Comments | xf_book_club: Story 142: "Silver Bells and Cockle Shells" by threeguesses

wendelah1 in xf_book_club

Story 142: "Silver Bells and Cockle Shells" by threeguesses

Feb 05, 2011 10:01

I hope everyone is having a fine weekend. Our next selection is a short-short by threeguesses. I like everything of hers I've read. You can find the rest of her work at her Master List of Fic.

What else? 600 words. No warnings. Summary: William meets a girl in the garden.

"Silver Bells and Cockle Shells"

william, post series, short-short

Comments 9

mosinging1986 February 5 2011, 23:02:50 UTC

Oh, I remember reading this! (Good grief, how can it be more than 2 1/2 years ago already?!)

A very strange, magical sort of story. The sort of thing where you're not sure *exactly* what's happening, but you're along for the ride because it's so beautiful.

I love this line:

It’s hot, the middle of summer, and everything feels like it’s melting sideways.

write_out February 5 2011, 23:37:54 UTC

This was a new one for me and I had to read it a few times before it really sank in.

Some of my favorite lines:

When he starts spending all his time in the garden, his dad asks “like the bugs, eh son?” and William says “eh” and his dad goes back to reading the newspaper and it’s just another Saturday morning, only William can’t catch his breath.

William can't catch his breath. Oh, this makes me sad.

She has drawn nothing but red flowers; her section of the deck is carpeted with them. William tests the drawing with his fingertips and it's softer than wood ought to be. He snatches his hand back.

Surreal and not a little frightening.

William is nine. His dad isn’t really his dad and his mum isn’t really his mum. He has never asked about his real parents.

“I’ll take you to meet them,” she says. When she takes his hand it is like holding air. Her dress is yellow and the blades of grass do not bend under her weight.God, that last line ( ... )

wendelah1 February 7 2011, 05:39:44 UTC

This is a creepy ghost story. That last line sent chills through me when first I read it. This time, too.

tiger_bay February 7 2011, 12:25:34 UTC

Yes, creepy...

And I'm not sure I got it...but perhaps it wasn't meant to be anything other than a surreal and heart-breaking picture that doesn't make too much sense and on that level it works really well. She has the ability to make her characters real with very simple language. I could see William and Emily playing in the garden so clearly as if I looked out my own window and saw them there.

Have read some of threeguesses other work and it is all quite painful and often surreal. My favourite, though, is "Shopping List", a must-read I think. She is a very, very clever writer and I guess, English?

amyhit February 7 2011, 23:29:40 UTC

I'm pretty sure I read this when it was first posted, but at the time it just didn't strike me. *facepalm* I think it was that I'm usually fairly averse to William fics, so I didn't give it a proper chance - a careful enough reading - and with a fic like this one if you don't read it carefullly it slips right past.

Also, I think a short fic like this one benefits from the reader having a prior knowledge of what to expect from an Threeguesses xf fic. Everything of hers but Shopping List hinges on magical realism in some way, and knowing that, and being prepared for it, made me much more receptive to SB&CS this time around. Each one of Threeguesses fics I find quite beautiful, but all together her body of work for this fandom, though small, is exceptional.

I think what Threeguesses does most strikingly (dare I say best) in her xf fics - and certainly in SB&CS - is create a sense of inexorability. Not that things are fated to happen, exactly, but that once they've begun to happen a kind of natural/unnatural inertia quickly gathers ( ... )