The Newsletter of
The Council for the Literature of the Fantastic
Volume 1, Number 4 (1997)
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LAST RITES & RESURRECTIONS: STORIES FROM THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE.

Last Rites & Resurrections is an anthology of stories drawn from the English fantasy magazine The Third Alternative. Editor Andrew Cox has given the collection cohesion by presenting stories that all relate in different ways to the general theme of last rites and resurrections as manifested in "love, loss, grief, fear, loneliness, separation and importantly, reconciliation." The stories vary immensely, ranging from the grisly, disturbing horror of Julie Travis's "The Guinea Worm" to the humorous and original "Clean and Bright," by Mat Coward. Overall, what particularly appealed to me was the concern with human relationships and topics that stayed close to existential questions, overlaid with a veneer of the paranormal. The title story, by Martin Simpson, depicts a young financial planner from Florida who has just lost his twelve year old son and is in the process of losing his marriage. As he drives down the long highways near the Ocala forest, the mangled bodies of small animals crushed by oncoming cars and discarded by the side of the road draw an increasing amount of his attention and concern. Finally, he hears their voices communicating their last violent moments and he starts to bring them home and bury them nearby. As they revive, the protagonist is filled with a wistful hope about the resurrection of his son and marriage. In this story I found something very poignant in the treatment of bereavement and hope, executed with neither sentimentality nor morbidity.

"The Angel of the Moor," by Lawrence Dyer, is interesting in the way it handles dualities of love and nature. The moor is both beautiful and dangerously smothering.

"It was what their grandmother would have called a 'hill-cutter day' because the hills seemed to be cut from their moorings, freed and lifted by the fog in the valleys, so that millions of tons of soil and stone could be seen to float without weight against the sky. It was an uplifting sight, a day of freedom."

Edward feels a grudging bond to the moor of his childhood home. Therefore he feels unable to join Rachael, the woman he loves, in her journey to California. He and his brother's discovery of a pre-Roman-era corpse buried in the peat becomes pivotal. Through her, and Edward's mistaken presumption that she is Rachael, he is confronted with the depth of his emotions and the stark difference between his own and his brother's connection to the moor. Ultimately, Edward is released from his self-inflicted tie to a land he does not love and realizes the courage to pursue the uncertain promise of a future with Rachael.

Like a number of the stories, "Take Me When You Go" explores English urban settings and that particular estranged solitude that threatens to envelop the modern city dweller. It also concerns relationships and the passing of time, specifically two former schoolmates and best friends, whose lives have taken very different directions.

"Jason hooked me far more deeply than if we'd ever gone to bed. He always knew I was more attracted to him than to his ideas; and he wasn't always kind about it. 'You're my shadow,' he said once, with some bitterness. 'A simplified version of me.' Our friendship was riddled with conflict and mistrust."

Thus, Joel Lane succinctly captures the ambivalence, love, cruelty, and power plays of an adolescent friendship wherein one feeds on the other's admiration. As time passes, the friends drift apart, until David is invited by Jason's mother to visit her son, who is now a mental outpatient living at home. Jason is obviously troubled, depressed, anxious about the effects of anti-depressive medication, and frustrated in the confining, bleak, small town setting. On a walk through the woods he points out a supernatural phenomenon only to be told by his friend that "there's nothing there." With its emphasis on reaping what one sows, this story raises significant questions of morality, loyalty, and human nature. "Because of Dust," by Chris Kenworthy, is consistently entertaining, yet disturbing. It is by turns voyeuristic and macabre in its depiction of a young man, left hanging by the phone after a thrilling first date, who finally overcomes his fear of appearing too eager, only to discover that the woman was killed the day after their date. Subsequently, he manages to enter her home and rummage through her belongings, obsessed with the loss of a potential romance with a woman he barely knew. Ultimately, each story is provocative, vivid, and honest. The anthology is especially guaranteed to appeal to fantasy readers who also have an interest in psychological and philosophical matters.