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The Melancholy of Mechagirl

par Catherynne M. Valente

Autres auteurs: Yuko Shimizu (Artiste de la couverture)

Autres auteurs: Voir la section autres auteur(e)s.

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"This is Catherynne M. Valente's collection of the stories and poems with a connection to Japn"--Introduction p. 7.
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This collection of Cat Valente's short fiction and a novella was probably one of the biggest pleasant surprises I've had all month. I've been catching up with her works and I'm generally not a huge, huge fan of short fiction, but this one kinda rather blew me away.

They've all got a theme of Japanese, either explicit or implicit, and it's not that surprising since Valente lived on a base in Japan and can draw from a lot of experiences and interests. This, if nothing else, could have been enough to catch me, but her prose is, as always, gorgeous and dense and so good as to be shocking.

There's a lot of really excellent poetry in here, but it's her SF poetry that really revs my engines. Melancholy of Mechagirl was good and very disturbing, but I think I liked the Girl with Two Skins better.

Ink, Water, Milk was a short that was disturbing and dreamlike and oppressive. Maybe not my favorite but the prose was a delicious swirl. The same thing can be said about Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai, only more so.

The Ghosts of Gunkanjima was very much a windy story of ghosts. Short and clever.

My second favorite story, easily one I'll remember for years, is Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time. It's heavy on the science, almost all physics, but every short-short was couched in a creation myth subverted heavily by the real science. I chortled and had wicked delight with all. This is why Cat is called a master of MythoPunk. Way-clever and cool shit. :)

One breath, One Stroke was okay but it relies on our understanding of Shinto (of which I'm woefully unprepared), but Story No. 6 was a great ghost story of a Kami who haunts old celluloid. It was delicious as hell and reminded me wonderfully of Radiance.

"Fade to White" was also very amusing for what was ostensibly a post-apocalyptic story all about the cultural changes of an early 60's America forced to go into heavy-procreation mode because of all the radiation sickness.

I was heavily amused by the short story "Killswitch" about a game and its peculiarities and the obsessions of all its fans and just how tragic it could be.

The last novella was probably the most fascinating, most SF, and most interesting in the core of what it means to be human, have a family, and grow... all the while taking on the forms of old myths, legends, and stories. No matter how I look at "Silently and Very Fast", I'm shocked with the accomplishment, the prose, the characters, and the structure. Blown away. From Inanna and Ereshkigal, I was caught and swept away with the discussions of a girl and her house computer, their growth, all the way to exploring the stars. :)
( )
  bradleyhorner | Jun 1, 2020 |
I have had this book for a while to read, it’s a collection of short stories by Valente and has some excellent and some good stories in it. I have read most of Valente’s novels and really enjoy her prose-like and sometimes ambiguous writing style.

This book is a collection of thirteen stories. Most of the stories are somewhat science fiction in theme and have a very Japanese feel to them (they deal with Japanese mythology or culture).

There were a few stories I absolutely loved, some I liked, and a couple that were a bit too far out there even for me. Valente’s writing style is absolutely beautiful and sparkling, but it is also something best read in small doses (like eatingn a rich chocolate). You do have to concentrate as you read and really pay attention because some things can be a bit ambiguous and have multiple meanings.

I’ll go through my favorites first. I really enjoyed Ink, Water, Milk that tells the story of scroll and a paintbrush and a woman lonely and alone in Japan. This story starts out as three stories that all tie together in the end. I also loved The Ghosts of Gunkanjima; which gives a little history lesson about Battleship island and tells a story about the wind on the abandoned island...it was absolutely beautiful and melancholy and interesting.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at SpaceTime was probably the most ironic and funny story of the bunch. I enjoyed the way Valente blended creation mythology with scientific terminology in this story….it was very cleverly done. One Breath One Stroke was my absolute favorite of the whole bunch and is about a man who lives in a house where he is human in one half of the house and a paintbrush in the other half. This was just such a bizarre, creative, and magical story that I absolutely loved it...just wonderful imagery throughout.

Fade to White was a well done, yet absolutely hopeless feeling, post-apocalyptic story about two young people who each desperately want opposite places in this futuristic society and neither of them gets what they want. It turned a lot of standard societal perceptions topsy-turvy and was easy to read and engage with.

Now onto the stories I didn’t enjoy as much. Killswitch was an easy read about an ironic sort of video game, but ultimately seemed a bit shallow and unfinished. Story No 6 was about a goddess hiding in films and was very forgettable. Silently and Very Fast, was by far the longest story and the hardest to read of the bunch. I had trouble figuring out what was going on here and really struggled to stay engaged with the story.

All the poetry in between the stories was well done and beautifully written. Of the poems I think my favorite was The Melancholy of Mechagirl; a poem from the perspective of a female robot.

I also really enjoyed the Afterword in which Valente explains the situation she was in when she wrote these stories and her own struggles with being a stranger in a strange land. This is definitely an adult book, most of the stories have at least some reference to sex. Just FYI.

Overall I really enjoyed this collection of science fiction short stories blended with Japanese mythology. It’s a unique blend of sci-fi and mythology and Valente’s writing style is rich, prose-like and beautiful. Like with the majority of anthologies there are some absolutely spectacular stories in here and some not so spectacular ones. If you are new to Valente I would recommend reading her The Girl Who/Fairyland series first, that series has Valente’s beautiful writing style but is a bit more accessible than her more ambiguous works like this one. ( )
1 voter krau0098 | Aug 9, 2015 |
I don't know enough words to talk about these stories. I like them so much I don't want to recommend it to anyone because it feels private. But I want everyone to read it so they can feel the same way. Highlights: Story #9, KILLSWITCH, and the tremendous achievement of SILENTLY AND VERY FAST ( )
1 voter aliceoddcabinet | Jul 25, 2015 |
This book was not what I was expecting, nor anything like what I usually read and had I know just what it was I probably wouldn’t have bought it and that would have been a real shame. This book challenged me in ways I haven’t been challenged in a long time.
Many of the stories felt more like extended poetry than narrative and were so heavily influence by Japanese myths and culture that they were very hard for me to follow, some didn’t feel like stories at all. Once I fell into the rhythm of her writing though, and accepted the lack of a straight forward narrative I began to really appreciate the beauty and flow of her words, I got a sense of place, color and feel for what she was writing even when I didn’t fully understand what she was referencing.
I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite story out of this collection, there were a few I didn’t like at all but of the others each one I liked I liked for completely different reasons. I would have to pick three. The first is One Breath, One Stroke, reading it felt like being inside a Japanese myth or a Miyazaki film. The second would be Story No. 6, it is harder to explain why. It’s sort of eerie without being creepy or unsettling, a mystery that never really gets answered. And lastly is Silent and Very Fast. I guess you could call this a Singularity story, it had a cyberpunk feel without the cynicism and the most beautiful imagery and ways of expression.
The one thread through these stories that stand out once you are done is that they all feel so personal, like you got a peek into the authors mind in a more intimate way than I’m used to, there was not “story” or character to distract and hide behind. Some of the stories were unsettling and uncomfortable, all were well worth reading. ( )
1 voter Kellswitch | Apr 14, 2014 |
I'm more or less sticking with "guh" here. Maybe I'll have something more articulate to say after sleeping and not spending fourteen hours traveling. ( )
1 voter iliadawry | Feb 6, 2014 |
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Nom de l'auteurRôleType d'auteurŒuvre ?Statut
Catherynne M. Valenteauteur principaltoutes les éditionscalculé
Shimizu, YukoArtiste de la couvertureauteur secondairetoutes les éditionsconfirmé
Hashimoto, TeruyukiIntroductionauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Lau, FawnConcepteurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
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"This is Catherynne M. Valente's collection of the stories and poems with a connection to Japn"--Introduction p. 7.

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