Apocrypha

Catherynne M. Valente

This is my seventh attempt to write this review. I doubt it will be my last.

It is rare that a book leaves me flummoxed. Apocrypha has done so. I finished reading it-- for the first time, anyway-- almost three weeks ago, and I still haven't found a way to put words to how I feel about it. I might simply not try, if I hadn't promised the author I'd proselytize the term "mythpunk," which she coined to describe the wonderful new movement coursing through fantasy these days, of which Valente and Sonya Taaffe seem to be the twin progenitors. (I believe their spiritual mother to be Wendy Walker, but what do I know?)

This is fabulous stuff. And "fabulous" is a horrid word to be using here. It's vague and meaningless. But to be honest, I could go on for thousands of words about myth, legend, art, craft, eroticism, wit, the lush and the spare, poetry and prose, and explain to you as best I can why this book is so good, and at the end we'd still be nowhere. I can dance around it and point to it all I want, but I cannot convey to you the sheer visceral pleasure of reading this stuff.

"It's stood for years, this little wooden asylum, a grotesque sugar-house chuffing licorice smoke into my eyes, and I am a witch, child, coal-fed oven-- I lean in and shove myself inside, I burn my flesh to intricate blisters, I scrape the grille with molten teeth. Here there is only I repeating into infinite planes, refracted into haloperidol windows, cathedral-stained and weeping." (--"Geography of the Unheimlich")

A fantastic collection. Very highly recommended.