Helen Marshall's Gifts for the One Who Comes After was published by ChiZine Publications in September 2014.
Information about Helen Marshall:
Helen Marshall is an award-winning Canadian author, editor, and doctor of medieval studies. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Chiaroscuro, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Tor.com and have been reprinted in several "Year's Best" anthologies. Her debut collection of short stories, Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012), was named one of the top ten books of 2012 by January Magazine. It won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer and was shortlisted for a 2013 Aurora Award by the Canadian Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Oxford, England.
Click here to visit the author's official website.
Information about Gifts for the One Who Comes After:
Ghost thumbs. Microscopic dogs. One very sad can of tomato soup... Helen Marshall's second collection offers a series of twisted surrealities that explore the legacies we pass on to our children. A son seeks to reconnect with his father through a telescope that sees into the past. A young girl discovers what lies on the other side of her mother's bellybutton. Death's wife prepares for a very special funeral. In Gifts for the One Who Comes After, Marshall delivers eighteen tales of love and loss that cement her as a powerful voice in dark fantasy and the New Weird. Dazzling, disturbing, and deeply moving.
A REVIEW OF HELEN MARSHALL'S GIFTS FOR THE ONE WHO COMES AFTER
I'm glad I had a chance to read and review Helen Marshall's Gifts for the One Who Comes After, because it's an excellent short story collection. I'm tempted to use the words "exceptionally good" when talking about it, because it was something different and contained well written stories.
There are many readers and critics who have already praised Helen Marshall's stories. I also praise them, because it's almost impossible not to be impressed and moved by her odd stories. This is the first time I've read a collection by Helen Marshall, but it definitely won't be the last time, because I liked this collection very much. I intend to read all of the author's books as soon as possible.
Helen Marshall's Gifts for the One Who Comes After is one of the best fantasy, dark fantasy, horror and new weird flavoured short story collections I've read to date, because it contains beautiful, moving, haunting, clever and disturbing stories that will linger on the reader's mind. The tender brutality and thrilling oddness of these stories is something to behold (this unique combination of tender brutality and oddness sets the author apart from all other similar authors).
In my opinion, Helen Marshall is clearly one of the most talented new speculative fiction authors, because she dares to explore the human condition and the workings of a human mind in an intriguing way by adding supernatural elements to everyday life and making them part of the characters' lives so that the supernatural feels at times almost natural. Reading about how the characters live their lives and how they act to different situations is genuinely interesting.
Gifts for the One Who Comes After contains the following stories:
- The Hanging Game
- Secondhand Magic
- I'm the Lady of Good Times, She Said
- Lessons in the Raising of Household Objects
- All My Love, a Fishhook
- In the Year of Omens
- The Santa Claus Parade
- The Zhanell Adler Brass Spyglass
- Death and the Girl from Pi Delta Zeta
- Crossroads and Gateways
- Ship House
- A Brief History of Science Fiction
- Supply Limited, Act Now
- We Ruin the Sky
- In the Moonlight, the Skin of You
- The Gallery of the Eliminated
- The Slipway Grey
All the stories in this collection are good, but some of them are clearly better than others. Although I enjoyed certain stories more than others, I have nothing bad to say about any of these stories, because all of them are worth reading.
At first these stories may appear to be simple, but they're anything but simple. These stories are surprisingly complex, because the author has constructed them in such a way that you'll gradually notice how much depth there is in them.
Here's a few examples of what these stories have in store for the readers:
"The Hanging Game" is a brilliantly chilling and unsettling story about a macabre children's game. The children have learned the game from their parents and thus the game is almost like a dark heritage that's passed on from generation to generation. (This story can be found online at tor.com.)
"Secondhand Magic" is a fascinating and a bit different kind of a story about magic and a young magician whose magic trick goes wrong.
"I'm the Lady of Good Times, She Said" is fascinatingly strange story about a gun, Smiley, Carl and Juney.
"Lessons in the Raising of Household Object" is a good story about a tomato soup can and a child whose mother is pregnant.
"Supply Limited, Act Now" is a fantastic story about Larry and a miniature dog.
"The Zhanell Adler Brass Spyglass" is a well written story about Danny who tries to find out what went wrong with his parents' lives.
"The Gallery of the Eliminated" is an intriguing story about a young boy called Walter and a different kind of natural history exhibition. I found it interesting that the author wrote about extinction in a fluent way in this story.
There's much more weirdness to be found on the pages of this short story collection, but I won't reveal more information about the stories. I'll only mention that I think readers will be glad to read these stories, because they're well written stories.
Helen Marshall is an author who immediately manages to impress the reader. She easily captures the reader's imagination and lures him/her into a world of fascinating weirdness, because she views the world and life through a skewed lens. She uses weirdness in a bold yet subtle way, which is one of the reasons why her stories work so well.
It's a bit difficult to describe these stories to readers who haven't read them, because they must be experienced personally to understand their subtle beauty and power. The author writes about life as it is and shows her readers what kind of joys and sorrows life brings to people: love, death, hope, darkness and wonders.
The stories in this collection feature weirdness in different ways and they differ from other authors' weird stories. The author approaches weirdness in her own way by writing about how something unexpected or horrifying happens to the characters. There are many recurring themes in this collection. It was interesting for me to see how the author used recurring themes, but didn't repeat herself.
It was fascinating to read about how the author wrote about families, parents and children. As all readers know, the relationships between family members are often complex and changes may happen in the family. In these stories the author shows how children feel about changes and how they react to new things. I've read many weird stories that feature children, but I've seldom read stories as good as these, because the author has a way of making the children behave in a believable way, because children can be quirky and are capable of reacting abruptly and even strangely to changes. For example, in "The Zhanell Adler Brass Spyglass" the author writes well about how Danny feels about his mother's male friend and decides to hate him.
Helen Marshall manages to evoke feelings of loss, love, longing and terror in the reader. Depending on the reader's taste in weird stories and stories that contain supernatural elements, these stories will either fascinate or chill the reader (or perhaps they'll do both). For me, this is a sign of a quality author, because only talented authors are capable of causing this kind of an emotional response in the reader.
I dare say that The Gifts for the One Who Comes After is one of the best collections of modern new weirdish stories published during the recent years, because it contains different kind of stories and has something for almost everybody. I think that this collection will please many readers and it will especially be of interest to readers who love the weirder side of speculative fiction.
Helen Marshall has her own unique writing style, which reminds me a bit of Nathan Ballingrud's writing style. She is capable of writing the same kind of sad, bleak and unsettling stories as Nathan Ballingrud, but her stories are also strangely beautiful and moving and thus they differ from Ballingrud's stories.
I have to mention that the illustrations by Chris Roberts look great and help to enhance the unsettling nature of the stories.
Like many other short story collections which feature weird stories, The Gifts for the One Who Comes After may or may not be of interest to certain readers, because weird stories have a tendency to either fascinate or annoy readers, but all readers who like weird stories will most likely be impressed by this collection. It's possible that newcomers who aren't familiar with this kind of genre fiction will find this collection interesting, because it's an easily accessible collection.
If you like weird and unsettling stories, The Gifts for the One Who Comes After is a must-read collection for you. In my opinion it's essential reading material for all who enjoy reading extraordinary stories.
Highly recommended!