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The WEIRD (18)

Real-Time Review continued from HERE.

The WEIRD: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
First published in Great Britain 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

27/11/11 – another 2 hours later

Angels in Love – Kathe Koja

“…names didn’t exactly matter at that time of night,…”

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.  Her suspenseful stalking of Anne in the next-door neighbour flat because of the sounds of the sex life through the wall, Lurleen’s day job is in a classical music shop.  The protagonist as burr. The style is pitch perfect. The aura entirely unforgettable. It’s simply that “beige” is good I say.  And “bumbling on about some opera“. And baggy T-shirts. But contraptions of love made from structures not a billions miles from Barker’s – or Bach’s? Hilarious as well as deeply concupiscent in a very original way (to me) and cosmically, sublimely frightening, too. What more could you ask? Well, perhaps, the arpeggione sonata by Schubert as the story’s coda, to wind down from reading it. Seriously good. Standalone in this book. “But have you heard Spivakov’s Bach?”

Continued as The WEIRD (19) page HERE.

Index of this whole real-time review HERE.