Do You Suppose She Wrote These Before Breakfast?
Written: Jul 29 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 11 Delightful, witty stories.
Cons: There's only 11.
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| Darkmistress's Full Review: Connie Willis - Impossible Things |
This is the highest complement I can give a book: I reread it often. This may not sound like a big complement, but then you haven't seen the 2 foot stack of books I'm working my way through. Impossible Things collects 11 stories and I will discuss my favorites. All of the stories are excellent, but some are easier to describe.
Even the Queen
In the future, science has figured out a way to stop menstruation. Women rejoice. They call it the Liberation. A few years of this bounty passes and some younger women who have never been forced to deal with the Curse, decide they want it back. Traci's youngest daughter is one of them. Traci, her assistant (the token male),her mother, mother-in-law, elder daughter, and granddaughter arrange what is essentially an intervention to talk her out of it. The daughter in question doesn't show up, but sends her mentor-in-madness. Every woman I've told about this story is delighted by it, every man gets an uncomfortable expression on his face. This story is witty, human, socially accurate, and the resolution is priceless.
Schwarzchild Radius
I got all the way through this story thinking "I don't get it" and at the very end, I got it. It flips back and forth between the present and the Russian Front during WWI where Schwarzchild developed his theory. I can't explain this story at all, but it is wonderful and you will have to read it for yourself.
Ado
Have I mentioned that I taught English in high school? Or that I come from a family of teachers? My sister once got in trouble with the community where she taught school because she told the class that the human body does not need more than three or four servings of milk a day. It was a farming community. Between that and having tried to teach English, I may have been uniquely disposed to like this story about a teacher who is trying to teach Shakespeare in a world that feels it can erase anything that makes it uncomfortable. If you've ever laughed at a joke about political correctness or fumed about a book being removed from a library, you'll love this story. It won't make you angry, but that is easy.
Spice Pogram
This is a screwball comedy and the binding of my copy is cracked at it. Ms Willis casts Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, and Cary Grant in her leading roles, but she also includes Spielberg wearing a Blue Harvest cap. Aliens have arrived at Earth and are staying on a space station (owned by Sony.) The government is pretty sure the aliens are going to give humans a space program, but they aren't sure because the aliens don't speak very good English. The way the English language, with it's words that mean many different things,is used here is amazing.
Chance
This story gives me the willies. A woman moves back to the college where she went to school because her husband has gotten a job teaching there. She has an ok life, nothing to sneeze at. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's ok. Well, time does something weird to her. It folds back on itself to a decision she made in college that changed the course of her life…and it gives her another chance. This is not the normal, lighthearted, happy Connie Willis tale. It's creepy and cold and strange. But it's wonderful and not in an It's a Wonderful Life way.
Jack
I've sold this book based in a description of this story alone. It's set during WWII in London during the Blitz. Jack Harker is on the fire watch when another Jack joins them. Jack H thinks there's something strange about the new Jack, why does he have to be home before sun up? How can he hear people trapped in rubble that no one else can hear? Why doesn't he want his share of the sugary treat on of the other wardens brings in (remember, this is war, sugar is strictly rationed)? (SPOILER HERE) He finally figures out that Jack is a vampire who is helping out because his preternatural senses can hear people and vampiric strength allows him to dig better than normal humans. And before you say "Oh, a guilty vampire, that sounds like Interview With a Vampire, I must say it also sounds like The Living Dead Girl which appeared a couple years in advance of Anne Rice's novel and shares a couple of key ideas.
These are my favorites. I like The Last Of the Winnebagos, but it's hard to explain clearly. Winter's Tale is clever and wonderful, but I don't like Shakespeare enough to read and reread it. However, if I was still teaching, I'd make the kids read it. In the Late Cretaceous is funny and witty, as is Time Out, but hard to explain. At the Rialto is impossible to explain, but if I taught physics I'd make the kids read it.
Recommended:
Yes
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