Reviewed by Mari Webb 

I wonder how many other writers smiled to themselves upon reading this anthology, Interfictions 2, and realising that what they themselves wrote could be 'interstitial' fiction if it wasn’t classifiable as anything else. The thing that immediately struck me when I had finished reading the collection was the sheer variety of the stories contained within. Nothing is off limits here—from a house that travels across country to avenge an apparent murder, to a narrator who has an angel attached to his shoulder, to post apocalyptic societies and everything in between. This is both the collection’s strength, and a possible weakness if ‘interstitial’ becomes a genre in itself, a thing the collection is trying to avoid. Certainly there’s great benefit to writers from a collection that attempts to go beyond rigid genre boundaries, and uses its own ‘label’ since it is difficult to work in writing and publishing without using labels of some kind. However, the majority of what is considered literary or great fiction is interstitial in any event, according to the discussion of these issues offered in the introduction and concluding interview. That being so, what does this particular anthology offer to readers and writers that literary fiction collections do not? Fortunately, the answer is plenty.

I should also mention that I think it’s a great idea to offer something like this as an e-book, but that for reading on the kindle e-reader the print size of the pdf file is too small—it would be better to offer it in a file format more compatible with the kindle.

Specific stories in the collection that stood out to me:

'Remembrance is Something Like a House'—William Jorgensen.

I can remember one of my favourite writers, Madeleine L’Engle, describing how she did an exercise with her writing students in which she first got them to write down a significant incident of their childhood, and then to rewrite that story from the point of view of a different character to the one they had first chosen. One person wrote a story in which the only characters were herself as a young child and a tree that was important to her. The story she wrote from the point of view of the tree was a much better story. Jorgensen’s contribution in this anthology is an example of what can happen in fiction when assumptions about narrative conventions are questioned. Not only is the story hugely effective as a mystery; a vein of dark humour tinged by melancholy infuses it as the house becomes increasingly dilapidated on its journey across the country. What is being tapped into here is a fundamental feeling that we all have—if houses could speak, what stories they would have to tell! The personification here is startlingly effective because there is no trace of sentimentality in the narrative.

'The Score': Alaya Dawn Johnson

In this tale narrative conventions are played with in another way. We are never told anything directly, but must find out everything through various forms of printed or online documentation and piece the story together that way. While this form of narrative could easily get annoyingly choppy, in this story the changes between styles and forms are handled with finesse and the overarching theme remains the connecting factor between the bits and pieces we are given. The unifying factor here is piecing together the suicide of the main character.

'The Two of Me': Ray Vukcevich

This story elegantly uses an extended metaphor as the backbone of the story. Whether Renata, who grows out of the narrator’s shoulder, is a part of him, truly an angel, or something different altogether, she becomes a device for exploring a number of themes: our alienation from ourselves, or relationship to things we perceive as “other” and the truth or otherwise of the old bromide 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. This lends the story considerable weight and depth. In the end, I was asking myself the question, do we always find ourselves horrible on some level if we happen to catch a glimpse of ourselves in a mirror, not realizing at first that we are looking at our reflection? Is the unknown stranger frightening simply because we are not accustomed to view ourselves as strange?

'Black Dog': Ray Ball

This tightly constructed story again makes excellent use of metaphor and the Celtic myth of the ‘grim’, ‘gytrash’ or spectre dog that is supposedly seen by people who are about to die. Where it perhaps falls down is the follow through on what the ultimate significance of the Black Dog is for the protagonist himself—again there is more than one way to read this, whether it is a manifestation of the famous ‘shadow’ referred to by Jung or a part of himself he does not want to acknowledge or a physical manifestation of fears and insecurities about relationships on his part (particularly since the black dog keeps eating his girlfriends!). There is also the expression ‘a black dog on one’s shoulder’ which can mean taking a snippily resentful attitude towards the world, certainly relevant in many ways to this tale.

'Afterbirth': Stephanie Shaw

In some ways this story was my favourite in the collection, because it managed to combine an element of the surreal/fantastic with a deadpan, no nonsense practical narrative voice which provides a wonderful contrast to the macabre content; dragons in the birthing delivery room that everyone except the narrator ignores.

In the final analysis, I am still left puzzled as to what the deciding factor was for the choice and placement of the stories that are included in this anthology. It doesn’t seem to be restricted to particular themes, or to stories that contain an element of fantasy, or even stories that are unusual narratively. The placing of the stories seems random as well. Thus I’m back to where I started, trying to figure out what ‘interstitial fiction’ means. At least I had fun on this particular reading journey!

Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing

(2009)

edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak

(The Interstitial Arts Foundation)

Small Beer Press

ISBN 9781931520614

e-book edition US $9.95

paperback edition US $16