Book Recommendation: "Shriek: An Afterword" by Jeff Vandermeer

I recently went through a harvest of Listmania lists on Amazon, from those I found on the page for China Meiville's "Perdido Street Station". It seemed like a promising way to break into reading the current "New Weird" fantasy sub-genre movement, uh, thing. (New Weird. It's a fairly ambiguous term, but generally, think Fantasy (often dark fantasy) with a more "modern" viewpoint and usually an urban (modern or pseudo-steampunk) setting, that sidesteps Tolkien's legacy when tracing its lineage (which manifests itself, in the books I've read at least, in attempting to include an element of psychological realism despite the fantastic setting and events, as opposed to the more archetypal characterizations one finds in Tolkien and other writers of Epic Fantasy.)

All of the above is true of the first book from the Amazon lists that I've gotten from the library, "Shriek: An Afterword" by Jeff Vandermeer. Shriek takes place in the fictional city of Ambergris, in an unnamed fictional world. It is ostensibly an Afterword to another work (which does not exist in real life), written by the sister of the other work's author (who has gone missing). The brother and sister duo are named Duncan and Janice Shriek (thus the title), and the story involves Duncan's two obsessions: first, his obsession with the mysterious fungus-filled world of tunnels beneath the city, and second his obsessive love for a girl named Mary Sabon, who is at first his student and, in the end, the person who discredits and ruins his name in the public mind. But of course all of these are almost secondary characters compared to the city itself, its history, its current state of politics and turmoil, and the tensions with and fear of the original inhabitants of the area, the Gray Caps: beings who live in the world Underground, having been driven there by the first human colonists, who may or may not secretly control the minds of the human populace of the city (this is where Mary and Duncan differ in their theories), and who are never given concrete physical description within the course of the novel.

One of the critiques leveled at the New Weird from the more traditional fantasy is that the New Weird is Ugly. This is the same critique that I have heard one of my favorite authors, John C. Wright, level against the "traditional" "literary" genre (you know, the one that claims not to be a genre). Novels concerned with psychological realism tend to include a lot of psychological baggage, which in turn means not flinching away from the faults (and underlying reason for the faults) of their characters. Which means that essentially a lot of dirty laundry is aired, even on the part of the protagonists. This is certainly the case in Shriek, where certainly none of the characters are treated as being blameless in their actions. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in the novel; and sometimes just when you expect someone to be a caricature (such as the supposedly narrow-minded religious leader that tries to ban one of Duncan's early books), Vandermeer surprises you (as when the religious leader, himself having suffered a scandal, becomes one of Duncan's closest friends, though no less a religious man). I'm not going to fall on either side of this argument: I can see both sides of the argument, and enjoy books written by those on both sides. (Which side I would rather write like myself remains to be seen.)

(The other "ugly" aspect of the New Weird is that it often draws on influences from the horror genre. There are some disturbing or shocking images in Shriek, which you may want to watch out for if you're not a fan of being disturbed or shocked. Mostly it is more dark than gruesome, though there are a couple violent images at certain points.

Literarily, Shriek exists in that lovely world of "suggesting" meaning, where the metaphorical (or mythopoeic?) elements are there to "wake" a meaning rather than to "convey" a meaning, as George MacDonald once said. Shriek is an excellent example of this. The Underground, perhaps the most powerful metaphoric image in the novel, can be seen from any number of potent angles. It's exactly the sort of technique that I want my own work to employ.

In all, then, I would heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in works of the fantastical, but who aren't necessarily looking for mere escapism. This is a tough, complex, and ultimately rewarding book, and one that I devoured with much excitement. I'll be reading more of Vandermeer in the future.