Filter House

Filter House

Co-winner of the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award; finalist for the 2009 World Fantasy Award The collection’s fourteen tales offer a haunting montage that works its magic subtly on the reader’s subconscious. “From the exotic, baroque complexities of ‘At the Huts of Ajala’ to the stark, folktale purity of ‘The Beads of Ku,’ these fourteen superbly written stories will weave around you a ring of dark, dark magic.” — Ursula K. Le Guin “Nisi Shawl uses the tools of future and fable, usually used to explore the other, the future, and the mysterious, to magically reveal what and who we all are here and today.” — Tobias Buckell “Sometimes enigmatic, often surprising, always marvelous. This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to some strange and wonderful places.” — Karen Joy Fowler “This exquisitely rendered debut collection of 11 reprints and three originals ranges into the past and future to explore identity and belief in a dazzling variety of settings. “At the Huts of Ajala, a folktale concerning a girl wrestling with a trickster god before her birth, is full of urgent and delightful imagery, while “Wallamelon” is an elegaic, sophisticated exploration of the Blue Lady myth. Of the several science fiction stories included, the strongest are “Good Boy,” an engrossing experiment in computer psychology, African gods and postcolonial anxiety, and “Shiomah’s Land,” a cross-genre bildungsroman involving a girl who becomes the wife of a goddess. The concluding tale, “The Beads of Ku,” is an utterly arresting, authoritatively delivered tale concerning the diplomacy of marriage and the economy of the land of the dead. The threads of folklore, religious magic, family and the search for a cohesive self are woven with power and lucidity throughout this panorama of race, magic and the body.” Starred Review, Publishers Weekly , Aug 2008 In these stories, characters tend to lack power in a traditional sense yet are strong and resourceful in worlds running a gamut from nearly contemporary to the strangest of futures. Beginning with “At the Huts of Ajala,” the story of a girl with two heads, and proceeding to “Wallamelon,” in which watermelon vines protect a neighborhood, magic is drawn from many sources, and magic is disguised as science fiction, as in “Good Boy,” in which a colony is stricken by a mysterious disease and healed by a woman possessed by the spirit of Elegba. The collection ends with the haunting fable “The Beads of Ku,” about Fulla Fulla, a woman who bargains in the marketplace of the city of the dead, and the foolishness of her husband. Shawl’s stories afford fascinating glimpses into the magical underpinnings of worlds springing from all sorts of places within the world we all know. --Regina Schroeder Nisi Shawl tells stories as if she has just awakened from a vivid and terrifying dream, and she's intent on relating its details. [...] Her stories are part fairy tale and part nightmare, and they bristle with references to real-life problems, like racism and poverty. In her recent collection of science-fiction short stories, ''Filter House,'' Shawl, who reviews science fiction for The Seattle Times, explores a world that is both sinister and whimsical. Monsters aren't always lurking in the closet, but they're there often enough that you hold your breath before opening the door each time. Her characters are mostly women little girls, grandmothers and nannies who see the world differently than those around them. They know secrets, and they have visions. They are sexual, self-possessed and curious, and that makes them powerful. In one story, ''The Water Museum,'' the main character is a woman who picks up a hitchhiker. She can tell immediately that he is an assassin, sent to murder her. But because she knows who he is, she toys with him, as a cat might gleefully torture its prey. ''I have a sneaky suspicion this one might turn out to be interesting,'' says the woman, after locking the hitchhiker into a room. ''When he's good and ready.'' Perhaps the scariest part of ''Filter House'' is that the stories take place in locations that could very easily be Seattle, or SeaTac, or the shores of Lake Chelan except for the sinister magic that slithers into the characters' consciousnesses, and seeps up through the cracks in the sidewalk. [...] Shawl's stories are for the reader who relishes that bone-deep shiver of a grisly ghost story. And they're perfect for the reader who wants to be left scratching her head and peering over her shoulder at the end of each tale. But one thing's for sure: Shawl's stories are not for the reader who wants to dip into a bit of fiction just before bedtime and then fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. -- Seattle Times These fourteen stories, including three originals, share a striking freshness linked to unique points of view. Sometimes Shawl opens with a great hook, as with the opening of ''The Water Museum'': ''When I saw the hitchhiker standing by the sign for t