Red Spikes

Ten more deeply weird stories by the Australian writer who seems to be the current master of this sort of material. These books are published under young adult imprints. Admittedly it would have been some time ago, but I wonder what I would have made of them had I encountered them about the time I was marveling at Ray Bradbury.

I have read her collection Black Juice where all the stories take place in unique worlds that nevertheless seem placed in a medieval fantastic realm. These stores range over many time periods, some impossible to place, at least one in the contemporary world, and one in limbo. Several involve trauma surrounding births, birth being a situation where the world comes temporarily unhinged and characters must step up to new responsibilities or face some very scary facts.

In "A Feather in the Breast of God" we learn that our dead budgerigars become just that -- feathers in the breast of God. But they can revisit us here on earth when we need them for such emergencies as a teenage sister whose sleazy boyfriend is trying to interest her in heroin. Some other very modern-day teenagers work off their time in Limbo by delivering souls to hell. Their current miscreant is a particular problem because a clerical error has granted him a brief glimpse of heaven and he seriously does not savor the alternative.

Lanagan's stories are swiftly told, sometimes to the point of abstraction. You may at times feel lost in her worlds, but she is an able guide to uncanny and psychically dangerous realms.