I’ve written about both Jeff Vandermeer (The Southern Reach trilogy) and Sarah Hall (The Wolf Border, The Electric Michelangelo, and Daughters of the North) before. Vandermeer sits clearly in a post-Lovecraft tradition, somewhere between horror and the merely psychologically disturbing, a style that adapts very well to the form of the short story. Hall is one of my favorite contemporary authors, and a prior short story collection, The Beautiful Indifference, was also quite, quite strong.
Both Vandermeer’s The Third Bear (2010) and Hall’s Madame Zero (2017) are solid collections, and there are, between the two, a small handful of truly standout entries.
The title story of Vandermeer’s collection is a thoroughly creative riff on a common fantasy context–avillage threatened by a violent external force–and The Goat Variations may be the most creative exploration of President Bush’s response to the events of 9/11 you’ll ever come across. There is a degree of self-indulgence in some of the other stories, but none of it ruptures the consistency of supernatural voice that makes Vandermeer’s fans so loyal. If that’s up your alley, you’ll greatly enjoy The Third Bear.
Hall’s collection is more even, with the opening and closing stories the really outstanding pieces. Mrs. Fox is a meditation on love and sex, with an anthropomorphic twist that makes it more than memorable, and Evie is a stunning work, thoughtful and subtly feminist in nature. It looks at a change in personality, probing whether and how it matters if we know the cause of new or altered behavior.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Create mood like Vandermeer and describe the natural world like Hall. I mean, if I had to choose one of these authors to emulate, it would be Hall–she has more range, and a style more conducive to supporting multiple, different novels. But I’d take being able to do either.