Fen: Stories

I enjoy writing that is uncanny, something strangely familiar yet existing just outside of our understanding. Stories that are not so abstract that there's no ride or rise, but that are not afraid of ambiguity within their own dark dream. Someone will come away with a bloody nose, the reader, the writer, a character, possibly all three.Two such books I had read and reviewed on Facebook not so very long ago were Laird Hunt's spooky The House in the Dark of the Woods, sort of a Blair Witch in colonial times, but a fairy tale, unless it wasn't. The sense of "otherness," the headlong pitch of the language, the almost childlike sensibility of the narrator, was scarier than most bloody horror stories.The second was Daisy Johnson's Everything Under, which was about a lot of weird s***. Gretel, reconnecting with the mother who abandoned her. Their secret languages, fascination with words, words used in odd ways by the writer. Life in a houseboat on a canal. A runaway (Marcus/Margot), and her backstory. A strange deadly canal creature that may be imaginary. Oh, and a thread of the Oedipal recast in a gritty and muscular 21st century retelling.Many of the signature oddities of Everything Under are present in Johnson's previous book, a collection of short stories titled Fen. A bilgy canal; another Margot and a Marcus, though in separate tales; a smudging of what is "real" in some sort of cold fluorescent logical sense and some earthy crepuscular dreamworld.These are stories of metamorphoses, and in one the bad boy twin brother comes home drunk from a night of fighting every night, climbing through a second story window to his sister's room: "[H]e'd come to her with a story so hot in his mouth he couldn't help but tell it: the house that fell in love with a girl, the girl that starved into a fish." Readers will nod in wonder, because those tales comprise two earlier stories in this collection.In these stories, people slip from their human selves to something primal and wild and unpredictable. There is a feeling of landscape that is abandoned, not quite at the border with the canal of nightmare, not quite exiled from a post-industrial bleakness, a sense that the fen is stronger and deeper and more abiding than we might know. Fen is not just marshy land, unsettled and unsettling, it is pluripotent, what we run away from and return to, always.

An interlocking collection of stories set in the fens of eastern England, where women starve themselves into eels or wear the skins of the seduced and men disappear into the woods or at sea, perhaps to return as foxes or birds. There's an Angela Carter feel to some of the transformations (a comparison Ms Johnson is probably tired of) and with the same bloody edge threatening bodily violence. I think this ended up on my TBR pile because of a NYT review, and the collection certainly deserves that level of visibility. I suspect a second reading will turn up even more interconnections than I noticed on my first run through, and the book is easily good enough to entice me inside again, soon.

I only give this book four stars (rather than its clearly deserved 5) because so much of it eluded me on first reading, which was like spending time with a quiet, self-possessed person who’s complexity and depth reveals itself slowly and grandly to the point where, by the end of your time together, you feel small and almost lost yet energized by the possibility of someday understanding them. There is darkness and poetry here. There is brilliance and the teeth of feral beasts. Many of these stories haunt me, for reasons I may never be able to voice. I will be returning to the Fen.

If you're looking for small, sweet stories that behave themselves, this isn't your book. But, if you're looking for a wild night, an adventure you'll never forget because it's unlike what you've ever known, this is it.Dark and mischievous folktales. The impossible on paper that lives, winds itself into real images that whistle around and lure you to trespass the fen.The characters make this book special, all of them on the verge of discovering what no one wants to talk about. And the fen is also a character, alive and hungry as any person.Go with no expectations and enjoy the ride.

Writers and word nerds will absolutely love the writing in this book. It's like poetry in prose form. Themes and phrases run from story to story, testing your memory and delighting your pleasure centers. I immediately started from the beginning as soon as I finished, so I could find more of the hidden treasures I missed the first time through.

Probably the strangest collection of short stories I've ever read. So well written, such a sense of place but no place I have been. Thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Will reread soon. Highly recommend this if you like the skewed and twisted.

There are some real moments of lovely writing here. It does seem a bit...unfinished, rough around the edges, though. I would recommend it, but boy, do I think it would be really great with a bit more time and attention.

Haunting, intriguing, unlike anything I have read before. Definitely worth the read, I can't wait for her next book!

Bought on the strength of the rave reviews, after it cropped up in my recommendations. I'll have to learn to stop doing this. I only lasted two stories before deciding life is too short to waste on books I'm not enjoying. It reads like Young Adult (YA) fiction, which I don't object to once in a while, but this was not a gripping example. I found the first two stories neither engaging nor pleasingly scary. An allegory about anorexia, which I might say was "with a twist", if it hadn't been pretty obvious from the moment the girl stopped eating where things were headed. Anorexia is a serious and topical subject; this could have been so much more. I don't object in principle to linking mental health issues with the supernatural, or even leaving it to the reader exactly which is at play. But I didn't care about either of the principle characters (the afflicted or her sister), the motivation was never explained, and the attainment of the objective left me thinking: "So what?"Then we came to a tale about modern day vampires (I've just bought the complete box set of True Blood, so should have been fine). They were all brash and callous, cynically exploiting their sexuality to lure male prey. OK, sexuality, or at least sensuality, is sort of what the vampire thing is about, but there was no subtlety or nuance here. I didn't care about either predators or prey, just as I hadn't cared about the anorexic girl or her sister. I wasn't shocked, I wasn't intrigued, I was merely bored. Making young women "man eaters" in a very literal sense isn't really genre-defying or refreshing these days, but does have the effect of making them unsympathetic as characters.I knew I wasn't going to wade through any more of this fashionable but uninvolving tripe, so have deleted it from all devices, ignoring the caution that I'd have to purchase it again if I wanted to continue reading. I'm annoyed I purchased it once, so I'm not ready to grimly persevere, just for the insistence on getting my money's worth. I don't think there's any danger I'll relent and buy it again. If I'd bought the paper copy, it would have been one for the charity shop. Shame we can't donate ebooks the same way.

I read this in one gulp. The language, though sparse, was lush. I felt lulled into a series of fantastical stories and situations. A girl starves herself into becoming an eel, a house falls in love with a girl, the dead return, a Messiah. Boundaries blur.I did find it hard to follow some stories towards the end and got the characters muddled, but I enjoyed it. Despite the slow feeling of dread that slithered in with the stories.

I love her prose style. She's easy to read but not simple - challenging without being an absolute pain to wade through. There is a thread that runs through the stories, linking them in loose ways, and I liked how that worked. However, not all of the stories were successful. The one that ran backwards in time felt like a clever exercise in literary fiction but it wasn't satisfying to read.

I've loved everything Daisy Johnson has done. This was a real gem. Every story is crafted, weaving worlds and strange natural laws with the land. It was a perfect book. I might read it again.

Daisy Johnson’s stories seem to deal with the supernatural but I came away with a strong sense that they explore the deeper, more hidden folds of the human psyche. Indeed they are almost mythical but can be impenetrable when the rich, almost imagist language steals the show.