Customer Reviews

Monkey Sonatas (Maps in a Mirror)

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Orson Scott Card is far and away my favorite short story author. Of his collections of short stories, _The_Monkey_Sonatas_ is the best. Each of the "sonatas" is a gripping, tragic short story about we "monkeys." In almost every case, I was moved to tears. If you can find this book, I give it my highest recommendation. It's not in print at the moment, but I'm looking forward to a reprint. I lost my first copy, which I consider to be a separate tragedy. :) If it is re-released, I plan to buy at least 5 copies for backup and gifts. (Hear that, Tor?) Some of them are science fiction, some are fantasy. All are fantastic.

In the introduction, Card states that humans engage in storytelling in order to define themselves, their behaviors, and the behaviors of others. While these stories may take place in 'worlds' that are completely unlike our own, the core meaning of the tale carries truth that can be related to the reader's own life. If I read the introduction correctly, that is the point of each of the stories in this book.
With that in mind, the first story, "Unaccompanied Sonata" best fulfills that purpose of any other story in the collection. The premise is that each person is given a career that best suits them (as determined by testing at a very young age) and everyone is happy. The few laws are just enough to keep that system running. The narrator embarks on a career in music, and breaks one of the laws. He is then told he can never make music again. What, then, happens if he just can't help making music no matter what the cost? I always enjoy tales of utopian societies and how there is always some inevitable downfall that keeps the system from being completely perfect.
I loved the story of "The Princess and the Bear." It was almost a Disney fairy tale, but included some real pain and suffering as well as some incredibly real emotions. To put a description of an abusive marriage in the context of a medieval-type kingdom, with a shape-shifting bear as the hero of the piece was quite brilliant, I thought.
"A Plague of Butterflies" is just about the oddest, most incomprehensible work of fiction I have ever read. I did not understand the point and all, and can't even give a brief synopsis, since each portion of it made no sense when taken in conjunction with the other portions. (By portion, I guess I mean mini-chapter...whatever one would call the individual sections of a short story or novella). The end of the story did not explain anything, and was quite dissatisfying.
I thought I understood "The Monkeys Thought 'Twas Fun" and I had a pretty good idea of how the thing would end, and I even thought the solution for overpopulation it contained was pretty innovative. However, it didn't end that way, and to say anything more about it, even to tell you what it was about, would absolutely spoil every part of it.
These are the three longest pieces in the collection. Of the other, shorter, works, I enjoyed "The Porcelain Salamander," "Middle Woman," and "The Bully and the Beast." I did not enjoy "A Cross-Country Trip to Kill Richard Nixon," and "Sandmagic."
"The Best Day" was a good fable, but I was already kind of depressed after reading "Sandmagic" that I was not really in the mood for more suffering. I think had this story been placed between "Unaccompanied Sonata" and "The Porcelain Salamander," I would have liked it better.
I think that the placement of stories in a collection, especially one as ambitious as this one, should be well-thought-out, so that there aren't too many bleak ones all in a row.
It was nice that an afterword was included with a few paragraphs about the author's state of mind and intentions in regards to each of the pieces, however, the information in the afterword revealed more about the publishing history and less explanation of each story than would be really helpful.
I kept feeling like I'd read this book before, but then deciding that I hadn't following each of these yarns. In fact, I had read several of these before, but a few I had not. I guess I would really only recommend this to people who are huge fans of Orson Scott Card and are looking to read everything he's written. The best of the stories contained in this collection can be found elsewhere.

For fans of Orson Scott Card, Monkey Sonatas is from his golden age of story telling. Each of these stories pings the heart. Although it's fantasy, it rings true.