19. The View from the Seventh Layer

TBR #19. The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories by Kevin Brockmeier.

First sentence: “Once there was a city where everyone had the gift of song.”

I bought these thirteen fable-like stories on a whim: I’d never read any Kevin Brockmeier before, but I’d heard of him on blogs and in reviews as a sometimes crossover science fiction / magical realism author.  His novel, The Brief History of the Dead, I’d picked up more than once in a bookstore but never took home.  I will now, though.

These tales are unusual and delightful, stories about priests and ghosts, a graduate student in philosophy, an apparently mundane woman who believes the Entity will return for her someday, and more.  One of my favorite stories, which I recognized with delight the instant I began reading, is “Year of Silence,” anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008.  It turns out that I’ve liked Brockmeier longer than I thought.

The story that delighted me best, however, was “The Lady with the Pet Tribble.”  Yes, a gentle Star Trek version of the classic Russian story “The Lady with the Pet Dog.”  It was better than mere fan fic, though; it said something about human longing and the incongruity of love.

This is a collection I’m delighted I stumbled upon and highly recommend.  I’ll be pursuing this author’s novels as well.