The Third Bear (2010)

I'm not much of a short story guy, but there's some very good stuff in here. ( )

As I suppose is common to many collections of stories, I found some of VanderMeer's short fiction in The Third Bear to be compelling and vivaciously creative, while others seemed to be stale and trying too hard. The stories which I found less successful, such as "Errata" and "Appoggiatura," felt like they were written just for the purpose of being contrary or odd--they felt like concept pieces rather than actualized stories. Sometimes, admittedly, I felt like these "concept pieces" worked despite themselves--"The Situation," for example, had a sense of the bizarre-for-the-sake-of-being-bizarre, but was eerily compelling. The stories I enjoyed the most, like "Finding Sonoria," "The Quickening," and "The Secret Life of Shane Hamill," were delightful in both the light and deft touch of their oddness as well as their emotional veracity. The titular tale, "The Third Bear," could belong in any great horror collection. Overall, the successes outweighed the missteps, and I'll definitely read more of VanderMeer's writing. ( )

The Third Bear (Tachyon, 2010) is a collection of Jeff VanderMeer's recent short fictions, most of which (like his novels) take the reader in very unexpected (and generally very dark) directions. I found myself entirely creeped out by a few of those included here (including the initial story from which the volume takes its title), confused by others, and all the time in awe of VanderMeer's talent for creating an dark, brooding, bizarre atmosphere that is downright weird and at the same time completely absorbing.

It takes a certain kind of author to come up with stories as odd as "The Quickening" (one character in which is a very enigmatic talking rabbit), "The Situation" (office politics where the manager literally self-ignites when angry) and "Errata" (a reporter, trapped in a flooded Lake Baikal hotel with seals and - for reasons unknown - a penguin called Juliette).

"The Goat Variations," imagining the events of 9/11 through a series of alternate realities, kept me up at night; I was really disturbed by it, but found it compelling in a sort of strange way. I guess that's how I feel about most of VanderMeer's writing: it's wonderful, and bizarre, and it keeps me coming back for more.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/11/book-review-third-bear.html ( )

Originally posted @ http://tnt-tek.com/reviews/review-the-third-bear-by-jeff-vandermeer/

Jeff Vandermeer has made a name for himself, both as an author and an editor, as a purveyor of the classic weird tale. His wife Ann is the editor of the classic magazine Weird Tales, he has compiled an anthology entitled “The New Weird”, and is considered a leading voice of the fantasy movement known as, you guessed it, the New Weird. If it seems like this review has gotten repetitive, grant me one last indulgence, because Vandermeer’s new short story collection, The Third Bear (2010, Tachyon Publications), can be described fittingly in only one way, weird. And that is a great thing.

Beginning with the paranoia and ambivalent horror of the titular story, and ending with the stream of surreal vignettes in Appoggiatura, The Third Bear is relentlessly imaginative. The worlds constructed in these stories ooze with atmosphere and dread. The characters seek and brood and drag us along with them to witness their fascinations and horrors. There is a vein of deep mystery that threads the stories together. A feeling that the tales are woven together as dispatches from strange happenings in a world that’s not quite our own.

There are plenty of memorable moments to be had here. The eponymous story introduces us to the mayor of a small village, struggling to hold his people together in the shadow of an unspeakable monster. An orphan and her brooding aunt find some common ground when they come into possession of a talking rabbit in “The Quickening”. Office politics go surreal in “The Situation”. A wily octopus lays a trap for a marauding shark in the mytholical “Shark God versus Octopus God”. Cat Rambo is credited as a co-author on the brilliant “The Surgeon’s Tale”, a story about the consequences of love with a reanimated arm.

Each story, while technically stand-alone, have little traces of the others running through them. The feeling of open-endedness, of real things just beyond our grasp, unifies the collection into a paranoid tour-de-force. We live with the characters as they confront the nightmare of, say co-worker violently murdering a giant fish with the face of his manager, or a manta-ray who wants to bond with your mind, or hallway of horrors maintained by a raven-headed man.

If you’re looking for a way into Vandermeer’s fiction but are daunted by the density of the superb City of Saints and Madmen, The Third Bear is a great introduction. Recommended. ( )