Customer Reviews

Things That Never Happen

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

M. John Harrison has for many years been an exponent of finely-wrought, often oblique and disturbing stories. Having mastered the tropes of the sf and fantasy genres early in his career, Harrison has since forged for himself a unique niche in modern writing. THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN is a fine showcase of his work; no truculent elves in this fantasy - Harrison is concerned with compassion for the human condition, the state of reality at the edges of things, the way silence and empty space speak as eloquently as sound and matter in our frequently odd world. As a stylist he reigns supreme - sentences and dialogue are shaped with incredible attention to nuance, cadence and effect. If you enjoy the weird intruding on the world of the commonplace, this book is for you!

I don't think Harrison wants these stories to be understood. I suspect he might not understand them himself, as he states somewhere in the forward that he prefers a mystery to its solution, the one being wondrous, the other being banal. And so in Things that Never Happen we have a compilation of fascinating stories that simply won't be unraveled. Delve into this with the understanding that you're not going to understand, and you won't be disappointed. There are at least three stories that are chapters in Harrison's excellent novel Signs of Life, but I didn't mind the retelling, as they were slightly different versions of what appeared in the novel. Of the remaining twenty-one stories, most were disturbing on some level, which is what I read Harrison for. It's beautiful work. Don't miss it.

I picked up this collection of short stories expecting primarily the "new weird" that M J Harrison occasionally writes under, or perhaps some speculative fiction to accompany his popular novels. In truth there are as many mainstream stories here as there are weird, and although this wasn't what I'd hoped for it didn't spoil my enjoyment in the slightest.

The author is a master of people, able to decipher individuals to the point where he can construct characters that are real and fully rounded to the reader. It's astonishing that anybody can assemble characters so believable and place them in situations from the banal to the extraordinary, but keep them accessible and emotive.

The stories that stick out in my mind are mainly the ones with a touch of surreality to them: the first story in the collection is a wonderful piece reminiscent of P.K. Dick in which God returns; another is about a man who is crumbling apart so thoroughly that the environment begins to crumble with him; and there is a fantastic yet unhappy tale of a woman who wants nothing but to fly.

Throughout the whole collection is an aura of melancholy and quiet despair, although there is a lot of humour as well. The emotive content of the stories is what drive them and it's the uncanny ability of Harrison to charge every line with feeling is what makes this book unmissable.

It's difficult to judge a collection of short stories, but on the whole:

9/10

Having previously read and enjoyed Light, perhaps I was just expecting something very different, but it was all I could do to get the end of this collection. Only a few of the stories can claim to involve elements of speculative fiction in any significant way, many of them are so similar in theme and structure it is hard to believe an editor had any input into selection, and much of the language ranges from baroque to fustian. While I read a lot of work by British authors, I can't recall ever being quite so lost in place-specific allusions. Harrison's references to the Midlands and northern England might as well be neighborhoods on Mars, although then I probably would not have felt like I was losing so much of the context. It has been about 40 years since I've read any Bradbury short stories, but towards the end of this, I considered picking up The Illustrated Man or R is for Rocket just to clean my palate.