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Translation published: 2020 Originally published: 2018 Acquired and read: October 2020 |
This is a series of linked short stories, published in French in 2018, and just now translated into English. The stories all take place in and near a town called Shivering Heights, where something strange is happening: the people have attributes of animals, some have voracious appetites, and a parasite is changing the local ecosystem. The stories mostly center on a biologist from outside the community who comes to investigate it, but there are other ones about its residents: a young man who falls in love with her, a group of people staying together in a cabin as their numbers dwindle, an HR administrator visiting a spa.
There are some great visuals and metaphors here, but none of the individual stories came together for me. Strange things happen, and some I get, but many just seemed strange for the sake of strange. Which can work-- I don't think this is the kind of sf that trades on explanations-- but then something else needs to carry you through the story-world, and I didn't think the characters interesting enough or the themes complex enough to do it. Why can't Laura's lover find her when she leaves, and why does everyone else act like they've never even heard of her? What does the opening story about the spa have to do with anything?
I did like "In Vivo," where Laura (the biologist) comes to term with her own infection, and her apparent pregnancy. This one felt like it had something to say, about how we get supplanted, as individuals by our progeny, and as species by whatever can succeed better as the ecology of the world changes. I wish more of them had been like this, sharp sets of observations focused on a compelling idea.
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