Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis
“Allies” by Katherine Dunn
Card picked: Six of Hearts
From: David Copperfield’s Beyond Imagination
Review: A peek at a family dynamic against the backdrop of UFO reports on the radio. Copperfield’s introduction strongly influenced the way I looked at this story. He saw it as a meditation on perception, which it is to some degree. Edie, a teenage girl, manages how her mentally ill mother perceives the world by buffering the unpleasant and fabricating stories that will be pleasing. Her brother is too young to participate in the charade, her father too weary, and their community simply too prejudiced. Unfortunately, Edie is physically ugly and can’t hide who she is from the world outside of her family. It’s a pretty grim story with only the slightest glimmer of light at its end as Edie wishes for intervention.
About the Author: I didn’t recognize her name when reading the story, but Katherine Dunn is the author of Geek Love, a novel I haven’t read, but have encountered on numerous occasions. I might get up the courage to read it one day.
This story sounds so sad!
It lured me in with a kind of happy beginning too…
It was. Glad it didn’t catch me on a different day.
I have not heard of this author before, but this story sounds very powerful…and sad.
-Dale
It was a pretty rough tale. I don’t require sunshine and roses, but this one only went down from a relatively placid beginning.
Sounds like a bit of a downer. I’m curious about the title and how it fits in with the story. Also, the backdrop of UFO reports on the radio? What’s up with that? 🙂
-Jay
It *is* a curious title. While Edie is definitely trying to keep her mother’s world calm, she’s really doing it for her own sake. Really, Edie is her own and only ally. The alien reports feed into her mother’s delusions, unless of course they’re real…