A horrifying and hopeful tale
It has been a big autumn for members of the King writing dynasty of New England. First we saw Sleeping Beauties, the collaboration between Stephen and youngest son Owen King, then Strange Weather, a collection of four short novels from eldest son, the barely pseudonymous Joe Hill.
Yes, a collection of four short novels.
At this point in his career, considering also the references to his father’s work in his novels The Fireman and N0S 4A2, the choice to publish a collection so structurally similar to King’s Different Seasons — a collection of four novellas — has to be seen as a deliberate, almost winking, recognition of Hill’s acceptance of his place in the territory staked out by his dad, which he at first resisted.
After his last two mammoth novels, Hill was drawn to the shorter form, as short novels “offer the economy of the short story but the depth of characterization we associate with longer works.” Or, as he writes, in his author’s note, “short novels are all killer, no filler.”
Which is the perfect description — and critical judgment — of the four pieces in Strange Weather, which showcase both Hill’s imaginative range and his stylistic depth.
“Aloft” uses — and subverts — the tropes of the desert island story to follow a reluctant skydiver who finds himself marooned on a cloud. It’s not just any cloud, of course, but Hill’s great strength as a storyteller is his ability to loop together a tender coming of age story, an account of romantic loss and yearning and an alien spaceship drama, while never seeming to strain.
Similarly, “Snapshot” is about a mysterious instant camera (think Polaroid, but evil) that can destroy the subjects of its pictures. While the narrative is, explicitly, a thriller (including a chase during a dark and stormy night), there’s a deeper mystery buried in the photo albums, one which Hill rightly leaves hauntingly unresolved.
“Loaded,” a story which twists the common NRA trope about “what happens when a bad guy with a gun meets a good guy with a gun” beyond recognition, a crime story with a Coen brothers-meets-Carl Hiaasen sensibility, also serves as a scathing examination of race, class, sex and violence in the contemporary United States.
While the four novels are equally — though very differently — strong, every reader will gravitate toward a personal favourite. Mine is “Rain,” the closing novel, which opens with a storm that drops razor-sharp, glass-shattering, metal-puncturing crystals on Boulder and Denver. It’s a story of global politics and brinksmanship (and contains the book’s most chilling line: “The President had disappeared to a secure location but had responded with the full force of his Twitter account. He posted: ‘OUR ENEMIES DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY STARTED! PAYBACK IS A BITCH!!! #Denver #Colorado #America!!’”), but rooted firmly in the love and loss of a young woman as the world crumbles around her. It’s a perfect Hill story and representative of his force: there may be monsters, there may be no hope, but there’s still good, even when the sky is falling. Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Black Feathers.