Opening: Two in the morning and he's stumbling around in the attic, lost in horizontal archaeology: the further he goes, the older the artifacts become. The stuttering flashlight guides him past boxes of Christmas decorations and half-dead appliances, past garbage bags of old blankets and outgrown clothing stacked and bulging like black snowmen, over and around the twenty-year-old rubble of his son's treasures: Tonka trucks and science fair projects, soccer trophies and summer camp pottery.
Capsule: Second entry by Daryl Gregory--and he's surpassed himself with this story! The writing made me catch my breath from the first sentence. It's not enough to state that Daryl Gregory has short fiction writing chops. We might get closer to the truth by suggesting that he is the original skeletal framework from whence the chops were removed and bequeathed unto Readers. Better yet, make those royal lamb shanks.
The story delivers its Matheson-esque revelations (there was a pervasive Twilight Zone-ambience, and searching for lost youth or a return to innocence is a subject tackled explicitly by that series in some of its most memorable episodes) with emotional umph. While the premise, therefore, offers nothing startlingly interesting, the character development, technique and poignancy buoy this directly past our suspension of disbelief and into the evocation of genuine emotion. The UnCompass needle points straight at UnBetterable on this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment