I just reread Threats for the third time, just to see if I can figure out how Amelia Gray does it.
At times the experience of reading Threats reminds mI just reread Threats for the third time, just to see if I can figure out how Amelia Gray does it.
At times the experience of reading Threats reminds me of having a conversation with a schizophrenic person: the grammatical logic is there, intact, but the semantic sense unthreads by the end of each sentence. You know it's nonsense but still your mind grasps for meaning, and sometimes finds it. In other passages reading Threats was like looking at random patterns on a wall and finding faces there, because our minds are so good at imposing that kind of order on random things. Sometimes a verb or an adjective was so unexpected in a given sentence that I imagined the author playing Mad Libs.
And yet I am so moved by this writing. That is the amazement of this novel for me. This is a novel that nearly obliterates the typical relationship between novelist and reader. Novels usually engage parts of the brain that are rational, logical, social. That's the kind of exchange between text and reader that novels can do well. Reading Threats was very different. I'm disoriented by this writing. I feel the book leaves me to flounder on my own. But then suddenly I find myself making connections. As I read I have feelings of compassion, recognition, and joy, feelings that may or may not be anything at all to do with the "author's intent." I also have the feeling that whatever I decide to feel or imagine is happening will be completely ok with Amelia Gray.
As I read this novel I try to think of literary precedents. "Lenz" by Buechner comes to mind, or in contemporary literature, Remainder by Tom McCarthy. A few reviewers mention that the novel reminds them of Murakami. But in Murakami's novels any fantastic elements are corroborated by multiple characters, where I feel I can count on a certain mode of reality being the "correct" reality to believe in, within the framework of a Murakami novel. Threats gives me absolutely no framework to count on. No firm ground where I could say "this is really what I'm meant to believe is the 'real' for this novel." The reality you believe in for a few pages is quickly undermined by a new happening. The disorientation is marvelous and though-provoking.
The word "original" is so sloppily used for almost everything that I almost hate to use it, but there it is: This is original writing. It gives me joy just to know that something so new and unexpected can still be written after all the thousands of years we humans have been writing stories....more
This novel has a breezy lackadaisical fan-fiction feeling to it. I had the sense that Ellis just typed along, and this novel is what happened. I enjoyThis novel has a breezy lackadaisical fan-fiction feeling to it. I had the sense that Ellis just typed along, and this novel is what happened. I enjoyed reading it. I felt a little neglected by it, though. It felt as if the author kept trying to project a feeling in my direction of not caring whether he impressed me or not, or whether I kept reading or not. The feeling was pronounced enough to make me believe he really did care about impressing me, and by trying by pushing me away, was trying to make me care more about staying.
I'm spending a lot of words here now trying to explain the peculiarity of this author-reader tension. It felt different from the relationship I fall into with most novels, where I usually feel the author is trying to persuade me to enter into their story. This novel doesn't care if I like it or not. That indifference, rather than the story itself, became the most interesting thing to me about my reading experience....more
I'm exhilarated by Amelia Gray's writing. I'm happy to be reading something so new and unexpected. I literally don't know how any of her sentences is I'm exhilarated by Amelia Gray's writing. I'm happy to be reading something so new and unexpected. I literally don't know how any of her sentences is going to end--her choices are unpredictable, disturbing, magnificent. These are unsafe stories, at times so absurdly violent that I'm never sure if I should laugh. But they do make me laugh.
Here is a passage from the middle of my favorite story in the collection, "Labyrinth:"
--Knowing what he put into it, I thought it was a shame to stand by and see everyone go. The sun was still low in the sky and it was lonely at home, where the TV had been broken for a week and the tap water had begun to taste oddly of blood. "I'll go first," I said. "I'll do it."--
This paragraph has a lot of dramatic tension. Clearly a decision has been made by the narrator. Clearly something is about to happen because of that decision. But what, exactly, is going on? What is this about water tasting like blood? Why is it lonely at home? Why is the TV broken? What does it all mean? You never really know. If you were to read from the beginning of the story you would still not know. You arrive at this passage in the middle of a story, and what has come before has already left you, sentence by sentence, with more questions than answers, and even so you feel completely in thrall of the storytelling, of where it will lead. In each of her stories, Gray drives forward relentlessly to a satisfying conclusion, but along the way she keeps adding tantalizing, striking, unexplained details, until every word feels significant to the whole, and also, every word no longer seems to mean exactly what you though it meant before you began reading the story. The effect is quite unlike any other writer I've read. Wonderful....more
Second Read, 2018: When I read a book written in first person, it often feels as if I'm building a relationship2024: I read it again, I loved it more.
Second Read, 2018: When I read a book written in first person, it often feels as if I'm building a relationship with the narrator in my head. I'm gathering impressions based on what the narrator is telling me from the first page on. These impressions, this relationship between narrator and reader, affects my experience of the book. Do I like her? Do I trust her? Could she be my friend? Is she genuine? And so on.
This way of reading is all the more apparent on a re-read. The first time I read Annihilation I thought "The Biologist" was yielding, caring, and a great observer of life. I was very much affected by an early scene where she describes her childhood practice of sitting by a neglected swimming pool, and observing the coming wildlife as it invaded this formerly civilized space.
Reading Annihilation a second time, I thought The Biologist was cold, robotic, sinister. I was impressed by the way she coldly watches a colleague die, choosing to interrogate a dying woman for information rather than try to give her any aid or comfort.
I loved the book just as much. It's just that it was almost like reading a different book. This is one of the reasons I love to re-read.
First Review, 2014:
Annihilation feels like someone put an H.P. Lovecraft story into a blender with Charles Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle." Wow. As I read I kept thinking "I have never read anything like this before, and it's amazing." The strange thing, though, is that I had this same feeling--that I was reading something entirely unique--with a different book, and less than three weeks ago: THREATS by Amelia Gray. I felt very smart when I realized that Gray and Vandermeer share the same editor, Sean McDonald at FSG. I'm eager to read the other two books in Vandermeer's trilogy and also to explore this editor's other authors.
The protagonist and every other person in this novel, except in flashbacks, are women. There is really not a thematic or a plot-related reason that I can discern for this choice, but it did unhook this novel spectacularly and marvelously from typical sci-fi tropes. It was really refreshing to read a novel where women characters were a completely neutral thing, rather than women characters being used as plot devices in a gendered/sexist way (e.g. "women are the characters who need to be rescued by men") , OR women characters being used to support some kind of underlying feminist theme ("women are good at shooting arrows, too"). In this novel they are neutral, they are people. I really loved that....more
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