You Should Come With Me Now by M. John Harrison
M. John Harrison is a liminal cartographer. His writing blurs the lines between genres, including travel writing, science fiction, and horror, and his characters live in the grey area between the physical and the spiritual. The master of the New Wave presents unnerving images of contemporary urban Britain as well as spooky parodies of the larger, political landscape in this, his first collection of short stories in almost 15 years. These are strange tales for strange times, with anything from gelatinous aliens taking control of the world’s financial centres to a middle-aged guy running away from the demands of fatherhood in his own home.
You Should Come With Me Now by M. John Harrison
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You ought to accompany me. There are some recurring themes and motifs, one might even say obsessions, woven into the way the author treats his cities, landscapes, human interaction and its limitations, female characters, illness, dreams, etc. However, even someone who is very familiar with MJH’s prose will find new gems here. Now is a logical and successful sequel to Things That Never Happen, in which his previous short prose is collected.
These stories range from lyrical passages and onyrical meditations to satirical and/or political miniatures, short comedies, modern fables, and even condensed novels. The author has largely published these stories on his website. They are fascinating books with excellent writing. These short pieces are, in my opinion, especially valuable because they show how important word care is, how precise and beautiful language can be, and how great an effect you can create in a very limited space if you use your tools intentionally. Although one can learn quite a few tricks of the trade by reading any of MJH’s fiction, these short pieces are, in my opinion, especially valuable.
Due to the genre fiction, he writes, M. John Harrison is underappreciated. This collection of stories is the best he’s ever put out. They frequently consist of only thoughts, sometimes sketches, sometimes paragraphs, sometimes pages, all of which contain bitter humour and unknowability. They are not specifically about ghosts. Then, in the middle of them, is this nearly straight ghost story called “Animals,” which is probably my favourite. It centres on a woman named Susan who is living in a vacation rental in Pembrokeshire, which is really a classic M. John Harrison gateway to a nightmare because he takes great pleasure in creating the most excruciatingly realistic locations.
But he pulls off a fantastic trick here, one that I haven’t seen anyone else pull off quite so well: he makes our world look odd and foreign. Everything he says sounds strange. In his science fiction, he portrays all these other worlds in an impersonal, clipped manner, as if they weren’t all that intriguing. In contrast, our world is far more fully realized, down to the smallest of aspects like light and odours. He appears to understand how exciting the present moment is at all times.
