that feels natural, as if to show how perfectly suited the cultures are to this sort of interpretation, and how much we as readers have been missing out by not encouraging fantastic fiction from authors with roots in those traditions.

The next thing I was most impressed by was how our protagonists feel less like conventional heroes and more like real people with complex motivations just doing their best to survive their extraordinary circumstances while still remaining true to themselves and their beliefs. The two native Tovans, the Sun Priest Naranpa and the trained Shield Okoa, are the characters closest to being traditional heroes, as they explicitly seek to do the most good for their peoples. Teek ship captain Xiala is mostly a hedonist but won’t hesitate to put her own life in danger in order to save her crew. And even Serapio, the enigmatic figure blinded as a boy and intended for use as a vessel for a dead god, acts not out of selfishness or small-mindedness but because he’s been trained for no other purpose than to challenge the priestly Watchers who decimated his clan of his grandparents’ generation (trigger warning for the abuse he endured as a child tho. His mom and teachers were some truly fucked up people.)

The paths of our four protagonists are set on a collision course when Xiala is hired to carry a mysterious passenger from the southern city of Cuecola across the open waters of the Crescent Sea to Tova, the holy city from which the Watchers rule after quelling the old gods and barbaric magics in favor of their more scientific religion. Xiala’s unique heritage makes her the captain most likely to be able to bring Serapio to Tova in time for the Solstice, when he will fulfil a dark and bloody prophecy. But travel across the open sea carries more challenges than even a Teek can overcome on her own, and she and Serapio soon find themselves bonding in unlikely ways.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/19/black-sun-between-earth-and-sky-1-by-rebecca-roanhorse/

Oct 16 2020

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe

It’s been so long since I’ve read a standalone YA novel that I barely know what to do with myself at the end of A Golden Fury, in no small part due to Samantha Cohoe’s gifts as an author. Despite the ending being quite firmly The End, I’m so invested in these characters and their milieu that I can’t help wanting to know so much more about what happens next to our heroine Thea Hope and her friends.

Ofc, I should start at the beginning: Thea is the only daughter of Marguerite Hope, the greatest alchemist of her generation. Marguerite has gained renown for the alchemical armor she created for Louis XVI and, between that and the beauty elixirs she skillfully prepares, could enjoy a life of comfort and wealth despite being English in a politically turbulent France. But Marguerite has ambitions to cement her place in the history books by synthesizing the long lost Philosopher’s Stone, and has trained up Thea as her assistant.

The relationship between mother and daughter has recently been strained, however, by Thea’s own relationship with Marguerite’s last apprentice, Will Percy. Once Marguerite realized that her seventeen year-old daughter had fallen in love with charming, handsome Will, she quickly sent him packing. But Thea has been keeping up a secret correspondence with her love as he travels first to Prussia then to England while plying his trade.

Concerned by rising anti-British sentiment in their adopted country, Marguerite makes plans for Thea to return to their motherland. Not even Thea’s small delight at the opportunity to see Will again can make up for how hurtful this feels. She and her mother are so close to finally making the stone, and to be sent away at this crucial juncture feels like the worst professional and maternal rejection. But when things go horribly awry in France, Thea must flee the country in search of a father she’s never known, whose interest in the Stone may be far stronger than any paternal feelings he may have for a daughter he never even knew existed. Can Thea complete her mother’s work without courting disaster, madness or worse?

This was probably one of the most realistic depictions of an intelligent, angry young woman I’ve read in a long, long while. Told from Thea’s point of view, it’s easy to sympathize with her completely legitimate feelings even as the discerning reader can see clearly between the lines of what’s actually happening around her. I also very much appreciated her complicated relationships, especially with her parents. Whether through design or neglect, they molded Thea into an extraordinary young woman who is smart and sensitive while still being relatively sheltered. Ms Cohoe deftly balances Thea’s skills with her limitations to create a wholly believable teenage heroine who makes intelligent choices based on her experiences as we’ve seen them. I wish that that wasn’t as much of a rarity in YA as it often feels, but it was truly nice here to see an actually smart heroine do actual smart things to further the story.

There’s a lot of fascinating scholarship here as well on the subjects of alchemy and the events and mores of the late 18th century. Ms Cohoe’s treatment of the Philosopher’s Stone brings to mind Dr Jekyll’s ill-fated elixir (tho that latter, in retrospect, bears zero distinguishing characteristics from straight booze.) AGF is a wonderfully atmospheric tale of a young alchemist trying to find a place for herself — incorporating questions of what it meant to be a woman of that age along with the lessons that that can still teach us today — even as she is constantly undermined by people claiming to want the best for her. It’s a terrific coming-of-age tale, and hopefully the first in Ms Cohoe’s long and successful oeuvre.

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe was published October 13th, 2020 by Wednesday Books, and is available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/16/a-golden-fury-by-samantha-cohoe/

Oct 15 2020

An Interview with J. S. Barnes, author of Dracula’s Child

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did Dracula’s Child evolve?

I think it’s been evolving ever since I first read Stoker’s extraordinary novel at around eleven or twelve (oddly, and I suspect not entirely coincidentally, the same age as Quincey in my book!). More recently, I was asked to adapt the original story as faithfully as possible for an audio drama starring Mark Gatiss. It was this process of adaptation – of taking the narrative apart, seeing how it functions and putting it back together again in a slightly different shape – which led me to consider a direct sequel. It seemed to me almost as if Stoker had left deliberate clues for just such a follow-up. And it struck me as quite a mystery as to why he never attempted it himself!

Q. Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been dissected for its depiction of a Victorian-era England fearful of foreign influence and the sexual liberation of women. What social themes, if any, did you find yourself considering while writing Dracula’s Child?

It’s such a rich, dense text, full of all of the fears of the age, a good many of which have barely shifted in more than a century. In my own story, I wanted to continue what Stoker had done much as he might have done so had he set himself the task. Of course, it’s inevitably the case that, writing as I was in the twenty-first century, I’d end up reflecting a few of the concerns and terrors which are unique (or, more accurately, which seem unique) to our own age.

Q. I enjoyed the overtly political nature of Dracula’s ascension to power in the pages of your novel. In particular, the scene with the motorist refusing to assist our heroes struck a chord. What inspired in you the greater ambition of this version of Dracula?

There’s a line in the original novel when Dracula describes himself as a man “who commanded nations”. This element of his complicated personality seems very much to have fallen into abeyance by the time that Stoker introduces us to him. I wondered how his defeat in the book might have affected his psyche – whether, having been so thoroughly rejected by modernity he might not reach back into the past, to a time when he was in his pomp, and seek to recreate it. Were this case, it’s not too great a stretch to imagine that there’d be plenty of folks who’d be very happy, for their own reasons, to aid him in that objective.

Q. Do you write with any particular audience in mind? Are there any particular audiences you hope will connect with this story?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/15/an-interview-with-j-s-barnes-author-of-draculas-child/

Oct 13 2020

The Fallen Hero (The Dragon Warrior #2) by Katie Zhao

The Fallen Hero continues the epic drama of The Dragon Warrior series as Faryn tries to find her place with the New Order based out of Manhattan’s Chinatown, only to discover that the gods aren’t done with her yet.

Still reeling from her younger brother’s decision from the end of her last quest for the gods, while working through her feelings regarding a father who has no memory of who she is, Faryn is having a hard enough time fitting in without the animosity of the prickly Ashley Liao, another young girl who, with her older brother Jordan, form a pair of outcasts similar to Faryn’s own situation growing up with the Jade Society out west. Luckily, Ren is still by her side… until he tells her one day that his destiny lies in learning to control his dragon heritage under the tutelage of the Dragon Kings. Alone and anxious, Faryn has no intention of stepping up when the gods Guanyin, Nezha and Erlang Shen show up with another hero’s quest. But Xiong, the leader of the New Order, makes a stirring plea, and so she and the Liao siblings find themselves heading west in search of another weapon to rally the gods. Along the way, they’ll have to attempt to enlist the aid of the Monkey King himself, and travel to the depths of Diyu and back. But at what cost?

I loved how Katie Zhao incorporated more aspects of Chinese mythology into this action-packed sequel. While I was already pretty familiar with Sun Wukong, the perils of Diyu were entirely new to me, so it really felt like a wholly fresh landscape for me to explore alongside our heroes. I also really loved the emphasis on family, carrying over from the previous book. As with TDW, however, there were odd lapses in logic (e.g. the whole thing about New Order warriors retiring at 18 was about the dumbest reason I’ve read for an age limit on a quest) and the dialog was occasionally unlikely at best, but this was made up for with lots of verve, suspense and humor, with parts making me laugh out loud at the collision of 21st century adolescent sensibilities with ancient mythologies.

I’m really glad Ms Zhao is bringing these books to the world, showcasing a young girl’s quest to save humanity from certain callous Chinese gods. I kinda hope it runs for more than three books tho, because there’s so much to be covered still in this series! Aside from saving humanity, Faryn still has to rescue her mother’s spirit and find out more about the Mediterranean side of her family, and what’s up with Alex’s parents, too?! There’s so much, and I’m eager to read it all!

The Fallen Hero by Katie Zhao comes out today from Bloomsbury and is available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/13/the-fallen-hero-the-dragon-warrior-2-by-katie-zhao/

Oct 12 2020

Greensmith by Aliya Whiteley

Bear with me for a moment while I serve up a relevant anecdote here.

When I was 8 years old, on a layover in London, I climbed the stairs of the narrow house of the auntie who was hosting my mother and me, and turned on the TV in the bedroom. I was fresh out of things to read and figured I could sample some of what England had to offer in terms of televised entertainment. There was an episode of Doctor Who on: I’d heard of it, and I was into sci-fi, so I was definitely interested. But after about ten minutes, I had to turn it off as being deathly boring. Some guy with wild hair in a coat and scarf was running around and away from robots while wielding a screwdriver, and I just didn’t care, an antipathy that has carried through the decades despite the appalled cries of “you don’t like Doctor Who?!” from other nerds in my various fandoms. If I had all the time in the world, I’d give it another go, but I can’t even find enough hours in the day for all the shows I want to watch, so soz everyone, it’s not you, it’s me.

Which leads to Greensmith, which, for all my relative ignorance of Dr Who (one can’t help absorbing quite a bit by cultural osmosis, ofc,) felt like what I imagine a grown-up version of the Doctor might be. Penelope Greensmith has inherited the task of cataloging the world’s flora, specifically its flowers, from her dad, using an unusual device called, ahem, the Vice. Now divorced and with a grown daughter she doesn’t see very often, she’s retired to a hilltop cottage to better focus on her work, tho she does think wistfully of the pleasures of adult companionship from time to time. But then a mysterious stranger called Doc– I mean, The Horticulturist, shows up on her doorstep, asking for her help. Turns out, there’s a terrible virus that’s turning the greenery of many worlds to sludge, and she and her Collection might be the only way to save the universe.

If you’re familiar with Aliya Whiteley’s superb The Arrival Of Missives then you’ll smile at the repeated motif here of the woman who finds greater reservoirs of strength in herself than she knew, who’s going to save the universe on her own terms (and if you’re not familiar, please do consider getting a copy of one of my favorite books of 2018.) Greensmith is also a wonderful update of the cosmic-savior-who-needs-a-sidekick story, centering the “sidekick” and giving her the agency to make the necessary choices. I especially loved Penelope’s complicated relationships, not just with Hort, as she calls him, but also with her daughter, whose own chapters are great, if wrenching.

I wonder if my enjoyment of Greensmith would have been enhanced were I a Whovian. Doesn’t really matter tho: this is another terrific work of speculative fiction from one of the most creative, genre-bending writers working today.

Greensmith by Aliya Whiteley comes out today from Unsung Press and is available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/12/greensmith-by-aliya-whiteley/

Oct 09 2020

The Dragon Warrior (The Dragon Warrior #1) by Katie Zhao

Oh, wow, a book that updates Chinese mythology for young Western readers! You know, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Chinese deities beyond Kwan Yin, aspects of Buddha and what I remember from absorbing various tales of the Monkey God via TV and comics (as well as the usual prominent holiday-related mythologies) so this was an entirely fascinating pantheon for me to get acquainted with. Honestly, it’s a bit like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, only I’m much more familiar with Greek legends than I am with Chinese: I put that down to better marketing of the Western canon. Like the Rick Riordan, this book — the first of its own series — turns the mystical gods, demons, creatures and places into wholly accessible and absorbing characters and locations in this charming if somewhat uneven debut.

Faryn Liu is the teenaged eldest daughter of a warrior sworn to the Jade Society, an organization dedicated to the protection of humans from the demons that escape Diyu to terrorize mortals. Unfortunately, the society seems more interested in expanding its business ventures rather than in upholding its traditions of demon hunting, so when Liu Bo leaves their San Francisco compound to continue hunting monsters round the world, leaving his children in the care of his father, the little family is treated shabbily, almost in retaliation for Bo’s repudiation of their chosen path. This changes when the God Of War himself shows up at the Jade Society compound one Lunar New Year, heralding the arrival of the Heaven Breaker from their midst. The Heaven Breaker, it is foretold, will complete three challenges before being granted entrance to the pleasure island of the Lord of Heaven, the Jade Emperor himself, and being placed at the helm of his armies. Almost all the young men of the Society line up to prove themselves, but it is ultimately Faryn who will prevail. With a motley crew of companions, she must set off on a perilous journey to prove her worth and reach Peng Lai Island. But not all the gods are benevolent, and some have their own nefarious plans for what to do with the girl who would break heaven itself.

Such a cool premise, and Katie Zhao carries it off with aplomb, throwing in any number of unexpected twists that lend further verve to this unabashedly modern Chinese diaspora mash up of the culture’s traditional stories with the archetypal, if 21st-century, young hero’s tale. There are a few odd bumps, mostly to do with stilted conversational choices and teeny tiny lapses in logic (e.g. Faryn was totally bleeding from her first fight with the nian but by the time she got home, she was fine?) but nothing egregious enough to halt suspension of disbelief. Tho oh yikes, the description of Washington DC sounded like it came from someone who’d never been to the city, much less seen our extremely tiny Chinatown (or Chinablock, as it’s more commonly known.) I’m seriously thinking of flogging my services to any creators who need localization help with this city and its immediate suburbs. Writers, my emails are open!

But I digress. Younger me would have loved this book, and grown up me is busy trying to get my 9 year-old to read it. It’s a wonderful addition to the bookshelf of any kid who loves fantasy, urban or otherwise, and dreams of seeing themselves represented as the hero of a badass mythical adventure. Plus also, Ms Zhao’s pushes for diversity — the twist about why the gods wanted to leave China is really great and thought-provoking — teach an excellent lesson about what makes a society strong. Also, I loved what she had to say about family, as well as her occasionally snarky voice while channeling her teenage characters.

I actually bought this novel in anticipation of reviewing the sequel, The Fallen Hero, next week! TFH comes out 10/13 and my review will come soon after. After this exciting debut, I have very high hopes!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/09/the-dragon-warrior-the-dragon-warrior-1-by-katie-zhao/

Oct 08 2020

An Interview with Sharon Doering, author of She Lies Close

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did She Lies Close evolve?

The inspiration for She Lies Close came from my family’s move to a new neighborhood years ago and finding out that a guy down the street was being prosecuted for a child crime. Within months he was convicted, sold his house, and went to prison. While it was creepy (and I wouldn’t let my little boys play near his house), I never felt desperate. I had a good support system in my husband.

It got me thinking though…What if you moved right next door to a dangerous man, a suspect in a child kidnapping (maybe murder), and what if you had no support system, no sounding board? What if you were recently divorced and financially strapped? What if you had secrets of your own and mental health issues complicating your life? What if your sinister neighbor started talking to your little girl, giving her gifts?

I took the premise of a dangerous next-door neighbor and added a big old bag of What Ifs. I wanted to write a psychological thriller that was dark, desperate, and also funny. I wanted to write a thriller where the characters were stretched too far, where we get to witness some of them snap.

Q. As a mom who is the temperamental opposite of Grace Wright, the narrator of She Lies Close, I felt little empathy but a lot of sympathy for her. The demands of modern motherhood are so high, and can fracture stronger psyches than Grace’s, especially when coupled with the fragile social support systems America is notorious for. How does your own experience with motherhood inform your writing, particularly here with Grace?

What a beautifully worded question!

Some of the feelings Grace has all the time, I have experienced briefly. Most of us have. Anxiety. Deep love. Rage at the world. Anger at the kids. Fear of being caught as incompetent. Irritation with our partner. Shame. So much in here is honest. But the story and characters are invented.

I have felt some of Grace’s anxieties, but on a small, manageable scale. I am pretty laid back.

I have several women in my life who are juggling too much on their own. They have primary custody of their kids, they are working full time, struggling with finances, managing a home, doing the cooking, the cleaning. I am doing only half of what they are doing, and sometimes my workload feels overwhelming. I don’t know how these women do it. I think about this a lot.

I wonder how many of us who are feeling stable—emotionally, mentally, physically, and financially—are just two or three catastrophes away from going off the deep end. I wanted to explore that.

Being a mother was most helpful in the manifestation of the children’s characters in She Lies Close. Children are fascinating and complex, and I wanted to write a novel where we get to see their pure hearts, their evil genius, their intelligence, and their mindlessness. In writing She Lies Close, I didn’t use anything my kids have said, but having kids made writing their dialogue feel natural.

Q. Grace is a bold choice for a sleuth: overwhelmed, with poor impulse control and a tendency to make bad decisions. I kept wanting to yell at her to embrace both sleep and therapy. What inspired you to so fearlessly depict Grace’s mental and emotional unraveling as she insinuates herself into the case of 5 year-old Ava Boone’s disappearance?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/08/an-interview-with-sharon-doering-author-of-she-lies-close/

Oct 06 2020

Machine: A White Space Novel (White Space #2) by Elizabeth Bear

Genuinely surprised after reading this to learn that Elizabeth Bear has no military/police background. Or, perhaps, like myself, she spent formative years around military, which would definitely explain the wholly authentic feel she brings to the ex-military protagonist and judiciary command structure of the universe she creates here in Machine which, while the second in a series, can be easily read as a standalone. I’m actually rather also surprised that this is the first thing of hers I’ve ever read, but there are so many books and so little time (and thanks to Saga Press for making sure I had a chance to get to this!)

Anyhoo, Machine is about Dr Brookllyn Jens, a trauma surgeon specializing in search and rescues after a stint in the military that helped her escape her backwater planet, leaving behind an angry wife and a now-distant daughter. Her closest friends are the crew of her ambulance ship, I Race To Seek The Living, or Sally, as the shipmind prefers to be known. When they receive a distress beacon for an ancient vessel that’s traveled way farther than it reasonably should have, coupled with a much more modern courier ship which also seems to be in distress, Dr Jens is the one who leads the rescue mission aboard the Big Rock Candy Mountain. To her dismay, everyone on both the BRCM and the attached I Bring Tidings From Afar is either dead or unconscious, save for Helen, an eager to please but intellectually stunted shipmind who’s been cut off from her own knowledge banks. When a fracture in the BRCM’s hull causes several of the inhabited cryogenic pods within to float loose into space, Dr Jens has little choice but to bring them aboard and ship her new patients — along with Helen, the decoupled Afar and its crew — back to Core General, one of the most important hospital stations in that sector.

On the trip back, Dr Jens discovers that someone sabotaged Sally’s programming, probably while they were still docked earlier at Core General. When weird incidents start taking place at the hospital itself, primarily affecting AIs, Dr Jens becomes involved in investigating not only what happened to the crew of the BRCM and Afar, but also in uncovering a conspiracy that will shake her faith in perhaps the only thing she truly believes in.

First, I have to say that I loved the fact that Dr Jens suffers from chronic, debilitating pain but that medical and social advancements have made it so that this doesn’t hamper her from living the full, productive life she wants to lead. I strained the index finger of my left hand yesterday, probably because it’s cold and I was working tricky passages on my cello, and let me tell you, the thought of a future where I am automatically supported through my (minor, temporary) pain brings joy and warmth to me as I type through the twinges (and don’t even get me started on my arthritic knee.) This management of pain is only one aspect of a gloriously progressive future showcased in the White Space books as being very possible for not only humanity but also its syster species, as members of the Synarche that oversees intergalactic civilization is known. Most of the military sf and even progressive hard sf I’ve encountered to date tends not to be quite so baseline upbeat — I’d argue that Machine is more in line with those subgenres than with the more technologically hand-wavey space operas —  and it was genuinely refreshing to immerse myself in a future that was as optimistic as it was scientifically detailed.

I did think that the book started to falter in the last 20%, as the mystery was unraveled. Oddly, the reveals were done in such a way as to provoke minimum tension, which is great in a real-life situation where the point is to work through the problem to find an equitable solution, but just makes for dull reading for us people at home. I liked that the narrative stayed true to the characters but a little more suspense would have lent the events more gravity — I wanted to feel surprised when conspirators were revealed, and I wanted to feel sad when characters died. Instead, it was all very “then this happened, and then this”, which was quite a letdown after the terrific first 80%.

That said, this was a truly wonderful vision of a future I would definitely want to live in, and am happy to work towards. Machine brings up all sorts of ethical, medical and technological dilemmas, for both humans and other sentient species, and considers, if not outright resolves them, with discernment, empathy and heart.

Machine by Elizabeth Bear comes out today from Saga Press and is available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/06/machine-a-white-space-novel-white-space-2-by-elizabeth-bear/

Oct 05 2020

Daddy Daughter Day by Isabelle Bridges-Boesch & Jeff Bridges

Times I wish I had a daughter included while reading this sweet children’s book written by Isabelle Bridges-Boesch and illustrated by her father Jeff Bridges (yes, The Dude.) Little Belle wakes up one day and has a great idea that she rushes to share with her beloved dad. She announces that it’s Daddy Daughter Day, to the chagrin of her younger brother Sammie, who is Not Allowed to join. Belle and Dad embark on all sorts of backyard adventures, eventually incorporating Sammie and Mom, in a celebration of togetherness and the special bond between a girl and her father.

And while I regretted the fact that I haven’t a daughter to foist this book on, I did take solace in being lucky enough to have a dad I enjoy spending time with, tho our opportunities for same are few and far between now that we live continents apart. We did not, as Belle and her dad did, have pretend play sessions, but Dad and I certainly enjoyed reading the four important Sunday papers together in the living room — what can I say, even as a kid I was happiest when reading — then heading out to one of the malls to look around and maybe buy things and to definitely sneak eating some of the foods my figure-conscious mother did not approve of. I love that Ms Bridges-Boesch mentions in her afterword that not all Daddy Daughter Days are alike, but that the important thing is to spend quality time together.

But what I probably loved most about this book is Mr Bridges’ gorgeous art. Done mostly in pastel watercolors, the art tends towards the simple and dream-like, fitting for the subject matter. The style itself is reminiscent of Henri Matisse, invoking movement and joy. I loved how the text of the book was entirely in conversation, gracefully scrawled throughout in cursive, a nice challenge for modern kids who may not be as conversant in the handwritten font as we olds are. Regardless, the effect is one of dainty Fauvist charm, making this a lovely gift book for any daddy daughter duos.

Daddy Daughter Day comes out from Dark Horse Publishing tomorrow, October 6th, and will be available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/05/daddy-daughter-day-by-isabelle-bridges-boesch-jeff-bridges/

Oct 04 2020

Door into the Dark by Seamus Heaney

I admit that my first time through Door into the Dark I did not get as much out of it as I did from Death of a Naturalist. Entering again, I see more in the rooms that Heaney is making, evoking, although there is much that is still murky to me. The titles of the first three poems tell readers what to expect: “Night-Piece,” “Gone,” and “Dream,” which is more of a nightmare, quick and made brutal by a sudden turn. He is headed to dark places, will call attention to absences, will explore the unconscious.

Door into the Dark

Heaney notes in Stepping Stones that “No poems were held over [from Death of a Naturalist] … From then on, it was start-again time.” (p. 89) Not only are they all new, but the years when he wrote the poems in this collection, 1965 to 1969, were particularly tumultuous. There’s little direct reflection of the political turmoil that shook the late 1960s, but art and literature becoming more experimental are at least echoed in Heaney’s poems that are more oblique than they were in Death of a Naturalist. Yes, a horse is gone in “Gone,” but what else? What plays “The Given Note”?

“The Forge” — which gives the volume its title from the poem’s first line “All I know is a door into the dark” — echoes the first collection’s opening poem. Where Heaney had been digging, finding, now he is working like a smith, forging, creating things poised between fantastic “Horned as a unicorn” and material “To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.” Heaney’s smith is a bit of a relic; he “recalls a clatter/Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows” in a time when trucks and autos are displacing horses. Not unlike poets who are of their times but also separate. “The Forge” is not quite a sonnet, tumbling out of the rhyme scheme in the last six lines, with final word in that section that poise “music,” “clatter,” and “a slam and flick” against each other. The smith, like the poet, “expends himself in shape and music.”

He writes of place, some more clearly identified than others. It seems likely that someone who knew Northern Ireland well could identify “The Peninsula,” and while “Night Drive” mentions road signs in France, its location is the road more generally, and the road on the way to one’s beloved. “At Ardboe Point,” by contrast, draws the general from the particular, the beloved found and drawn close.

Those lead toward “A Lough Neagh Sequence,” the volume’s strongest section. Dedicated “For the fishermen,” the set of seven poems takes readers into the lives of the lough’s fishermen, their legends and beliefs, their work and ways. The different lengths and structures of the poems capture different seasons on the water, different personalities among the fishermen, and different elements of the work — “Bait,” “Setting,” “Catch.” Two of the seven — “Beyond Sargasso” and “Return” — are written from the eels’ perspectives. In eight pages, Heaney catches a place, a way of life, and the physical world that ties them all together.

He closes again with a poem dedicated to another poet, this time “Bogland” for T.P. Flanagan. Heaney has opened a door into the dark, into the creative forge where sparks fly, where lives and landscapes afford countless possibilities. Though it is a small country — “We have prairies/To slice a big sun at evening — /Everywhere the eye concedes to/Encroaching horizon” — it is old and deep and fertile “Every layer they strip/Seems camped on before./The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage/The wet centre is bottomless.”

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/04/door-into-the-dark-by-seamus-heaney/