A newcomer's remarkable debut

REVIEWS BY GAVIN J. GRANT

Mary Rickert's Map of Dreams is the type of debut collection bibliophiles dream of stumbling across. Rickert's stories, most of which were published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1999 and 2006, are tiny fireballs shooting across the reader's brain, delving into dark and scary parts of our imagination that other writers don't reach. The title story, original to the collection, is a short novel of time travel, art, grief, loss and love. The story comes to a not-unexpected end, but on its way there detours through startling places. In the best of the other stories, Rickert's writing is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, Connie Willis or Doris Lessing, writers who are unapologetically political and who use mythology as the underpinning to explore modern life. As with those writers, Rickert occasionally uses humor to heighten the darkness of her writing. But, in this collection at least, Rickert is very comfortably settled in the use of science fiction and fantasy to explore the lives of the outsiders and misfits who populate her work. All of this comes together in stories such as "Peace on Suburbia," an odd Christmas tale about a family dealing with a grandparent's Alzheimer's, snowflakes that might be angels and the random suburban paranoia triggered by worries about who is knocking on the front door. Rickert has a satisfyingly vigorous imagination which scales from the smallest detail to the grandest conceit, and she corrals and controls it in an incredibly skilled manner.


Time-bending journey

In Stamping Butterflies British writer Jon Courtenay Grimwood twines two narratives into a circular vision of time. In a present similar to our own, a supposed madman who has been living on the street tries to assassinate the president of the United States. He gets close enough to shoot but misses and is immediately apprehended. After he is taken into custody, his case becomes a worldwide phenomenon as everyone from the man on the street to the pope puts forward opinions on what to do with him. The mystery of the assassin's history is simultaneously explored, giving Grimwood plenty of opportunities for the detailed world-building at which he excels. In a parallel narrative, Grimwood examines the propensity of films and video games to present mass murder as nothing unusual by portraying a far-future Chinese emperor who doesn't believe in his perceived reality. His violent killing of those around him in the mistaken belief that they aren't real is reminiscent of such films as Star Wars or The Matrix.

Grimwood, who wrote the coruscating Arabesk series of alternate history thrillers, is presented as one of the "best-kept secrets" of British writing, but if he keeps producing mind-bending page-turners such as this, he won't be a secret for long.


Returning to a classic

Farewell Summer is Ray Bradbury's self-declared second half of his much-loved autobiographical novel Dandelion Wine, first published in 1957. We return to the story to find the now-14-year-old Douglas Spaulding on the cusp of adolescence in Green Town, Illinois. But, without quite knowing why, the teenager is struggling against the daily encroachment of age, adulthood and time itself. Doug leads his gang of almost-teens in a war against Green Town's senior citizens, who are believed to be killing summer and forcing time onto the kids. Members of Doug's gang steal the chess pieces off the park chess tables, sneak into the town hall and sabotage the town clock. All the while, Doug is being challenged by his younger brother Tom, who is still a child, still a boy, while Doug is beginning to experience flashes of adulthood.

Bradbury is still a master at catching the fleeting moments of adolescence and the hopeful and beautiful instances of intergenerational communication. The novel's conclusion may leave readers more than a little puzzled and uncomfortable, but getting to that end has many of the familiar joys of Bradbury's previous work.


Gavin J. Grant is the co-editor of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: 2006 (St. Martin's).

© 2006 ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com