Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman

Reviewed by Jeanne

Let me start off by admitting that I am somewhat intimidated by Mr. Gaiman.  I often have the feeling that I am just too dense to understand some of his work.  Also, most of it has at least a trickle of darkness (if not a flood!) and I have to be in a certain frame of mind to read it.  For me, I find that his shorter fiction appeals to me a bit more.  Just because it’s short doesn’t mean it can’t pack a wallop.

And while there’s always a bit of darkness, that doesn’t mean humorless.  Gaiman has a great deal of wit and sly humor glimmering between the lines.

Smoke and Mirrors, as he explains in the don’t-miss introduction, refers to methods that stage magicians have used to fool viewers into believing impossible things.  Stories do the same thing; they appear to present a truth; but do they? Readers should be prepared to question everything as they fall through the author’s rabbit hole.

Or they can just enjoy the ride.

The collection includes poetry as well as stories, but the poems are just as haunting.  The fiction ranges from very short—just a smidge over a page—but most are around ten pages.  Some knowledge of Lovecraft will enhance appreciation for a couple of stories, but knowing a bit of folklore will almost always help. I find them all to be very visual, a veritable marathon of “Twilight Zone” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episodes. In the introduction itself, Gaiman briefly discusses each entry.  I bookmarked that section and would go back to read what he’d said about a particular work after I had read it.  Then sometimes I would read the story again.  Most of the stories were written for particular themed anthologies (fantasy erotica, retellings of Grimm folktales, computer fiction, etc.) while others came from more general suggestions—cats and angels are popular, so why not write a story about a cat who is an angel? (The resulting story didn’t appear for some years and then in quite a different form.)

There’s really not a clunker in the whole collection, but for me the standouts were:

·         The Wedding Present which appears as part of the introduction is a tale Gaiman intended to write as a wedding gift for friends until he decided that perhaps they’d rather have a toaster. What would happen if, as a wedding gift, you received a book which wrote the story of your marriage—or rather, a story? One that might or might not be true?

·         In Chivalry, Mrs. Whitaker finds the Holy Grail.  It was right there under a coat in the thrift shop and quite pretty it is, too, but this young man keeps coming up and asking for it so he can fulfill his quest….

·         The Price is an unforgettable tale of a black cat and his devotion to his family.  By all means, though, go back and read Gaiman’s comments on the story in the introduction. It made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

·         Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar is a bit of a cautionary tale in which one can be led astray by relying too much on guidebooks.   The first sentence is a delight, and I thought the story just got better from there. I forced a colleague to listen to me read parts of it aloud because I thought it was so funny.

·         The structure of Murder Mysteries gave me pause because I made the mistake of starting it and then not finishing it the same day.  Our narrator meets a man in the park who tells him a story in return for a cigarette, and his story so dominates the plot that after my break I had forgotten that he was telling the tale to someone else.  He was, he says, an angel—Raguel, to be specific, the Vengeance of the Lord, and it was his job to investigate the death of another angel.  It’s a mesmerizing tale and one indeed to consider long after the last page has been turned.

As I said at the beginning, I find Mr. Gaiman’s work to be a bit of a challenge so I sort of take a deep breath before I plunge in—but it’s definitely worth it.  I shivered, I laughed, and I pondered.  That’s more than I can say about a lot of stories.

Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffith

Reviewed by Jeanne

It’s December 1951 in Brighton, and the city is gearing up for the holidays.  This year the pantomime will be Aladdin, featuring no less than magician extraordinaire Max Mephisto as the villain, a role Max embraces with something less than enthusiasm.  It’s a step down in his career, but it seems that magic shows as entertainment are falling out of fashion in this post WW II era.  At least he will be able to visit with his former comrade in arms, Edgar Stephens, who is now a police detective. 

The reunion is overshadowed when DI Stephens is called to investigate the murders of two children whose bodies were found in the snow, surrounded by candy—a sort of real-life Hansel and Gretel.  The girl, Annie, was fascinated by fairy stories and had written plays based on the Brothers Grimm—the dark versions, not the sanitized ones favored by modern audiences. When it appears there may be a link to an earlier murder connected to a theater, Stephens asks Max to use his theater connections to investigate.  

This is the second entry in Griffith’s Magic Men Mystery series, and I found it much more satisfying than the The Zig Zag Girl; much time was spent a detailing characters’ backgrounds and their service which made character development lag somewhat.  Since complicated yet believable characters are the main reason I read her Ruth Galloway Mysteries, I was a bit disappointed with the first book. Smoke and Mirrors, however, combines an intriguing plot with characters of depth and complexity.  The supporting cast played more significant roles and became much more memorable. I especially liked Emma Holmes, a young woman who is trying to make a career as a police officer at a time when it is very much a man’s profession and women are expected aspire to marriage and children. Max and Edgar emerge as more fully realized characters for me this time around.  As before, Griffith does a good job of capturing the feel of the era but she does it a bit more subtly this time around.

I’ll be looking forward to The Blood Card, due out this fall.

Nevermore: Smoke and Mirrors, Missing World, Civil War, and More!

Reported by Kristin

Nevermore began with one reader praising Elly Griffiths’ second installation in her series starring DI  Stephens and magician Max Mephisto:  Smoke and Mirrors.  In Brighton, England in late November 1951, two child actors are found dead in the snow.  To add to the horror of dead children, candy is sprinkled around the bodies, causing the press to dub this the “Hansel and Gretel” case.  Despite the morbid subject matter, the book is recommended enthusiastically.

Next up was The Missing World by Margot Livesey.  Main character Hazel is hit by a car, suffers a blow to the head, and loses her memory of the last three years.  Unfortunately, her ex-boyfriend Jonathan takes advantage of the situation and tries to control her life again as Hazel comes out of a coma but continues to suffer seizures.  Our reader described the character’s interactions as almost sitcom-like.

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris was chosen by another reader upon reflection of current events in Standing Rock Native American Reservation.  As a newcomer to a land with so little water and so much isolation, Norris found herself exploring the wisdom held by Native Americans, Benedictine monks, and other high plains residents.  Our reader described it as a very spiritual book with a significant message.

One of Nevermore’s history buffs brought up a well-written book:  A Disease in the Public Mind:  A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War by Thomas Fleming.  Beginning with the state of affairs before the Revolutionary War, Fleming discusses the roles of slaves in the northern and southern colonies.  As slavery began to diminish in other parts of the world, political leaders and private citizens began to question their conscience and some began to advocate for the abolishment of slavery.  The North and South became increasingly polarized over these issues, eventually leading to states’ secession and war.

Moving from North America to South America, the next book up was Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams.  As a travel magazine editor, Adams had travelled to Machu Picchu previously, but had taken the easier tourist route.  For this experience, Adams decided to walk (with mules and guides managing all the supplies) the “original” route travelled by Hiram Bingham a century ago.  Our reader said that this was a fun book but she was glad that she had not been the one walking amidst the giant spiders, snakes, and other dangers.

 How to Keep House by Sam Martin garnered a few chuckles because it is part of the tongue in cheek series “The Lost Art of Being a Man”.  With 1950’s style illustrations, in this book the man of the house is the one wearing an apron, ironing the clothes, and washing the windows while the woman sits back in an easy chair reading.  Joking aside, the book offers tips for modern householders who may not have learned how to remove stains from clothing, troubleshoot a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner, or replace a windowpane.

Finally, author Anne Wetzell Armstrong was touted as one of the most important (though largely unknown and unappreciated) novelists to live in the Bristol area.  Her novel This Day and Time is a tribute to the rural Big Creek community that she came to know after moving from Michigan to Tennessee as a child.  Armstrong also published several articles in the 1920’s about the emerging role of women in the workplace.