Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, 2005
The reigning "Queen of 'zines" had another strong year. Last year the planned second issue slipped into 2006, so for this year only this usually twice-yearly publication came out three times: #15 through #17. The three issues included 34 stories, 3 of them novelettes, and 11 short-shorts. Just over 110,000 words of fiction. Of course the 'zine also publishes some poetry and some nonfiction, such as Gwenda Bond's delightful advice column "Dear Aunt Gwenda". (On the other hand, #17's nonfiction, except for some marginalia, is described as "A Lack".)
I like two of the novelettes quite a bit. Sean Melican's "Gears Grind Down" (#16) is modest in tone but engaging, bittersweet, about a mechanically-oriented young man who comes to a sort of college in the city, befriends a young woman, and fixes a clock. Which doesn't sound like much -- and it's not, particularly, but as I said its quite engaging. John Waters' "Bright Waters" (#17) is a fine historical piece, with a faint fantastical element, about an ugly Dutchman living in the backwoods of the pre-Revolution US. He has a hard time keeping his Indian wives, so turns to a medicine woman for help -- and then he meets a strong-minded Englishwoman. The arc of the story is clear -- but that's fine, the telling is effective.
Of the short stories, my outright favorite was "Three Urban Folk Tales" by Eric Schaller (#16), three cleverly intertwined short pieces: about postman struggling to deliver the mail despite obstacles, about a young woman from the country and the young man who seems to fall in love with her but then abandons her, and finally about rats in love. Other strong short stories: Richard Parks's "Lord Goji's Wedding" (#!5), in which a monk tells about a young man who falls in love with a fox -- and somehow we learn a lot more about the monk than the man or the fox; John Trey's "At the Rue Des Boulangers Bridge Café" (#15), about an aging poet accused of wasting her talent -- but is she?; Scott Geiger's "The Pursuit of Artemisia Guile" (#16), about strange graffiti suddenly invading a sleepy town; Deborah Roggie's "The Mushroom Duchess" (#17), about a rather nasty Duchess who experiments with mushrooms, and about her daughter-in-law, first a victim but then her nemesis; and Philip Raines and Harvey Welles's "All the Things She Wanted", about a future Washington D. C. which seems a different city, literally, for every inhabitant, and a woman who takes a potion allowing her to explore other peoples "cities", sort of.
