Irregular Verbs and Other Stories by Matthew Johnson
My rating: 4/5 cats
Irregular Verbs
this is one of the best short stories i have ever read. it was the perfect introduction to this collection, which is overall characterized by a preoccupation with language/communication and by a strong sense of location. this story highlights both themes and is godawfully lovely and tender and sad and 100% relatable despite taking place in an imagined locale with very specific defining qualities. it is a truly moving portrayal of grief and helplessness within a well-developed world and i loved it to pieces.
Another Country
another really strong offering, concerning the plight of the assimilation of “prefugees”—individuals from various historical periods who escape their own times through a fissure that whisks them into the modern world and the man tasked with gentling them into their new temporal surroundings. it is both humorous and sad, cautionary and smart. one thing i love about this guy is his facility with linguistics, which is evident throughout, but is most humorously deployed here, with the very nice detail of the latin syntax. cracked me up.
Public Safety
this is a tidy little mystery story with the feel of steampunk without actually being steampunk. it is full of arcane elements, like phrenology and graphology, but also good old deductive crime-solving, where the crime itself is…atypical.
Beyond the Fields You Know
this one would fit really nicely into the whole tor shorts project. a dark tale about a narnia/wonderland-like world beyond ours where children pass through a portal and encounter talking animals and other children from “our” world, but with the shape more of a sweatshop than anything magically enticing, and where the secret dreams of children and their longing for adventure are exploited and used to ensnare them into servitude. there will be blood.
What You Couldn’t Leave Behind
a noir reimagining of limbo.
When We Have Time
oh, man—well done, this. a small-scale sci-fi family story that is genuinely haunting with an extra little kick at the end. BOOM!
The Wise Foolish Son
this one is most notable for its structure, and i’m not sure i have fully figured it out on the first read. it is framed as a story being told by an old man to a group of listeners while a village burns in the background, but the story itself is actually two different story-threads, related and woven together—one a fairytale type and one more anthropological in nature, grounded by the central character dasat/dasatan, and the idea of home. good interesting stuff going on here, but i definitely need to give it a second pass.
Long Pig
short, funny, delicious.
Talking Blues
a new take on hell. if it were a film, it would be 12 years a slave meets cesar chavez meets inside llewyn davis and would probably win all the oscars.
The Face of the Waters
jewish diaspora, meet medical sci-fi thriller.
Outside Chance
a time-traveling retrohistorian searches for “the good one,” amidst all possible futures, and finds a library, a conspiracy, and love.
Closing Time
a son endures his father’s ghost resentfully through an interminable and expensive posthumous ritual only to find that maybe the old man still has some lessons to impart after all. this one has the feel of a genuine tale from “distant far eastern lands,” which i think is one of johnson’s strongest skills—he is able to create stories that feel authentic and true, but are in completely imagined mythologies and locales, borrowing tonal elements from the real world, but creating languages and other little details from outta nowhere. and nothing seems superficial—all the stories have a weight of confident structure behind them. it’s a rare quality.
also, this story made me very hungry.
Lagos
the unexpected origin of the 419.
The Dragon’s Lesson
this one has a shirley jackson feel to it, like if she were to reimagine a grimm’s tale filled with jealousy, resentment, deceit, and dragons. a perfect, and completely unexpected ending to this one, a little nod to my favorite fairy tale, cap o’rushes, and a lesson in diminishing returns.
Au Coeur des Ombres
this is a sort-of callback to Public Safety with some Heart of Darkness overtones, but with a much more altruistic kurtz-figure.
Jump, Frog!
a fun little origin-story for mark twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
The Afflicted
a great new spin on the tired old zombie story: a.k.a. eldercare with rifles.
Holdfast
sigh, nothing to see here, just another one of his meticulously-rendered perfect folktales that reads completely differently from all the others that have come before. just complete mastery of craft, no big whoop.
The Coldest War
psychological suspense in the remote polar region. like a less-bloody version of the thing. ooorrr iiisssss iiiitt??
Written by the Winners
a time in which top hits of the 80’s and family ties can become contraband, nixon never existed, and flirting is still difficult.
Heroic Measures
even the mightiest must one day come to an end.
The Last Islander
technology intervenes to restore what nature has destroyed for the sake of tourism and one man’s memories.
in conclusion: a really solid collection of stories that i enjoyed primarily because they never fell into that samey-samey beige mash that affects so many single-author collections. while there are unifying themes between many of the stories, they are always approached from a different angle, with a different voice. it’s kind of extraordinary, and i will definitely be reading his next collection or—dare i dream? a full-lengther.
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