Month: December 2020

Review of M. John Harrison, “Cicisbeo”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 243-256. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Harrison is so good at giving us intimate pictures of complete strangers. While some of his stories feel like the narrator is intrusively observing someone else’s life, in this story, it feels like we the reader are the ones intruding. The experience of the reading is somewhat uncomfortably voyeuristic, but I at least couldn’t stop “watching” the unfolding relationship car crash, because there kept being hints of something more, something deeper, something fantastic — and when the reveal finally came in the very last paragraphs, it was worth it.

(It was also worth it just to learn the meaning of the title word, a word I hadn’t come across before. Hurrah for vocabulary expansion!)

(First published in Independent on Sunday, 2003).

Review of M. John Harrison, “‘Doe Lea'”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 231-242. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

What a strange little story. Alan’s father has died in hospital in London, and he is taking the train back to Dover when there is a train fault of some sort and everyone must disembark at the little town of Doe Lea. Alan explores the town while waiting for the relief train to come, and the way Harrison constructs the scene is full of skill: Everything seems just a little bit off, a little bit strange, and you never find out why.

(Originally published by Nightjar Press, 2019.)

Review of M. John Harrison, “The East”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 217-229. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story, like “The Incalling” earlier in this anthology, focuses on a young man, the narrator, who takes an intense interest in a stranger, striking up a conversation with the man from the East, becoming his friend, and eventually stalking him all over London. I’m really not sure what to make of these stories. There is absolutely no sense on the part of the narrator that what they are doing is intrusive or wrong (only once does he feel “faintly guilty” (p. 224) about pawing through the man from the East’s belongings); it makes you wonder how much this is the narrator’s view and how much the author’s.

(Originally published in Interzone, 1996).

Review of M. John Harrison, “The Incalling”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 173-202 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

It is clear that in this story, we are supposed to find Mr. Clerk’s demeanour and actions (especially his slack-faced tracking of Miss Alice Sprake across London) creepy and unintelligible. He is set off from the very start as an “other”, someone who doesn’t fit in, someone who isn’t quite there. And yet, what I found most creepy and unsettling was not so much Clerk’s actions but the narrator’s, Austin. We would not know anything of Mr. Clerk were Mr. Austin not following him around, in a sort of observant, prurient way that ends up being rather stalker-ish. Like — why is he doing this? The explanation given at the beginning — that as Clerk’s publisher Austin feels an obligation to take an interest in him — rings hollow within only a few pages. What was also strange was how unimportant the titular Incalling ended up being; for such a long story, it was all over almost as soon as the story began. All in all, this was a weird one, all right.

(Originally published in The Savoy Book, 1978.)