Our rerun post for the day is another Gremlin’s Library from *checks*… dear god, this was four years ago? Nevertheless. Middlegame is now one of my favourite books, and is actually a major influence on my completed, currently-querying novel. So you can take this review to heart. No notes, other than the humorous commentary that I eventually did read Every Heart A Doorway and was much less impressed. (No shade to McGuire. It was just inevitably never going to live up to the hype.)
I’ve been meaning to read some of Seanan McGuire’s books for a long time, but – do you ever get that thing when a book or author comes so highly recommended that you’re scared of reading it because it might not live up to the hype? Well, I’m ace, and Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway is one of the few books that’s consistently recommended as ace rep, so – you get the picture. But Middlegame is a new book, stand-alone and – fascinatingly to me – had a Hand of Glory on the front, so I checked it out.
I am SO glad I did. Lucky, lucky, lucky me, the nerd who loves alchemy and weird mindscrewy nonsense, I picked a book that manages to combine a children’s novel, Conceptual Alchemy, goth sensibilities and the unmaking of reality into a shockingly coherent, gripping narrative that also includes time travel. Hilariously enough, McGuire’s afterword includes that she wrote the entire book partially because her agent said the pitch didn’t make sense. The galaxy brain involved. I love it.
Anyway. Middlegame is a novel that makes very little sense until you get at least five or so chapters in; it’s a mastercraft example of “just go with it and then you start catching up” – exposition-lite storytelling, or in media res, however you want to describe it. I’m the kind of reader who can happily do this, filing away snippets of information until they make sense, and there’s nothing I hate more than an undisguised infodump. McGuire is clever – the infodumps are so sneaky in the beginning that they don’t register as that. First, you see two twins, one of them dying, the other struggling to figure out what to do. Then you meet Asphodel Baker, aspiring alchemist, creating something terrible and wonderful – a golem, or mannikin, or homunculus, whatever you want to call it. And finally, even later still, you meet the same mannikin, Reed, presenting a group of alchemists with his great quest; to embody the Doctrine of Ethos within a human form, and how he has managed to embody it into three sets of twins.
And thus, our story begins.
What’s the Doctrine of Ethos? Well, it’s kind of unclear, but that’s part of what makes it so fun. Nobody seems entirely sure. It’s the blueprint to the universe, clearly, or the Word of God, or the key to the center of everything – Really, you just kind of have to go with it.
If you think this all sounds like nonsensical gibberish, you won’t like this book. You may very well enjoy Roger and Dodger (yes, I know) and their complicated relationship; they’re the best kind of separated-at-birth twins, with psychic powers and distant telepathy. Their ridiculous rhyming names are even mocked at length by pretty much every character including themselves – the only thing better than a trope is a trope with a sense of humour. But the core of the book, and the thing that brings me so much joy, is how blissfully and happily weird it is. This is a world of shadowy conspiracies and twisty timelines, self-fulfilling loops, faerie logic mixed with questionable science, and Alice-in-Wonderland aesthetics married to the frightening ups-and-downs of turbulent adult relationships.
If this review got you interested – good! You’ll like it! And if you’re confused? Chances are, the book wouldn’t be your thing anyway. Welcome to the trip.
Trigger warnings for this book include: a semi-detailed suicide attempt, abandonment issues/triggers, reality warping/unreality stuff, mind control, gaslighting, threat of hospitalization and a few extended murder scenes that freaked me out much more than usual murder does.
David Cronenberg’s debut novel Consumed is… weird. Not bad-weird and not quite good-weird either; like his famous movies, Consumed is a trip through a rabbit-hole of paranoia, conflicting truths, and a conspiracy theory that by the end of things seems to involve North Korea and spell doom for the two main journalists.
I’ll be honest. Consumed, as a novel trying to tell a story, isn’t great. It’s a lot of various horrifying ideas all pulled together and not quite connecting, written in absolutely gorgeous and chilling prose – but it ends just before the conclusion that readers have been working towards, and the conspiracy theory it orients itself around gets to the point of disbelief. That being said, the ideas and images in the book are powerful. Cronenberg connects seemingly disparate images into a set of metaphors, and pulls you down into the depravity involved. It’d be a much better book if it had an ending, but I suppose that’s where imagination comes in.
Ultimately, Consumed functions more as a series of vignettes and thought streams than a cohesive novel. If that’s the kind of thing that interests you, go for it! But don’t expect a narrative that entirely makes sense.
However, I wouldn’t be doing my job as a reviewer if I didn’t make sure to put a MASSIVE content warning on this book. I mean, it’s Cronenberg, so one can assume a certain level of body horror anyway, but it’s about cannibalism, literally (and figuratively) consuming a woman’s body, and a weirdly high amount of sex scenes. There are also some slightly twitchy moments in regards to the Tokyo setting and Japanese culture in general.
I wrote this back in 2018, and while this seems like more or less a fair review, it’s interesting seeing how I’ve changed. I don’t think I would have the patience for this book now, certainly if my memories of it are accurate; and I remember the Japanese stuff being more than a “bit twitchy”, but of course this was also my very first WordPress-based review. (Maybe my first public one at all?) I also am a little clearer about spoiler vs non-spoiler reviews now; this really doesn’t spoil anything about Consumed, but I was obviously doing a lot of work to try say what I wanted without actually… saying much at all.
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Happy new year everyone! After taking a while to recover from burnout, I’m happy to say I’m back to blogging. My Patreon is…. well, gone — it’s a long story, and not by choice — but I have many updates for those subscribed to me here!
Number one: I have a SubscribeStar now! This should be much easier to use, and I’m queued up into February both for SubscribeStar and on here already, so that’s good. For those who aren’t aware, subscribers get my posts early; this time around I’m also posting an exclusive article for subscribers only each month. For January, it’s about Night in The Woods; for February, it’ll be about my personal relationship with poetry, and why I consider it my “first language”. If you like the work I do on this blog, this is a great way to help support me.
Number two: You can now preorder Carrion City in physical form! These preorders were originally only open in December for a short time, but between the Canada Post strike and the aforementioned Patreon shenanigans (that also involved Paypal… it’s been a time) they’ve been extended to the end of January. This is a handmade zine in full color, mounted on cardstock — and if you preorder, you get both the ebook and a bonus ebook of Revenant’s Hymn. Great value for twelve bucks, honestly.
Number three: I put the serious one at the bottom because it would feel weird to go from marketing to this, honestly. Earlier this year I was diagnosed (pending genetic testing, but it’s pretty definite) with something called Usher Syndrome. It’s come up here and there that I have sensorineural hearing loss in both ears — I’ve been that way since I was born. Over the last two years, it’s become increasingly clear that something was going on with my vision. As it turns out, it’s something called retinitis pigmentosa; in other words, progressive peripheral vision loss. What makes it Usher Syndrome is that it’s tied genetically to my hearing loss, which has got to be some of the shittiest genetic luck I’ve heard of. Everyone with RP/Usher loses their vision at a different speed. So far, I’m doing okay; but I’m likely to be legally blind within the next ten to twenty years.
So that’s part of why things like SubscribeStar and selling my books, already important, are going to be extra vital to me. Not only do I have to support myself like I always have, but I’ve got a whole host of other things to deal with! I can’t drive (I couldn’t before and kept putting it off, but now I legally can’t…) and likely can’t work most jobs being both deaf and blind, so I’ll be making the most of what I can do. Plus, I’m now saving up for a service dog, a cane, and all sorts of other things.
It’s not a fun adjustment so far, I’ll be honest. But I figure, I’m open about so much of what I deal with anyway. So there we have it. I’m doubling down to make my creative work go places, both as a writer and a reviewer, and I’m hoping I can reach people with it.
Thanks so much for your support and your time! Happy New Year, and may 2025 be kinder to all of us.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. All the devils are here, wandering around trying to figure what comes next.
Preorders for Revenant’s Hymn are live and ready through Kobo, Vivlio, Apple, BorrowBox and directly from me through Payhip! The book itself publishes on March 5th, just under two months from now. Look at me, being ahead of schedule and everything. Will wonders never cease.
Revenant’s Hymn is a collection of short stories and poetry, all positioned around a central narrative about four demons stranded in the 1980s with no mission, no purpose and no master. The full blurb/marketing copy can be read on Goodreads – here, I’m going to go into a little more depth about Revenant’s Hymn and its table of contents. (And if you really can’t wait and you’re a book blogger and/or willing to leave a review – the ARC request form is here!)
No Fun To Be Alone
It was Mammon’s house in truth, only because Asmodeus hated it. They stayed in it because there was nowhere else to go. They snuck into Mammon’s bed in the night and he would rake his claws over their back and sink himself into them and lick the sweat from their collarbones. But the electric lights hurt their eyes. The ones forty years ago had been less bright; there had been more candles, more oil, less of this.
The central narrative of the book, told in eight parts; gory, sexual, and essentially a Stephen King book told from the monster’s perspective, in a way. “No Fun to Be Alone”has a non-binary protagonist, for those of you who will immediately perk up at that, although they’re not exactly the heroic type. (Sort of the diametric opposite.) If you like Kiera in Ghosts in Quicksilver or cry over the villains in shonen anime a lot, you’ll enjoy this.
Shadowplay
I can read your face but not your mind
speak slow
and I might grasp your words from the air
A rather old poem of mine that I finally got working the way I wanted it to; I’ve always struggled with writing poetry about being deaf, but I have a few I really enjoy.
Revenant
Follow the moonlight’s trail to the very end of the road, and beyond, until you reach the last bridge across the river. Cross the bridge, then burn it.
There are eight “Revenant” pieces in the collection, each of them exactly 100 words. I’m not sure whether to call them prose poems, drabbles, flash fiction or something else entirely, but twice now I’ve had people mention them as some of the more striking bits, so clearly they’re something. Like “No Fun To Be Alone”, they’re scattered throughout the collection, bit by bit creating… well, not a story, exactly. A triptych? Octych? (I don’t know why I ended up with eight.)
Concrete
call the county coroner, keep now quiet
cremate their corpses like coals and kindling
One of my structured (sort of?) poems in here, “Concrete” is what happens when I try to see how much c/k alliteration or consonance I can fit into a single poem with an identifiable topic/narrative. Turns out, a lot. I think I wrote this nearly six years ago now! I even remember where I was sitting when I wrote it.
bury your LOVERS bury your FRIENDS
Negotiating the humanity of the mental constructs that most people have and never acknowledge, never mind the ones that do emerge as acknowledged and aware, is a difficult and intensely personal ordeal. Saturday, specifically, takes a very personal glee in being something Other. She has the freedom to be, after all. Humanity is for suckers who are stuck with it.
This short story is what happens when you listen to Billie Eilish’s bury a friend on repeat while dealing with kin (false) memories and PTSD flashbacks. In case you thought the title was a coincidence. It’s taken a long time to get fully comfortable with openly talking about plurality and dissociative identity, but plainly speaking, I wasn’t exactly going to get far pretending to be a ‘normie’ writer, so why not? Please know going in, however; I have content warnings in the book as well, but this story is very strongly about suicide, sexual assault, and extended sexual abuse.
WarningSigns
Thistle, vervain, bitterroot, and all the other warning signs Begonias in their vivid blooms, flash’d alarum in designs
This one started as me just playing around with the flower meanings I was researching (for Bell, Clock and Candle) and it turned into something a little more haunting than that. Although it’s one of the many examples in the collection of me very clearly growing up on Old Books, whoops. (Does anybody use alarum anymore? I don’t think so.)
Dead Boys Don’t Bite
Dead boys don’t bite, at least, not much we’re cold and limp but fun to touch smell sweat and formaldehyde our wired jaws rigid as our spines
Ah, it’s here I should underline that this is a firmly 18+ collection, and this piece is a huge part as to why. I don’t know why I wrote a sestina form poem about necrophilia from the point of view of the victims, but I sure did! I love it a lot, although I can’t quite get over the dorkiness of my first “real” adult content being… a sestina.
Mirrors on the Ceiling
…water turns to blood in the last light of the end of the world
swallowing up the sun for all the creatures skulking in the silt.
“Mirrors on the Ceiling”was originally published in my collection Post-Traumatic Anatomy, but this republished version is actually different! Mostly it’s been formatted differently, but it adds a remarkable amount in my opinion; I also like having it against poems and stories that are as weird as it is. Like some of the other pieces in here, it is deeply about sexual assault/abuse; also keep your eyes open for many, many references, because I can’t help myself.
Mary Mary Ordinary (Where Did Your Monsters Go?)
You don’t talk about the monsters under the bed. Under the earth. Under the stone and the bones and the crying crying soil.
I suppose I can’t keep just describing my short stories as weird given that that’s All Of Them. This short story is one that I apparently wrote at some point, shoved into the depths of my hard drive and forgot about, but I know it was clearly inspired by queer censorship/pinkwashing and the witch hunts that occur with such startling regularity online. For this one, another warning for sexual assault (mentioned more than anything else), suicide and genocide, and eye trauma (somewhat graphic).
Departure
in the dark of the night before you leave you touch me like you think that I might break
Probably the shortest poem I have in here; I actually know where this one came from, and it’s an interesting story, albeit one I have to redact some details for. When I was in fandom more full-time, big bangs were all the rage, and mini-bangs (5k or so) were really starting to catch on. For one in particular, I asked if I could tell a story through poetry — and the mods said yes! Unfortunately, I left the fandom shortly afterwards, and dropped out of all the events I was in. I still have a lot of unfinished stuff kicking around, and while most of the poetry from that isn’t usable without a lot of editing, this one is still something I’m quite happy with.
Bone Rune Testament
I carve into my bones the words he promised the texts I wrote the way forward out of time that tick-tocks backwards into time and text and history we forgot –
This one is definitely a prose poem, even if I’m still shaky on the exact definition of that. “Bone Rune Testament” was previously published by VampCatMag, and I’m still so thankful, because it’s what gave me the kick to recognize that, hey, maybe people Like surrealist nonsense. This also – in its own way – inspired me to work on Grotesque, which will hopefully be either getting subbed or prepared for publishing in the next year.
Here In The Chambers Of Your Soul
Or, perhaps, you have been slipping away from me from the beginning
happy to have company but never sure what to do with it;
never sure where it is I should sit or stand
here in the chambers of your soul.
This is one of the deeply personal ones that I won’t share too much about, but it’s worth saying that intimacy – physical and emotional – is a constant struggle for people with mental illness, especially with each other, and I was feeling that a lot when I wrote this one. There’s a lot out there about how we hurt each other, but in my opinion, not enough about how we just can’t get comfortable with each other sometimes — and how there’s usually nobody to blame.
Black Blood
in spirals winding inwards and the way the clocks are counting in rhythm that is best forgot rhythm that is best forgot
…Not to out myself as a total nerd, but for all of the creepiness of this poem, I suspect I originally wrote it after watching the first season of Soul Eater.
Half-joking aside, I performed this one at an open mic once and somebody wanted to turn it into a song! I eventually said no, because I want to do more slam poetry (and maybe record it) but I was tickled pink by the idea.
Distorted Lantern
…covering up the truth that’s writ
beneath the callus of my feet
that I could leave the lantern-room,
if I dared,
I tried,
I could believe,
that t’were enough to be half-sick of shadows. that there was something more to me.
I’ve already mentioned my penchant for references and that I do spoken-word poetry, and this is a wonderful example of both! I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to perform this one one day, with all its weird rhythms; it’s also the… third? I believe, third reference to Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott in the chapbook. I have my favourites. I have no idea what to give people a heads-up for in regards to the triggers for this one, other than very intense paranoia, I suppose? But if that’s a trigger for you, then you should probably be reading a different… um… writer. (To be perfectly honest.)
The Headless, Waiting
blood beading like something precious until he startles, breathing heavy clutching at his neck in fear.
I truly believe (hope, actually) that one day somebody will ask me ‘Is this a reference to The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe?’ so I can very enthusiastically say yes and maybe startle them a bit. Specifically, the last verse of The Bells. I grew up with a bunch of little illustrated books with samples of different poets in them; while I loved all of them, my favourite was the one of Poe. It had this picture next to the last verse of The Bells of a skeleton in rags ringing the iron bells, and it is one of the most persistent images I have. If you are, however, a normal person, and can’t see the connection, I simply hope you like the poem for all its macabre nature.
Third Nature
the home that feels like you could live in it the house that feels like you could build it the hands that feel like you could move them
hovering somewhere in the
soul of the thing you didn’t even think about
On one hand, poetry should speak for itself. On the other hand, I feel like most autistic folks (those who are into poetry, anyway) who read this will know; so I say for the benefit of those who aren’t that this is explicitly about masking as allistic/neurotypical. It’s also pretty relevant to trying to mask as a singlet or sane in general, and to dysphoria. Funny thing about assembling this chapbook – turns out a lot of those are very similar to each other.
The Hanged Man
“Surely you have better things
to do –” and then he grinned,
“than stand below and watch me rot
as the witching dark moves in.”
There’s nothing more irritating than a pastiche when you can’t quite place who you’re pastiching. This poem is in a very particular style (to the point where it was rejected a few times for being too long and I’d totally blanked on the length) and I just… cannot place who it is! Definitely late Romantic or someone a touch later, but that’s all I’ve got. “What’s with the obsession with death?” That’s a long story, the short version of which is “I hung out with it a lot”.
Blue Crocus
There are no blue crocuses.
There are no birds in the sea.
There are no angels in the sky.
There are no people like me.
This one has been previously published by Umbel & Panicle! This one was based on a dream as well; I have a habit of turning my more unsettling dreams into poetry or stories, then getting a kick out of people’s reactions. My brain is an odd and dangerous place, apparently. (Before someone starts in with ‘actually’, yes, I know there is technically a blue crocus! It’s not a ‘true’ crocus. Yes, I looked that up before writing the poem. I wonder if that’s on purpose or something.)
The Dripping Tap
There is a small little receiver on the wall in front of me; a bronze affair, elaborate enough, but simple in that there are no numbers or keypad, nothing to press or dial. I have found myself staring at it, hoping I will hear it ring. Finding myself is the most apt term, it seems.
The answer to a question literally nobody has ever asked, which is “what happens when a horror writer obsessed with Lady of Shalott and Yellow Wallpaper writes an entry for Literary Taxidermy based on the first and last line of a Dorothy Parker story he’s never read?”. I didn’t win the contest, which I’m not super surprised by – I’ve changed the first and last line since to be more suiting – but I wouldn’t have written this without the contest, which is why I’m giving them a shout out here. Heads up for this one; trigger warnings apply for domestic violence, implied suicide, claustrophobia and identity loss.
Will You Love Me When I’m Gone?
Will you love me when I’m gone? When I am just a shadow on your pillowcase, a scent lingering on the floor, leftover shampoo in the shower, forgotten shoes left at the door
This might be the one in strongest need of a suicide trigger warning; not because it’s a more graphic depiction (it isn’t) but simply because this is a very, very personal poem about… well.. how inevitable it can feel sometimes. It’s not, but when it comes to mental illness, it is a lifelong struggle, and it’s not acknowledged that way enough.
ALL OUR LOVE
When she died (cause marked unknown) they flayed the flesh from her white bones and peeled the contours of her face with careful touch and subtle grace –
I’ve actually published this one on this blog before; usually I wouldn’t link it, but the context for me originally posting it is very relevant to this collection! Trigger warning for death and oppression in general, although the specifics depend on how you read it. (It was written about transphobia and transmisogyny, but a lot of people can relate in different ways.)
Red Roulette
The two of them sit face to face and eye to eye in a room without windows or door, and the gun is heavy in Jenny Crimson’s hand. Guns are heavy most of the time; this one is lighter than most, 82 percent unloaded, but still made of metal and death and a thousand timelines converging into a single hollow point.
I have no idea where the characters of Blue Lagoon and Jenny Crimson originally came from, or how they eventually ended up in a story about two alters playing Russian Roulette to determine the fate of their host, but this was the first story I ever consciously wrote about plurality. I submitted it a lot of places, and it got pretty far, but there’s something almost amusing about the number of very kind rejections I got that amounted to “it just doesn’t fit with anything else!” I’ll bet it doesn’t. It’s not exactly a common premise. This was originally published in The Shining Wire; the formatting in this version is simpler (and more accessible, although I do have ‘make an epub of TSW on the to-do list’).
Friends With Death
…in the end, we all become his subjects, citizens and serfs of the underground, full fathom five deep dead and buried – far below the skittering and the sighing of the favoured and alive —
The concept of this poem was floating around in my head for a long time before I wrote it, but essentially, being queer is an odd balance of wanting to get away from the tragic depictions of death and misery, and… facing up to how much of it our history (and present) holds. My fascination with death comes just as much from that as it does my own experiences. Trigger warnings for this one include suicide, homophobia, and some oblique-but-clear references to things like the AIDS epidemic.
Waste Disposal (Ticking Of A Damaged Heart)
There’s a hole in the bottom of the ocean floor where your concrete shoes fit perfectly…
Yes, yes, another Poe-inspired one (Tell-Tale Heart, this time) but I claim it as my right as a goth. I really, really wish I could remember when I’d written this one; just that I’ve had it around for ages trying to fix it. I actually – through a hysterically on-point issue of memory – have a different version of this in Shining Wire and had forgotten. Which… I’d be more annoyed, but it’s too ironic.
Revenant’s Hymn
I’m nobody! who are you? are you nobody too? will you dance with me with a borrowed set of feet to music that there’s no reason to cry to with memories that neither of us own playing on an old film reel?
Dickinson, this time (my gay shut-in energy, instead of my gay goth energy) but she speaks to me for a reason. This is also the poem that made me decide to put the collection together, after years of talking about a proper horror collection; it’s striking how the experiences of identity loss and dissociation are so relatable and so important to so many people, but are still a little discouraged from ‘polite’ conversation. (Only the more obvious with the dropping of the Moon Knight trailer and only a psychiatrist being a consulted instead of anybody with direct experience.)
The Transient
and there’s another art to knowing how lost you are knowing that you’re a walking fucking disaster area, knowing that everybody around you is tired, knowing that your legacy will be equal parts admiration and frustration, and knowing that you could be so much more if you just knew when to stop and when to start.
‘The Transient’ may very well be one of my favourite poems I’ve ever written. While I’m not going to publicly disclose who exactly it’s about, it’s a very transparent love letter to both the Beats and the shooting stars of the ’60s music scenes; the rockstars who lived hard and fast and died in particularly brutal ways. As a historian and poet, there’s a particular experience had when reading about some of them, especially when you disregard some of their common narratives; the sense that you’ve met them, in the friends you miss but had to walk away from before they dragged you down with them, or yourself in the mirror on your worst days, or the friend you’re worried about all the time but that you know you can keep together another day, another week, another month, another year. It’s all the more brutal when you acknowledge the unspoken truth that there aren’t ‘more’ queer people now. It’s just not as hidden.
One day, I will record myself performing this one. I am very much looking forward to it.
Trigger warning: The review briefly touches on things like abortion and misogyny, but more prominently, child murder/dismemberment comes up in a story and is discussed here.
I’ve been working on breaking a reading slump, and the last while, I’ve kept running into upsetting things in books that I wasn’t warned or prepared for, leaving me uninterested in continuing and disenchanted with books for a little bit. So it was a bit of a surprise that this short story collection that I knew absolutely nothing about, was what broke the slump for me. The Moths and Other Stories is a collection of translated stories originally written in Spanish, by Mexican writer Helena Maria Viramontes. Despite what I initially thought, it’s an older collection (1985) and literary fiction to its core; while there are speculative elements here and there, they’re vague and not a central part of the writing.
At its heart, The Moths and Other Stories is a set of stories about Chicano women. Cisgender and heterosexual women, I will add, although Viramontes isn’t nearly as obnoxious about it as many other cis female writers. Two of the stories touch on abortion, and its fraught nature within religious Chicano communities (Birthday, The Long Reconciliation); others explicitly tackle the sexism that girls grow up with and that women have to endure and internalized (Growing, The Broken Web). One thing I found particularly interesting about these four was how Viramontes’s position as an in-group writer, rather than an outside observer, comes through so vividly. None of the stories take a simple, FeministTM approach to their topics; it isn’t as simple, within communities with their own traditions, as telling abusive men to fuck off or deciding that women Should get to do this, or Shouldn’t have to do that. Nor are the stories about abortion or modesty screeds about why it is Wrong and Bad. Instead, Viramontes actively sits with the emotions involved. What does it feel like, to go through this? What is the experience actually like?
The Moths, the title story, is one of my two favourites. It’s a parable about death and grief, with a touch of magical realism that isn’t nearly as present in the other stories, and what I identified with the most within it was how the central character is picked on for her looks, and responds with violence. No genteel or fragile victim crying in the corner – she responds with punches and kicks, and it makes her situation worse, and she does it anyway.
My other favourite, however, is the famous The Cariboo Cafe. Admittedly, I only found out after the fact that this story is well-known, since I never ran into it while I was in school. The first time I read it, I was emotionally affected, but confused as to what was happening; there are three sections of the story, all told from different perspectives, and the third is from an omniscient third person perspective which is hard to pull off at the best of times. Viramontes does, and it’s excellent, but it takes a second reading for it to sink in. However, the other reason why I had to read up on the story to have it affect me fully was simply because I’m not Latino or Chicano or Central American; and I’m also young enough to not have a piece of essential history. The story of The Cariboo Cafe is this; two kids, the children of undocumented immigrants, get locked out of their house by mistake and try to hide. It’s left unclear what happens to them, but in the second part, the man running the Cafe sees them come in with a woman he assumes to be their mother. He then sees a poster about two missing children, and debates telling the cops about it – but the cops mistreat him after he tries to cooperate about something else, so he doesn’t bother. The third part of the story, however, dips into the mind of the woman who apparently kidnapped the two children from Part One. She used to live in Nicaragua, sent her child out for a mango, and he never came back; we see her talking to somebody who tells her that he was working for the Contras, despite being four or five years old, and it only gets more graphic from there. She mentions terrible details such as him being dismembered, his penis nailed to her door, and how much is true is hard to tell considering how brutal the Contras and the people working against them were. This is where I didn’t have the background – I didn’t know who the Contras were until I looked it up. (And promptly was both glad I did, and wished I didn’t. Fuck the USA.) Driven mad by grief, she illegally crossed the border into the USA, but upon seeing the little boy from the beginning, snatched him away because she thought it was her son. And when the cops try to arrest her, she throws hot coffee on them, desperate to save her son at least this time around.
No summary can give Viramontes’s incredible prose any competition. But as somebody who knew nothing about the Contras other than the vague term “Iran-Contra affair”, it was a haunting read – and incredible, incredible work. The other stories in the collection are good, but The Cariboo Cafe talks about immigrants intersecting with each other in a light I’ve never seen before, and it’s the one that will stick with me.
Elliott Dunstan 