{"id":2710,"date":"2015-04-30T17:01:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T16:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2710"},"modified":"2015-06-16T11:35:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T10:35:11","slug":"review-noir-and-la-femme-edited-by-ian-whates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2710","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: NOIR AND LA FEMME EDITED BY IAN WHATES"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noir<\/em> and La Femme<\/em> edited by Ian Whates (Newcon Press, 2014)<\/strong>
\n(originally published in Vector<\/em> 277)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ian Whates, through Newcon Press and the Solaris Rising<\/em> series, has established himself as a key editor in UK short fiction and I, like a number of authors, have reason to be grateful for his generosity. But it is clear from his introduction that putting together these books was difficult. As Whates notes in Noir<\/em>, these two volumes started as a single project \u201cto publish a collection of stories each featuring a femme fatale\u201d and, even when that restriction fell by the wayside, he struggled to produce\u201d a volume that hung together with a definable identity.\u201d I think the evidence of the struggle remains visible. There are good stories here, but neither book coheres into something more than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

This was particularly obvious with Noir<\/em>. My expectation, not unreasonably, I think, given the book\u2019s title, was that these stories would relate to ideas of film noir. However, the majority of the book consists of more standard dark fantasy and horror fare. It took me some time to adjust my expectations.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something of the detective story in EJ Swift\u2019s \u2018The Crepuscular Hunter\u2019 \u2013 which opens the volume \u2013 but after a promising start with a mysterious entity brutally stripping victims of their privacy in a media saturated world, the story takes us into virtual reality for a conclusion where anything is possible and, therefore, the stakes seem diminished. The relationships never properly resolve themselves and the end left me shrugging not shuddering. The second story, \u2018Gross Thousand\u2019 by Adam Roberts, plays games with the implications of biblical mathematics as a social worker interviews a client who believes they can see who is saved and who is damned. \u2018Gross Thousand\u2019 is short, understated and the cold breeze of the conclusion brings a chill.<\/p>\n

I have an instinctive suspicion of stories about the magic of books and bookshops. They always strike me as self-aggrandizing, coming with the sense of authors shouting \u2018Look how amazing<\/em> my job is!\u2019 So, while Donna Scott\u2019s \u2018The Grimoire\u2019 does nothing wrong in itself \u2013 it is a perfectly serviceable story\u2013 it also failed to win me over. I found the magic books unconvincing and the bookshop owner\u2019s transformation unlikely. Emma Coleman\u2019s \u2018The Treehouse\u2019 felt juvenile in the wrong ways. The protagonist has the whiny quality of a grumpy teenager whose idea of paradise involves picnics, a talking cat and a band of animal musicians. There\u2019s too much messing around with shadows at the start and the conclusion didn\u2019t really make sense, with the protagonist getting the escape she wanted and then reacting in horror. By sharp contrast, Paula Wakefield\u2019s \u2018Red in Tooth and Claw\u2019 takes the Little Red Riding Hood story to Hollywood with some style. This grandmother is fierce, but I wanted more meat. I also enjoyed \u2018The Private Ambulance\u2019 by Simon Kurt Unsworth, which has the feel of a good fireside ghost story, with an atmospheric build-up and clean, direct prose. As with most ghost stories, the revealed phantasm is a little disappointing but it\u2019s still a memorable journey. Next came two stories about serial killers \u2013 \u2018Bite Marks\u2019 by Jay Caselberg and \u2018Inspiration Point\u2019 by Marie O\u2019Regan \u2013 both are well constructed and will find many admirers but neither were for me. I find the tendency to fetishize killers problematic and while Caselberg at least has his murderer face their comeuppance, the O\u2019Regan story turns a pair of monstrous predators into some sort of heroes \u2013 that\u2019s a step too far for me.<\/p>\n

The best two stories in Noir<\/em> come back-to-back. Paul Graham Raven\u2019s \u2018A Boardinghouse Heart\u2019 is very fine indeed \u2013 compact, dense and intelligent, it is more-or-less everything I\u2019d hoped for when I picked up this collection. It\u2019s a detective story \u2013 or at least it\u2019s a story with a detective in it \u2013 set on the slippery streets of a richly realised city. The protagonist, as should be the case in all good noir stories, is hopelessly out of his depth and beset by those more powerful and cleverer than he is. The most effective element is the way in which the story immerses you in a city, gives it history and heft, yet never burdens the reader with weighty exposition. I also liked its refusal of any heroic narrative. It\u2019s a fine achievement and worth the price of admission on its own. Simon Morden\u2019s \u2018Entr\u2019acte\u2019 could hardly be more different \u2013 both the setting and the set-up are preposterous: a superfluous private investigator on a corporate-run moonbase finds himself drawn to help a beautiful woman who has lost her husband in some time-travel, Bond-villain-style hokum. Morden revels in the essential silliness of the set-up and draws the reader into it, writing with impressive pace, wit and gloss. \u2018Entr\u2019acte\u2019 is fun and even squeezes in an unlikely emotional punch.<\/p>\n

I also enjoyed \u2018Silent in her Vastness\u2019 by James Worrad. I liked the idea: the abandoned University of California campus is to become a work of art, with the aid of Chinese money, a small nuclear device and some mannequins. I liked, too, the way the artist gradually crumbles, though his final sacrifice, while it works dramatically, felt an emotional stretch too far. Paul Kane\u2019s \u2018Grief Stricken\u2019 is another serial killer story \u2013 this time with an unlikely mental health twist as Detective John Lomax hunts down the doctor apparently responsible for the death of his wife. I didn\u2019t buy anything in this story, the portrayal of the protagonist\u2019s breakdown, the \u2018fridging\u2019 of the female character or the showdown in which an experienced cop faces a dangerous killer without back-up.<\/p>\n

The final story in Noir<\/em> is \u2018The (De)Composition of Evidence\u2019 by Alex Dally MacFarlane. It\u2019s cleverly done as a murder is revealed by the words on a rotting piece of skin and it has a certain chilling elegance. It is essentially the working through of a smart idea rather than a story but it is<\/em> a very good idea.<\/p>\n

La Femme<\/em> promises tales with strong female characters and opens with a cracking story, \u2018Palestinian Sweets\u2019 by Stephen Palmer, set in a transformed London that has imported the ancient conflicts of the Middle East. There are some good ideas here \u2013 the transfer of secret information through scents shared via complexly designed meals, the struggle of one generation to leave behind the conflicts of the past and a well-handled love story. My only quibble is that we see so little of, Ghinwa, the female character, and that\u2019s all through the male protagonist\u2019s eyes. It is a very good story but it\u2019s hard to see how it meets the \u2018strong female\u2019 criterion. Francis Hardinge\u2019s \u2018Slink-Thinking\u2019 is even better. I didn\u2019t expect to like a \u2018talking animal story\u2019, but this clever re-imagining of the noir detective as a hapless (ghost) dog being manipulated by the smooth charms of the house cat and taking a beating from the big boss (the ghosts of a broiled hamster and his gerbil henchmen) to save his master\u2019s life, is cleverly done. More convincing than it sounds in summary, my only quibble is that it\u2019s in the wrong book.<\/p>\n

Next was \u2018A Winter Bewitchment\u2019 by Storm Constantine, the longest story in either book. It is a story of romantic pursuit or, perhaps more accurately, the story of the pursuit of romance, set in a fantasy world with hints of a sanitised, pre-war Confederacy. It\u2019s a story of rich people behaving frivolously and I\u2019m certain there\u2019s an audience for whom the gowns and magical shenanigans are catnip. I\u2019m not in that audience. I appreciated the slickness of the writing and recognise the richness of the setting but never warmed to it. It felt too distant, cool and settled.<\/p>\n

\u2018Softwood\u2019 by Andrew Hook is odd \u2013 Apricot, a mathematician and codebreaker \u2013 allows herself to be locked in a small underground facility in a government base, believing she is running a mysterious \u2018number station\u2019. Nothing about this story made sense: the locking up of Apricot; her sudden and total, mental breakdown; the fact that this results in the cracking of a code that has resisted all other attacks; nor the ending, in which her bosses don\u2019t appear to have noticed that their agent has suffered a massive mental breakdown. There are good moments, but I couldn\u2019t see the logic. \u00a0Adele Kirby\u2019s \u2018Soleil\u2019 is a spy romp featuring Soleil, an artificially intelligent robot, hunting Eclipse, a rogue artificially intelligent robot. The female protagonist is \u2018strong\u2019 in the sense that she wears a dress that \u2018made every woman subconsciously tug down or hoist up her own dress as appropriate, and made very man want to dig his fingers through its sleek shining folds to experience the terrain of the taut body below\u2019 \u2013 and she does kung fu. There\u2019s a fight and a resolution and then Eclipse and Soleil go off to be a robot Adam and Eve on Earth. The ending suggests this is the start of something bigger, but it lacks substance.<\/p>\n

\u2018Haecceity\u2019 is the property of \u2018thisness\u2019 \u2013 that which distinguishes the specific from the general \u2013 and a story by Stewart Hotson, though I\u2019m not entirely sure why he chose the title. The story opens with the investigation of an explosion, at the centre of which is an unharmed woman. There follows a police interrogation in which the woman reveals she has the power to leap between alternate timelines \u2013 though this power has odd limits (she can be in two places simultaneously, arrange wildly complex strings of events, but not have two guns to jam at a key moment) and then she escapes. The talky core of the story doesn\u2019t make the most of the initial, interesting, set-up.<\/p>\n

John Llewellyn-Probert\u2019s \u2018The Girl With No Face\u2019 has the feel of something from the 1930s. A fleeing female gangster stumbles into the home of a mad scientist with a laboratory in the attic and his deformed, insane son locked in a dungeon below. The \u2018twist\u2019 is hardly surprising but there\u2019s pleasure to be had getting there. Jonathon Oliver\u2019s \u2018High Church\u2019 is the tale of a female priest taking on forces of reaction and malevolent magic in the Church of England. It works quite well, though I wasn\u2019t sure how seriously we are meant to take the ending. Maura McHugh\u2019s \u2018Valerie\u2019 makes a case for acceptance and tolerance in those who dress or love differently from the majority. McHugh\u2019s position is never in doubt, so there\u2019s no sense of attempting to convince naysayers but perhaps that\u2019s the point. Perhaps it is enough to offer consolation and a sense of fellowship. More seriously, the element of the fantastic in the story is feels unnecessary and tacked on. \u2018Trysting Antlers\u2019 by Holly Ice has a cheating man get his comeuppance thanks to a feisty protagonist and her hacksaw. It\u2019s not quite as gross as it sounds, since the story features a world where men behave like stags, complete with antlers. It\u2019s both likeable and smart.<\/p>\n

I really wanted to love Ruth EJ Booth\u2019s \u2018The Honey Trap\u2019 \u2013 it is sharply written, has a great setting, an interesting young protagonist and a strong core idea. Set post-environmental collapse, the story of a gifted home fruit grower getting talent-spotted and offered the opportunity to escape poverty and realise her potential is well conceived and delivered effectively. And I did love it, until the last two pages. I\u2019ve read it several times and I still can\u2019t work out precisely what happens or why. Perhaps it\u2019s my fault.<\/p>\n

The final story in La Femme <\/em>is \u2018Elision\u2019 by Benjanun Sriduangkaew, which is excellent. Set against the background of a star-spanning theocracy that feels thought through and rich, Kita-Ushma is a former operative who gets dragged back into the machinations of the church. There are traces of cyberpunk in the story of a mutating video revealing murder and corruption, but the strangeness of setting and technology and the complexity of the character interactions are very well handled.<\/p>\n

Like all anthologies, Noir<\/em> and La Femme<\/em> force the reader to accept the crunchy with the smooth in their reading, but when they are good, they are very good. Many of the stories that didn\u2019t click with me had qualities that were obvious. \u00a0I found it frustrating that neither volume quite hangs together as a strongly themed anthology, but that may not bother other readers as much. Read individually, or without pre-conception, there are a number stories within these covers that are worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noir and La Femme edited by Ian Whates (Newcon Press, 2014) (originally published in Vector 277) Ian Whates, through Newcon Press and the Solaris Rising series, has established himself as a key editor in UK short fiction and I, like a number of authors, have reason to be grateful for his generosity. But it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[15,10],"tags":[127,73,47,46,71],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-HI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2715,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710\/revisions\/2715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}