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A review by karieh13
Strange Weather by Joe Hill
3.0
I love short stories. When done well – they are wonderful, easily digestible, extra-tasty (wow – I must be hungry!) bits of fiction goodness. “Strange Weather” is an example of a variety pack of great short novels.
The first story, “Snapshot” was my favorite. It was wonderfully creepy, while remaining strongly connected to the humanity of the main character. There is love, care, grief and helplessness all wrapped up in a scary package of “what if?” And those two elements being perfectly mixed is what makes this story so strong. “Almost from the first, I felt it was important not to do anything to alarm her. There was no obvious reason for caution – but a lot of our best thinking takes place well below the level of conscious cogitation and has nothing to do with rationality. The monkey brain absorbs a great deal of information from subtle clues that we aren’t even aware we’ve received.”
Then in the apocalyptic “Rain” – Hill demonstrates an excellent sarcastic take on the crazy times in which we live… (after mass death) …” then a teenager standing beside her asked if I wanted large fries or an Egg McMuffin and told me that McDonald’s wanted to express their sorrow for my loss. It was the end of the world, but you could still hit the drive-thru on your way to oblivion.”
I must admit, I was less fond of “Loaded” – but that was just because that subject matter is hard for me to handle. It was well written – but just too much for me.
But at the end of it, I took from “Strange Weather” – the true humanity in unreal circumstances. “I’ll face whatever blows in on the wind. It may come to blow gales of pure sadness instead of air and leave us all taking shelter from grief. Maybe time itself will begin to crest and drop instead of temperature. We may have the nineteenth century for winter. For all we know, we might’ve already slipped into the future without knowing it.”
Indeed, I think we may have. And it’s not a good one.
The first story, “Snapshot” was my favorite. It was wonderfully creepy, while remaining strongly connected to the humanity of the main character. There is love, care, grief and helplessness all wrapped up in a scary package of “what if?” And those two elements being perfectly mixed is what makes this story so strong. “Almost from the first, I felt it was important not to do anything to alarm her. There was no obvious reason for caution – but a lot of our best thinking takes place well below the level of conscious cogitation and has nothing to do with rationality. The monkey brain absorbs a great deal of information from subtle clues that we aren’t even aware we’ve received.”
Then in the apocalyptic “Rain” – Hill demonstrates an excellent sarcastic take on the crazy times in which we live… (after mass death) …” then a teenager standing beside her asked if I wanted large fries or an Egg McMuffin and told me that McDonald’s wanted to express their sorrow for my loss. It was the end of the world, but you could still hit the drive-thru on your way to oblivion.”
I must admit, I was less fond of “Loaded” – but that was just because that subject matter is hard for me to handle. It was well written – but just too much for me.
But at the end of it, I took from “Strange Weather” – the true humanity in unreal circumstances. “I’ll face whatever blows in on the wind. It may come to blow gales of pure sadness instead of air and leave us all taking shelter from grief. Maybe time itself will begin to crest and drop instead of temperature. We may have the nineteenth century for winter. For all we know, we might’ve already slipped into the future without knowing it.”
Indeed, I think we may have. And it’s not a good one.