McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories

Title: McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing
Stories
Author: Edited by Michael Chabon
Publisher: Vintage Books (Random House)
328 p.

When I need to get my fix of the weird, creepy, and various, I turn to
this book. Ordinarily, I'd talk about the book as a whole, but since
it's an anthology and I'm a dumb asshole, I'll go over each story
briefly and in order as published.

Lusus Naturae by Margaret Atwood: From the author of the
delectable Handmaid's Tale comes this creep-fest about a
young girl who comes down with a mysterious disease that turns her eyes
yellow, her teeth pink, her fingernails red, and her hair
all-encompassing. With a taste for blood and her fearsome appearance,
she becomes a liability for her family, and is eventually abandoned as a
result. Her curiosity and need for human companionship results in a
curiously clichè denouement that is nonetheless effective.

What You Do Not Know You Want by David Mitchell: An
intriguing tale about a special-interest buyer with an annoying model
fiance in L.A. who investigates his former lover's suicide in Hawaii.
The story revolves around a Japanese knife with an evocative history,
and the hero bugs a shitload of people to find it. In the end, though,
the shitload bugs back, and things get interesting.

Vivian Relf by Jonathan Lethem: More puzzling than it is
scary, this story tweaks the "Have I seen you before?" pickup line. The
protagonist bumps into a mysterious woman three times. Really, that's
all that happens. I guess it's about missed chances at true love, where
the soul almost, but not quite, recognizes it's counterpoint in another;
on the tip of the ectoplasmic tongue, so to speak. The last line is fun,
though: "The dinner party rose up and swallowed them, as it was meant
to."

Minnow by Ayelet Waldman: This is one of those far-out
stories that make you go, "OK. The fuck?" A pregnant woman is bloodily
liberated from her parasite (miscarriage to you kid-non-haters), but
starts hearing the yowls of a ghostly hatchling via her baby monitor. A
lot of really weird sexual shit happens (hubby digs ta-ta-juice fresh
from the nozzle), and makes you wonder if this is why pregnant women
suck. Good ending, though.

Zeroville by Steve Erickson: So a crazy film editor
spends 30 years watching movies and dreaming about hidden frames with a
door in them. Of course, he finds them in every movie, and tracks down a
final flick that holds the secret. In the end, he walks through. That's,
like, it. Yawn.

Lisey and the Madman by Stephen King: Eh. It's okay. A famous
writer's wife (gee, how unusual for a famous writer to write a famous
writer character) sweats in the Nashville sun while her husband conducts
a groundbreaking ceremony for a new university library. Well-written,
but goes on and on about omens and shit before a blond assassin shows up
and tries to blow away the writer. Wifey saves his life, but bitches
about how in every significant picture of her husband, only her shoes
are visible. Here's a hint: don't buy Payless.

7C by Jason Roberts: Holy shit. Definitely one of the best short
stories in the book, which makes sense since it won a contest to be
included. An astronomer is studying quasars and wondering why our
universe even has them, since they're immensely old. Eventually, as
people begin developing scars that seem to run backwards, he finds out
the truth about his wife's infidelity and resorts to some truly scary
tactics to bounce his ideas about quasars off of his best friend.

The Miniaturist by Heidi Julavits: It's average, really--your
basic story about a young woman trapped in a remote mountain cabin with
a strange, dollhouse-obsessed old lady. Not my favorite, but
serviceable.

The Child by Roddy Doyle: A nice fake-out story, where things as
written are not the same as what's actually happening. Doyle is one of
my favorite authors, and I'm pleased to report he fell far short of
disappointment on this one. A random guy starts seeing a little kid
everywhere, and starts making a list of women he's slept with and trying
to contact them. The end's quite good, a little surprising, and
certainly sensical.

Delmonico by Daniel Handler: Another puzzler. A drunkard observes
as a bartender with an unusual skill at problem-solving (and I mean
unusual) works on a unique problem involving an acrobat, a
murder, and a chandelier. Really quite a pleasure to read, mostly
because it's a locked-room mystery reconceptualized. Plus the eponymous
cocktail of the title was responsible for a drunken rampage of mine a
couple of years ago, so I have warm fuzzies for it.

The Scheme of Things by Charles D'Ambrosio: A couple of con
artists hit a small town, using a crack-baby charity as a front to bilk
agriculturally-inclined Iowans out of pennies. The hook? They're
psychic. The end? They provide closure to an old couple. Not sexy,
but still a decent read, if only because of the banality of the phrase
"cowboy brain."

The Devil of Delery Street by Poppy Z. Brite: Okay, I admit it:
I'm not a Brite-head. The name's ridiculous, and Anne Rice has made the
gothic New Orleans somewhat tiresome. Still, this one isn't too bad, if
unsatisfying. A ghost starts haunting a Stubbs girl with interesting
consequences, but virtually nothing is elaborated. She hears
scratchings, crucifixes self-affix to her back, her siblings start
playing with a mysterious force, and then it goes away. That's it. Maybe
the lack of explanation and seeming senselessness behind this
supernatural manifestation is supposed to make it creepier, but it seems
to rob the reader of any kind of payoff. It doesn't help that the damn
thing acts like Casper with the younger Stubbses. Nothing "devilish"
about this one.

Reports of Certain Events in London by China Mièville: My
favorite out of the entire fucking book. It's done in the false
documentary style, the author posing as just someone who came into
possession (ostensibly due to postal error) of certain documents
belonging to a group of people who investigate Via Ferae. The VF,
as they are referred to by the group, are fucking cool. They're what
their name says they are: untamed streets that come and go at will in
the heart of London and most other major cities. The investigation of a
war between the intelligent city streets turns out to have very, very
interesting ramifications.

The Fabled Light-House at Viña Del Mar by Joyce Carol Oates:
Ordinarily, I think of Oates as a first-period type of writer--and I
mean the menstruation kind of period. Talk about an up-ending of
expectations. Jesus. A nineteeth-century guy who vacillates between
British gentlemanry and hooliganism is dropped off on a tiny island in
the Pacific as part of an experiment on human isolation, with only his
dog to keep him company. He has two tasks: document the effects of
isolation on his psyche, and maintain a lighthouse. He only succeeds in
one of them, and his descent into animalistic madness is amazing and
disturbing. The aquatic animals in the vicinity are not fucking normal,
and the end makes you both shudder and want to throw up in your mouth.

Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle by Peter Straub: Four guys who're
involved in publishing wind up on the same fancy-pants floor of some
fancy-pants hospital, all because of non-fatal heart failure. Two are
writers, one of whom has experienced a brutal fall from grace when he's
outed as a shameless plagiarist. One's a book critic who sells opinions
for money and loves artificial sweetener. The last is an ancient
publisher with delusions of grandeur. All four have affected each other
at some point. The rest really isn't terribly fascinating, what with
comings and goings and "Oops, he's actually dead" moments. A big, giant
*shrug* to it.

And that's it. Keep an eye out for another one coming soon.