Scooter Chronicles

While on vacation, I finished reading the short story collection titled “Black Juice” by Margo Lanagan.

This book kept popping up at Amazon, either as a book that was bought by others who also bought the book I was looking at, or in my recommendations. I had been interested in it for a while, but kept putting the thought aside due to wanting to read novels. Finally with my switch to short stories because of being too busy, this came quickly to the top of my list again. Then Amazon was selling remainders of it for $4.99, the hardback edition. Well, you know me.

These are the stories within:

“Singing My Sister Down”
“My Lord’s Man”
“Red Nose Day”
“Sweet Pippit”
“House of the Many”
“Wooden Bride”
“Earthly Uses”
“Perpetual Light”
“Yowlinin”
“Rite of Spring”

What kind of surprises me is that this is “categorized” as geared towards young adults. Puzzling, because some of these stories are rather dark. And some are quite complex, including thick prose. I can totally see a teen enjoying this book, but for the adult readers out there that like speculative fiction, don’t let the tag put you off.

Obviously the best story is the first, Nebula nominated “Singing My Sister Down”. It is told from a young boy’s point of view as him and his family witness the very slow execution of his sister. His family tries to make her last day a celebration by feeding her her favorite foods and singing songs to her as she slowly sinks into a tar pit.

Lanagan seems to write a few different ways, but all being still in her basic style. “Singing My Sister Down” is one of the more straight ahead stories, along with “Perpetual Light”, which is told from the view point of a college student who drives three days to attend her grandmother’s funeral.

“Wooden Bride”, “Yowlinin”, and “Rite of Spring” lean more to a surreal side, and more fantastical. This can be said more of “Rite of Spring” which turned out to be quite a treat. A young man is given the task of courting the spring season by battling the fierce winter elements up on a mountain where his brother had once failed. The prose is very thick, but in all the right places. “Wooden Bride” centers around one bride-to-be in a mass ceremony who gets lost on the way to the church. It has some strange ways about it, since it appears there is no groom. But still an interesting story.

This collection didn’t start strong with just because of the Nebula nominated story. Both “My Lord’s Man” and “Red Nose Day” were great stories as well. “Red Nose Day” was a little evasive, but it worked so well with the story. Especially the very shocking twist two thirds into the story. Two college age guys (my take) are lost in a world of being hit-men (again, my take) and are making “hits” on performers at what seems to be either a very popular event, or a way of life in this city/world.

There were two stories though I found hard to finish. “House of the Many” I literally did not finish. I am still confused as to what the story was even about. It was very surreal in my opinion and heavy on language. “Sweet Pippit” was rather unique, and I applaud Lanagan for this story, but again I was a bit confused as to what exactly was going on. The main characters of the story though are elephants, and they are searching for Pippit, a young human man, who seems to take care of them.

Even with the two clunkers in my mind, this was still a great collection of stories. And again I stress that it is probably hindered with the young adult tag because some scoff at that. It would be a shame for speculative fiction fans to pass on this because of that tag. Lanagan’s writing style should turn heads, as it did with me, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear much more from her in the future.