fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviewsfantasy book reviews The Drowned Life Jeffrey FordThe Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford‘s The Drowned Life is as engrossing as his previous short story collections, immediately ensnaring the reader with his detailed prose and characterization. One noticeable trend is that while Ford dabbles in clear-cut fantasy with stories such as “The Manticore Spell” or “The Dismantled Invention of Fate,” much of his work deals more with the mundane sprinkled with just the right amounts of magic and the surreal. The titular piece for example, “The Drowned Life,” seems like the narrative of the common Joe, albeit one that utilizes Ford’s excellent use of language and metaphor. However, it slowly steers itself into the territory of weirdness with its concept of an underwater afterlife but all this time, the reader isn’t jolted from the experience.

What I particularly enjoy with Ford’s writing is that the quality is consistent. Each and every story is rich, whether it’s the minutiae of the descriptions or the complexity of its protagonists. As a longtime Ford fan, it’s also noticeable to me that some stories feature recurring characters, and if there’s any cosmology that he’s revisited time and time again, it’s that of real life (a quick reading of the detailed biography at the end corroborates this, especially in light of the story “What’s Sure to Come”).

I’m pretty much overwhelmed by all the stories in this collection but here are my top three: “Present from the Past” is an emotional rollercoaster as the author fully fleshes out the personalities and experiences of the protagonist’s relatives. For example, there is a definitive impact when Ford uses the word “bullshit” as a description of the father’s mentality towards the complaints of the various characters. This is also one of those stories that end at just the right moment, the type that brims with potential rather than a failed attempt at attaining ambiguity.

“The Way He Does It” is an almost whimsical narrative as Ford constantly teases the reader with revealing what “It” actually is. That it captured my attention as a reader for the entire length is a testament to Ford’s skill, and this is one of those stories that’s stronger because of the dialogue between the reader and the text rather than what the author explicitly includes.

“The Dreaming Wind” has been one of my favorites ever since I first read it in the anthology Coyote Road, and it still stands up to multiple re-readings thanks to Ford’s usage of language, his manipulation of the expectations of both the characters and the reader, and his overall execution. It’s not often that an entire town is an actual character yet that’s the case here as the individual characters are merely parts of a bigger whole.

The extra material at the end is also invaluable, whether it’s the longer-than-the-usual biography or an essay on “The Metaphysics of Fiction Writing.” The Drowned Life is a very satisfying collection, easily one of the most memorable short story collections of 2008.

 FanLit thanks Charles Tan from Bibliophile Stalker for contributing this guest review.

The Drowned Life — (2008) Publisher: There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry — and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it… There is a life lived beneath the water — among rotted buildings and bloated corpses — by those so overburdened by the world’s demands that they simply give up and go under… In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid,exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents astrange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction’s most original artists.

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