Free Fiction Recommendation: The Days of Flaming Motorcycles
Today's free fiction recommendation is available in the print anthology Dark Faith, recently published by Apex Book Company. This particular story, Catherynne M. Valente's "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles" was recently featured on io9, thus fulfilling the "free" qualification in "free fiction recommendation."
Do you like zombies?
Well, I don't. At all. Yet they've been a popular thing for a while now, and I don't think that's changing any time soon.
What I like, however, is well-written fiction. Tell a compelling enough story, and it doesn't matter if it has elements I find in every way disturbing and distasteful. Of course, it's true that stories containing those elements have to work a bit harder to impress me: they're struggling against natural prejudice, and that can't be helped.
I say all this so you'll understand the strength of my recommendation: "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles" is a zombie tale well worth your time.
It's not flippant or fun or action-packed or thrilling. It's frankly quite sad. It's painted in dark rooms and dripping ichor, in running water and the far pinpricks of stars. It's full of sadness and despair and the need to witness. The story is a bit wandering, but that's just fine because it comes to us scrawled in the pages of a notebook with flaming motorcycles on the cover. The narrator is just a girl, still herself and all alone in Augusta, Maine. She chronicles her days in notebooks of Kermit or punky princesses - an affectingly comic touch that turns out to be not really comic at all.
Perhaps this zombie story isn't fun, but it says something real: something about soul-killing weariness and despair and existence in tandem with these truths. Truths, unfortunately, that we can all identify with in some degree. Valente weaves in the flip-side, as well, shoring up her narrative with the indomitability of human curiosity and the persistence of life-preserving hope in the face of inexorable bleakness.
Valente has stated in her blog that "I have no plans to ever write a zombie story again, so this is pretty much it for me and this trope." If that must be so, I must say that I'm glad this is the one she gave us.
Have you read "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles"? And, if so, what did you think?
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently
comments.
Do you like zombies?
Well, I don't. At all. Yet they've been a popular thing for a while now, and I don't think that's changing any time soon.
What I like, however, is well-written fiction. Tell a compelling enough story, and it doesn't matter if it has elements I find in every way disturbing and distasteful. Of course, it's true that stories containing those elements have to work a bit harder to impress me: they're struggling against natural prejudice, and that can't be helped.
I say all this so you'll understand the strength of my recommendation: "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles" is a zombie tale well worth your time.
It's not flippant or fun or action-packed or thrilling. It's frankly quite sad. It's painted in dark rooms and dripping ichor, in running water and the far pinpricks of stars. It's full of sadness and despair and the need to witness. The story is a bit wandering, but that's just fine because it comes to us scrawled in the pages of a notebook with flaming motorcycles on the cover. The narrator is just a girl, still herself and all alone in Augusta, Maine. She chronicles her days in notebooks of Kermit or punky princesses - an affectingly comic touch that turns out to be not really comic at all.
Perhaps this zombie story isn't fun, but it says something real: something about soul-killing weariness and despair and existence in tandem with these truths. Truths, unfortunately, that we can all identify with in some degree. Valente weaves in the flip-side, as well, shoring up her narrative with the indomitability of human curiosity and the persistence of life-preserving hope in the face of inexorable bleakness.
Valente has stated in her blog that "I have no plans to ever write a zombie story again, so this is pretty much it for me and this trope." If that must be so, I must say that I'm glad this is the one she gave us.
Have you read "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles"? And, if so, what did you think?
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently
comments.