Thursday, December 27, 2018

Ben Marcus, Notes from the Fog *** 1/2

Like the author's earlier collection of stories Leaving the Sea, Notes from the Fog starts and finishes with fairly traditional stories and hides its most experimental ones in the center. The stories in part 3, "Critique," "Lotion," and "Omen," eluded me, but most of the others have a human warmth despite their bleak scenarios. "Cold Little Bird," for example, is about a 10-year-old boy who starts refusing affection from his parents, and how this embargo affects his father. Many of the stories also address failures of language, with characters deciding it's better to stop speaking.

My favorites were "Cold Little Bird," "A Suicide of Trees," and "Stay Down and Take It."

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