- Analysis by L.Timmel Duchamp
- Review of The Start of the End of It All at Strange Horizons
A disclaimer for you on this happy June that will become self-evident soon enough: I love this story. I could read it a thousand times over and give you a thousand different insights. I love it in the peepish and borderline obsessive way its narratrice experiences love. Love it, in its own words, “as a mouse might love the hand that cleans the cage, and as uncomprehendingly, too, for surely I see only a part of him here.”
(Except the story doesn’t have a gender, so swap the pronoun for the more appropriate in that quote.)
I first read this story while obdurately at the beach with a friend on a cold, wet day. The only other beach-trawler was an Australian man, whistling and playing football by himself and wearing nothing but a floppy hat. This guy belonged perfectly with this collection of stories.
In fact, if story’s author is one whose writings (long and short) you haven’t yet read, I can tell you authoritatively that they’re perfect reading for rivers and hammocks and beaches and other June-type reading.
Speaking of June reading, by this daymarker it’s just about Bloomsday…
6 responses so far ↓
1 Robert Nagle // Jun 6, 2010 at 11:53 am
The effusiveness of that ending seemed positively Joycean. It’s refreshing that the female is the sexual deviant for a change….
2 R. Ross // Jun 13, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Miette
Happy Joyous Bloomsday I wish you will / are going to read some James Joyce this year. Thanks for all your work. Much encouragement R. Ross, sitting in California
3 miette // Jun 14, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Robert, my god, I KNOW. Emshwiller writes the most genuinely complex women in the known universe, as far as I’m concerned. The Mount = required reading.
4 miette // Jun 14, 2010 at 2:46 pm
R: I celebrate Bloomsday every year, and this’ll be no different. You still have a day and change to catch up on Miette’s Bloomsdays Past:
http://www.miettecast.com/authors/joyce-james/
5 rula // Jun 14, 2010 at 9:03 pm
excellent! amazing details and anxious thinking and of course well read too. I always track down the stories that I like to see if it written similarly to how you read them
6 chris // Jun 19, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Finally got around to listening to this one-what a great story! I now have to track down everything else by this author. Why have I never heard of these people before? (And I could hear in your voice how much you liked this one. Unless that was just me.)
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