The Broken Box

[setsuled]

I read the new Sirenia Digest on the train to-day, a new story from Caitlin R. Kiernan called "Discord in Anthracite". It's exciting to see Caitlin combine her love of HP Lovecraft with her palaeontology expertise.

The point of view character discusses childhood memories with a figure who shifts between a psychiatrist and a dead girl. It has the quality of an internal dialogue, the sort of thing we do when we try to explain things to ourselves by imagining a friend, family member, or authority figure to whom we're delivering the explanation. In those cases, we may well switch out the identity of the listener/interrogator mid-explanation. The people we choose can be indicative of our priorities and perspectives, as it is for the narrator of Caitlin's story.

This all, like the personalities of Lovecraft's narrators, helps establish an emotional reality for the fantastically horrific. It's a nice piece of work, it gets under your skin, or your scalp.