‘This Strange Way of Dying: Stories of Magic, Desire & the Fantastic’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Posted: October 4, 2013
Book Reviews
Reviewed by Chadwick Ginther (originally posted Nov. 4, 2013)
You might think there are no secret places left in the fantasy genre, but there are. The world and myths that Silvia Moreno-Garcia reveals in her debut collection is not one often seen; her stories are mostly set in Mexico and told through the lens of that region’s rich tradition of folklore. The names and terms may seem more foreign at first than Frodo or Gandalf, and Mexico more distant than Middle-Earth—what most may know about Mexico is not featured in these stories, but there is much more to the nation and its people than the Day of the Dead or luchadores.
As one would expect from the title, there are many meetings with death in This Strange Way of Dying. Moreno-Garcia always reaches beyond the obvious, even when dealing with something as pervasive as the zombie. In this collection, death can come in a literal or more metaphorical sense. For every monster, there is someone stuck in a dead-end job, or a career turned to dust by societal changes. Of cultures eradicated by colonialism and genocide, an idea addressed in “Jaguar Woman” Moreno-Garcia says, “They speak new words to her and the words drive away the words she used to know. They even give her a new name and she watches as her old name is trampled under the hoofs of their horses. The magic is lost.”
Moreno-Garcia has a spare prose style, but it is one that belies the complexity and depth of her ideas and is well suited to the many common folk who populate her stories. There is a subtlety and seriousness amid the skulls and bones, and beauty among the omens and death. The fantastic elements in This Strange Way of Dying are presented matter-of-factly, such as in the opening of “Stories with a Happy Ending,” a story where the author plays with the journalist/vampire dynamic that Anne Rice crafted in Interview with the Vampire: “The vampire was eating meatballs at a late-night restaurant and smoking cheap cigarettes that tinted the fingers and defiled the tongue.” Moreno-Garcia’s characters are an uncommon array of common folk, blue collar more than blue blooded (her vampires work night shifts as security at a hosiery factory).
The horror in this book is not the horror of blood-splashed walls, but it is there, and in “Flash Frame,” Moreno-Garcia can evoke a shudder with a mere description of sound. “The sound was yellow. A bright noxious yellow. Festering yellow. The sound of withered teeth scraping against flesh. Of pustules bursting open. Diseased. Hungry.”
In “Shade of the Ceiba Tree,” the standout of the collection for me and one of the most moving stories I’ve read recently, that horrific tone is underlain with beauty:
And when he whispered to her with a sorcerer’s voice made of stars, binding her with each word, she thought of her childhood and her sister singing to her and his chains melted away. Thus she fell into darkness but was never swallowed by it.
One wouldn’t expect to find humour in a collection so riddled with stories of death, but it is here, and not all of the gallows variety. Moreno-Garcia knows that horror and humour can be fast friends, and that the darkness feels a little bleaker after a good chuckle. For instance, when Death extracts fourteen years of life rather than the promised seven after a broken vow, he remarks: “Compound interest.”
There is plenty to enjoy in This Strange Way of Dying, not just for the gourmet of death, but for anyone who loves a good story, even for those ready to dismiss horror fiction as “butcher’s work.” If you hunger as Moreno-Garcia’s “Death Collector” does “for the delicious, the delicate, the more refined crimes rather than clumsy trails of corpses,” then you will devour them in each wonderful story. A whole new world of possibilities for speculative fiction is revealed in these pages, and there is a lot of life to be found in This Strange Way of Dying.
Exile | 216 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1550963540
‘This Strange Way of Dying: Stories of Magic, Desire & the Fantastic’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Book Reviews
You might think there are no secret places left in the fantasy genre, but there are. The world and myths that Silvia Moreno-Garcia reveals in her debut collection is not one often seen; her stories are mostly set in Mexico and told through the lens of that region’s rich tradition of folklore. The names and terms may seem more foreign at first than Frodo or Gandalf, and Mexico more distant than Middle-Earth—what most may know about Mexico is not featured in these stories, but there is much more to the nation and its people than the Day of the Dead or luchadores.
As one would expect from the title, there are many meetings with death in This Strange Way of Dying. Moreno-Garcia always reaches beyond the obvious, even when dealing with something as pervasive as the zombie. In this collection, death can come in a literal or more metaphorical sense. For every monster, there is someone stuck in a dead-end job, or a career turned to dust by societal changes. Of cultures eradicated by colonialism and genocide, an idea addressed in “Jaguar Woman” Moreno-Garcia says, “They speak new words to her and the words drive away the words she used to know. They even give her a new name and she watches as her old name is trampled under the hoofs of their horses. The magic is lost.”
Moreno-Garcia has a spare prose style, but it is one that belies the complexity and depth of her ideas and is well suited to the many common folk who populate her stories. There is a subtlety and seriousness amid the skulls and bones, and beauty among the omens and death. The fantastic elements in This Strange Way of Dying are presented matter-of-factly, such as in the opening of “Stories with a Happy Ending,” a story where the author plays with the journalist/vampire dynamic that Anne Rice crafted in Interview with the Vampire: “The vampire was eating meatballs at a late-night restaurant and smoking cheap cigarettes that tinted the fingers and defiled the tongue.” Moreno-Garcia’s characters are an uncommon array of common folk, blue collar more than blue blooded (her vampires work night shifts as security at a hosiery factory).
The horror in this book is not the horror of blood-splashed walls, but it is there, and in “Flash Frame,” Moreno-Garcia can evoke a shudder with a mere description of sound. “The sound was yellow. A bright noxious yellow. Festering yellow. The sound of withered teeth scraping against flesh. Of pustules bursting open. Diseased. Hungry.”
In “Shade of the Ceiba Tree,” the standout of the collection for me and one of the most moving stories I’ve read recently, that horrific tone is underlain with beauty:
And when he whispered to her with a sorcerer’s voice made of stars, binding her with each word, she thought of her childhood and her sister singing to her and his chains melted away. Thus she fell into darkness but was never swallowed by it.
One wouldn’t expect to find humour in a collection so riddled with stories of death, but it is here, and not all of the gallows variety. Moreno-Garcia knows that horror and humour can be fast friends, and that the darkness feels a little bleaker after a good chuckle. For instance, when Death extracts fourteen years of life rather than the promised seven after a broken vow, he remarks: “Compound interest.”
There is plenty to enjoy in This Strange Way of Dying, not just for the gourmet of death, but for anyone who loves a good story, even for those ready to dismiss horror fiction as “butcher’s work.” If you hunger as Moreno-Garcia’s “Death Collector” does “for the delicious, the delicate, the more refined crimes rather than clumsy trails of corpses,” then you will devour them in each wonderful story. A whole new world of possibilities for speculative fiction is revealed in these pages, and there is a lot of life to be found in This Strange Way of Dying.
Exile | 216 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1550963540