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A review by teresatumminello
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
3.0
I picked up this collection from the library, because I loved Lanagan's [b:Tender Morsels|2662169|Tender Morsels|Margo Lanagan|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1389763545s/2662169.jpg|2687395], a novel I know I would've reread if I were a teenager.
The reader of these stories is plopped, matter-of-fact-ly, into Lanagan's imaginative worlds, places that are not our own but in some ways are familiar. For example, we may not encounter blobby, destructive monsters made from beetles in a rural village set in some kind of past (in the story "Yowlinin"), but we all know the pangs of unrequited love.
The first story ("Singing My Sister Down") has a "The Lottery"-by-Shirley-Jackson (an author I loved as a young teen) feel to it, though it certainly stands on its own merits. The most powerful story, "Red Nose Day" -- about clowns who are the upper-class in a city with a vaguely medieval feel to it (with one glaring modern exception) -- is creepy but with strong meaning. "Perpetual Light" sets us in a near-future when the young people all have allergies, while the 'olden-days' persons feel like they still have some old immunities left over, but there is still the need for daughters to separate from their mothers no matter their age.
Each story is its own little world, though each has a novelistic feel, reaching out into a larger world that Lanagan has us believing exists or existed or will existed, one day, somewhere.
The reader of these stories is plopped, matter-of-fact-ly, into Lanagan's imaginative worlds, places that are not our own but in some ways are familiar. For example, we may not encounter blobby, destructive monsters made from beetles in a rural village set in some kind of past (in the story "Yowlinin"), but we all know the pangs of unrequited love.
The first story ("Singing My Sister Down") has a "The Lottery"-by-Shirley-Jackson (an author I loved as a young teen) feel to it, though it certainly stands on its own merits. The most powerful story, "Red Nose Day" -- about clowns who are the upper-class in a city with a vaguely medieval feel to it (with one glaring modern exception) -- is creepy but with strong meaning. "Perpetual Light" sets us in a near-future when the young people all have allergies, while the 'olden-days' persons feel like they still have some old immunities left over, but there is still the need for daughters to separate from their mothers no matter their age.
Each story is its own little world, though each has a novelistic feel, reaching out into a larger world that Lanagan has us believing exists or existed or will existed, one day, somewhere.