Map of Dreams

by M. Rickert (Editor), Gordon van Gelder (Afterword)

Set in a reality where nightmares do not fade upon waking, this anthology skims along the surface of life and dips just beneath, revealing the hidden machinations that fuel dreams. These underlying myths and fantasies exist not as musty old stories but as ancient truths that have come to illuminate the modern human condition. The title story touches on themes of grief, redemption, and time travel; "Cold Fire" ventures into love and obsession; and "Peace on Suburbia" introduces readers to a Christmas with an entirely different kind of savior. These and 13 other tales are framed by four interludes—Dreams, Nightmares, Waking, and Rising—that guide readers through a world that is at once familiar and eerily off-kilter.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Magical Realism, Anthologies, Speculative Fiction, Time Travel

313 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

M. Rickert also writes under the name Mary Rickert. How did this happen and why, you might ask. It is a reasonable question but that does not mean the answer is reasonable as well. There was a time when M. was a young writer, scribbling in notebooks and on the back of envelopes, who thought she wanted to disappear behind the stories she wrote. (She still feels that way, and rather enjoys writing about herself in the third person as if she were someone else.) After years of rejections M. began publishing under the mysterious moniker, and was happy doing so, until she began to feel that she was repeating herself, or (and this is the weird part) repeating someone else who she once had been. At the age of 51 she decided to go back to school and earned her MFA as well as the rest of her name. She also wrote a novel, The Memory Garden, to be published in May, 2014.

Reviews

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a happy, joyous book. Despite the fantasy elements, the stories show all the different facets of the suffering of life that I don't see much outside of Raymond Carver's collections. Except that the pain of the characters isn't hidden under even a thin veneer.

But the stories aren't devoid of hope, unless you're talking about optimistic, feel-good, against-the-odds kind of hope. The collection seems more about the kind you find in real life, that of scarred people who find their hope in clawing their way forward, choosing to light an inch rather than curse the darkness. And, not everyone does, not in life or in this book, I'll just be up front about that right now.

To fully experience Map of Dreams, save "The Chambered Fruit" for last. Seriously. It's only after you've read all of the other tales of loss and suffering that you can read "The Chambered Fruit" and, like the protagonist in that story, put all of that pain into the perspective you need to move forward.

M. Rickert is the writer I want to be when I grow up. This book is up for three World Fantasy Awards for a reason! I give it five stars because goodreads won't let me give it six.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read about a half dozen of M. (for Mary) Rickert's stories before reading this book. That included three memorable, puzzling, provocative tales that I think are among the best stories of this kind that I have read in some years: "Journey into the Kingdom," "The Christmas Witch," and "Holiday." And I say "of this kind" because I am not sure how these should be classified. Fantasy? Slipstream? Weird fiction? I know that all of them left me wondering what they really meant, but not unsatisfied.

There are seventeen principal stories in this book as well as five interstitial entries written for the book as connecting material. The first story is a novella, the title story, "Map of Dreams." The final story is a novelette, "The Chambered Fruit." All the other entries are short stories. I don't think that the four very brief introductions to groups of stories work well, nor, in my opinion, does the fake "Introduction" to all the stories other than "Map of Dreams," ostensibly written by Annie Merchant, the bereaved narrator of the story "Map of Dreams."

These are stories of madness and loss and mourning. All happiness is hard-won. Both of the two longer stories are about women whose young daughters have been murdered and who can not stop grieving. They are two of the most powerful and moving stories in the collection; I think that "The Chambered Fruit" is, in fact, the best story in the book.

One of the things that Rickert deals with in her fiction is the element of "story" itself. That is a central issue in her marvelous "Journey into the Kingdom" and is also important in some of the entries here, especially "The Harrowing" and the excellent "Cold Fires." Different myths are essential pieces of some of these tales, particularly in "Map of Dreams," "Leda," "Moorina of the Seals," and "The Chambered Fruit."

There is a real introduction by Christopher Barzak (in addition to the Annie Merchant one) and an "Afterword" by Gordon Van Gelder, the editor who first published most of the stories in this book.

Goodreads shows this book as being available with two different dust jackets, both featuring birds. The one I read has a picture by Tom Canty showing a sort of pre-Raphaelite woman in a room with six ravens. The other jacket shows two swans; that picture, not attributed but I think also by Tom Canty, is used in black and white as the frontispiece in the edition that I read.

Most of the stories here are fine, even if not as good as the three Rickert stories not included here that I mentioned in the first paragraph above. I would especially recommend "A Very Little Madness Goes a Long Way," "Many Voices," "Map of Dreams," "The Harrowing," "Cold Fires," and "The Chambered Fruit." The story "Map of Dreams" was nominated for a World Fantasy Award" for Best Novella and the book won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection.

[Ore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating: 3 1/2 stars

It is harder for anthologies. And I suppose I am harder on anthologies as well, mostly because although I've had a fifteen year romance with the novel (I'm starting at the first one I ever read) short stories have my heart.
Fans of this style of writing may have read other anthologies such as Somewhere Beneath Those Waves (Sarah Monette), The Forest of Forgetting (Theodora Goss), Pretty Monsters (Kelly Link) and The Empire of Ice cream (Jeffery Ford) all of which are so ridiculously amazing that I could never even write a review on them because I would just ramble, tremble and gush.

Here is the thing, M.Rickert is just as good a writer as any of the ones I mentioned above, it's just some of her stories are not as good. Yikes! That sounds harsh. It isn't meant to be. I think, what was missing for me was the strength of direction that I am used to in a really gripping short story.

Like the box of chocolates that you gave your third-favorite coworker for Christmas, some of the stories are not the greatest, some an acquired taste, and some are truly amazing.
My favorite story BY FAR in the anthology is the last story, The Chambered Fruit. (I guess she really was saving the best for last).

This story contains similar elements to Ricket's other stories witches (there is also a really great witch in Cold Fire's my second favorite story), dead daughters, distressed middle aged wives. If you want to know why this story is so great read it for yourself!

But here is my favorite quote from it :)

"Dead daughters do not wear socks or shoes and they won't go into old bedrooms unless you beg or coax (...) Dead daughters have little in common with the living ones. They are more like sisters than the same girl and you realize, just as you miss the daughter you've lost, so does the dead girl."

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The initial story is so convoluted and confusing (and long) that I thought I hated this book but the rest of the stories are hauntingly beautiful, moving and memorable. The writing is superb. Many of the stories explore devastating loss and elements of rebirth and are deeply feminine in many ways. I imagine that everyone will relate to the loss differently but it is an journey into the surreal well worth taking, both disturbing and somehow deeply nourishing. The stories are quite beautiful and could be taken at face value but i think the true value and depth would only be appreciated by someone with a mind for the abstract. This book will remain on my bookshelf for decades and I look forward to revisiting it.

[Haddayr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure here: I LOVE M. RICKERT. She is a personal friend.

That said, this book is brilliant and I'd say it even if I hadn't read it. She is truly a genius with the short story. It's such a joy to read someone who takes short stories in and of themselves so seriously.

Also, her stories can be extremely creepy. Not in a blood-n-guts way, but in an OMG people-can-be-awful-including me kind of way. You've been warned!

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Outstanding writing, but the mood and tone of the stories just were not to my taste. It was recommended to me as speculative fiction, but was much closer to magical realism. The author is obviously quite skillful, and it is only a matter of personal taste that keeps me from giving this one a higher rating.

[Bridgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical realist short stories with a starting and ending story about a young girl that dies, as well as themes about dreams and eggs. I really liked it.

[Claudiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some stories I liked, some I really loved. A new favorite author.

[Gregory Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful work as always from M. Rickert.

[David Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed just under half of this short story collection with the only novella ‘Map of Dreams’ being the biggest disappoint as it dragged on but didn’t explain enough how time travel worked. If it’s a state of mind as suggested then how can it bring someone back to life and allow them to come home with you. Many of the stories are emotional and you can feel for the suffering of characters like Moorina as Rickert paints their pain so well. My favourite story and the reason I bought this book was ‘Bread and Bombs’. Told from a child’s point of view the actions, dialogue and viewpoint all ring true. This story of children burning down a house of refugees as their parents’ paranoia and refugee strangeness has infected them has undoubtedly happened in somewhere. The only difference is the world situation is slightly more fantastical but one day could be a reality including snow as a biological weapon and aeroplane travel stopped due to terror threat. By only adding little touches of fantasy this story brought me into it more deeply and even the clichés like sweets they thought were from refuges weren’t. Several stories are parables like ‘Chambered Fruit’ which poses an interesting question if the dead came back to life would you be happy. Would death have changed them not physically but emotionally would they make it hard to live your life? It made me think be careful what you wish for and sometimes you need to accept death otherwise it will rule your life. Rickert’s power is in making you assume everything is normal then fantasy comes along and it takes an unexpected twist. In ‘Chambered Fruit’ after you had the horrible tale of the daughter being killed by an online predator I half expected the girl who can talk to the dead to be faking it and playing a prank on the old woman who has lost her child.
However this collection isn’t all positive as it includes a lot of stories about women losing their kids and being seen as crazy so many in fact that it becomes repetitive. The endings of some stories fade out and disappoint like ‘Art is not a Violent subject’ with the narrator ended up in a prison still crazy after telling us his story. Something’s needed describing more like how crows are proven to carry a disease which would help explain how quick government decided to kill them all instead of just stating the fact in a single line.
Overall Rickert’s collection is good for its characters you can root for and realism with small doses of fantasy which are unexpected in many stories. However the narrators in many stories are repetitive, as they are all woman who have lost children and people now think they are crazy so they talk in similar voices.

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

First collection (there have been two since) of literary fantasy shorts from M(ary) Rickert. The stories tend towards the intense and introspective; most are first-person, and grief, mental illness and emotional disconnection are strongly recurring themes. The stories' settings tend to be a magical realist small-town and rural US - many of the stories are suffused with a rich, heady sense of the natural world - but the shadow of 9/11 and the subsequent American-led invasion of Iraq hang heavy over a number of the entries (notably the Shirley Jackson-esque 'Bread and Bombs').

With the exception of the opening, titular novella - which is original to this collection - the stories tend to be very short (ten pages or less), making the collection ideal for dipping into. As is generally the case with single-author collections, reading the whole lot in a short space of time is an interesting exercise. On the one hand, you get a clear sense of a writer honing her craft, and reworking key ideas; 'Map of Dreams' and 'The Chambered Fruit', both reflections on coping with the death of a child, make fascinatingly contrasting bookends. On the other hand, it does run the risk of smothering some of the shorter and/or quieter entries (like the short interludey mood pieces 'Dreaming of the Sun', 'Feeding the Beast', etc.). But there's enough variety of tone and affect here - from delicate weirdness of 'The Girl Who Ate Butterflies' to mind-of-a-killer creepiness like 'Art Is Not a Violent Subject' - to make reading the whole thing more than worthwhile.

[Sheena Forsberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s many reasons why Rickert has become one of my favorite authors and this is one of them; the premise of interlinking stories in the sleep/wake (and in between) cycle is an brilliant concept; being able to pull it off so elegantly is a sign of a great writer.

An overview below (my favorites have been marked with an “*”)

-Map of Dreams:
A daughter is shot and killed, her mother learns there’s a way to travel through time and is desperate to save her. Ultimately a story about hurt and acceptance that will break your heart a little but not lose hope.
Furthermore, Annie & the people she encounters in her quest to save her daughter will build the foundation/interlinking between the following stories in this collection; all tied to the act of sleep- and early waking, from dreams, to nightmares &…

-Leda (dreams):
A struggling marriage, the rape of a wife the husband is finding hard to believe and the egg that resulted from it. Reads like part criticism of a culture that often blames or disbelieves the victim as well as a tale of redemption and finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

-Cold Fires (Dreams):
A man & woman spend a cold winter locked in telling stories to one another; the woman about being descended from pirates and a mysterious strawberry-witch who suddenly and brutally leaves the man she enthralled and married & he about a man who fell so hard in love that he near lost himself in the endeavor of capturing his love’s likeness on a canvas. The stories do well in accompanying and contrasting each other in how they deal with relationships; in one, the woman leaves and in the other, the man desperately tries to keep his loved one (or, her memory).

-Angel Face (Dreams):
Young love finds its way into a farmy congregation where miracles are rumored to happen.

-Night Blossoms (Dreams):
Marry a witch & you might find yourself haunted by your 7 daughters’ dreams; or maybe just the reality of being the lone man in a houseful of women.

-Feeding the Beast (Nightmares):
Trying to defend yourself or playing dead will not keep you safe from this monster; we’ve definitely entered the realm of nightmares.

-Bread and Bombs (Nightmares):*
A dystopian coming of age-tale: Refugee children move into a seemingly prejudiced neighborhood. As told through the POV of a child the story alludes to a war that changed everything, how they went from a prosperous society where you could get on an airplane to go from A to B and order things from catalogues.. until the snow came, and with it an infection. Gradually they become more aware of the things the parents don’t say out loud and their part in it. Reads disconcertingly zeitgeist considering recent events.

-Art is not a Violent Subject (Nightmares):
A bit of Rickert’s own take on a creation myth meets mental illness in this tale about an artist who will sacrifice what it takes for his life’s work, a statue. What is creation if not quite messy, (borderline) violent and an act of love?

-Anyway (Nightmares):
A woman is visiting her mother who’s suffering from dementia when she’s asked: “What if you could save the world? What if all you had to do was sacrifice your son’s life?”. Dementia expressing itself or something deeper and darker?

-A Very Little Madness Goes a Long Way (Nightmares):
A bereaved mother believing the crows involved in the death of her daughter finds herself haunted and stalked by them. A bit of shape shifting and a whole lot of loss.

-What I Saw When I Looked (Waking):
Sometimes we’re the monster.

-The Girl Who Ate Butterflies (Waking):
A coming of age tale featuring a young witch and the guy who falls in love with her. Love and obsession.

-Many Voices (Waking):*
A healthcare worker found guilty of murdering a patient, mental illness or psychic abilities, auras, angels & abuse; maybe there’s yet something beautiful to come out of all the ugliness and suffering?

-More Beautiful Than You (Waking):*
A young man finds himself haunted by the gay kid he and his friends beat up years ago. He might have more in common with the victim than he could have imagined. There’s a strong undercurrent of self loathing in this one.

-Peace on Suburbia (Waking):
As if it wasn’t enough that her father is dying and getting hospice care, war is breaking out & her father also starts talking about seeing angels and her son supposedly set to be a hero according to these visitations.
Then there’s the mysterious & disconcerting men trying to leave suspicious gifts for them.. the husband she can’t reach and a snowfall that might, or might not be the same as the fateful one hinted at in earlier stories in this collection.

-Flight (Rising):
An mythological interlude with our Annie where a bird visits and performs a special dance.

-Moorina of the Seals (Rising):
We continue the mythological path: An isolated island community where a woman sings with seals find themselves invaded and viciously brutalized by newly arrived hunters; yet there’s a life of sorts even after this. Even after such brutal events there is hope if you’re willing to go along with a very changed life.

-The Harrowing (Rising):
A young thief finds himself at the crossroads of life; one path will lead him home and the other down a miserable existence. He has vague ambitions of becoming an author but the trajectory he’s set himself on is a bad one. A phone call from his mom,about a farm they’re about to loose sees him on his way home. As he waits he’ll encounter an ominous man who’ll push him in one of these directions with his personal tale of good and evil. CW: Child SA, predatory priest.

-The Super Hero Saves the World (Rising):
The story about the girl who was swallowed whole by a snake, who somehow survived while her mother did not. A story about a family trying to move on in different ways.

-The Chambered Fruit (Rising):
A decision made in haste and in the genuine wish to please their lonely daughter has fatal consequences in this story where parental fears, technology and hope intersect. A mother must learn to carry on, and is befriended by a little witch/psychic around the same age as her late daughter. Said girl promises that she’ll see her daughter again come spring. Life will never be the same when you lose your child; but maybe it can be a different kind of worth living?

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep pain and loss with tiny glitter of hope spread throughout. I love how this author examines loss and pain in the psyche. She really touches emotions with raw truth and care. I cried from the suffering of these characters in each story. So many tales of honest agony from real life and common anguishes we have all suffered or may one day. Great book.

[Eleanor Toland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Map of Dreams is a collection comprising a novella (also titled Map of Dreams and a series of interlinked short stories of a fantasy nature. The book has no less than two introductions (one of which is written by the novella's main character) and an afterword. I didn't think the ephemera was justified. I generally don't care for introductions unless they reveal some vital historical/social context. Christopher Barzak's essentially boiled down to "Mary Rickert is a really nice person", which while sweet, didn't really add to the reading experience. The second introduction, the one written by the author, was even more frivolous. However, these are minor issues, and had the stories been better I probably wouldn't have mentioned them. But the stories themselves have some decidedly non-minor problems.

The collection starts with Map of Dreams a novella about grief, time-travel and altered consciousness. It's set partly in America and partly in an Australian island. Rickert uses Indigenous Australians and their concept of time as a major plot point, and her portrayal of Aboriginal culture suffers from cultural appropriation and the tendency to confer magical powers on ethnic minorities. It's a huge stretch of the imagination to go from 'certain cultures have a very different way of looking at time to what traditional Western thought is used to' to 'therefore they can help me travel through time to save my loved one', and it's all a bit cringey. Not to mention none of the major characters are Indigenous Australian... Racism aside, the novella concludes with a series of annoyingly predictable twists. When Mary mentions that a strange woman had been seen on the day of the shooting, I face-palmed at how obvious it was where it was all going. And the author doesn't pay anywhere near enough attention to the much more interesting paradox the ending creates.

Despite the ending, Map of Dreams the novella contains pacy writing, vivid characters and a powerful sense of moral dilemma. The absence of any of these factors from the short stories that follow is what caused me to give up on the volume halfway in. Most of the stories are floaty, insubstantial, dream-like, more prose poems than fiction. Inner monologues and stream-of-consciousness abound. There are a few exceptions, for instance "Leda", a retelling of the conception of Helen of Troy in modern times. So it's a story about a woman being raped by a swan. Actually, it's a realistic look at trauma combined with magic realist/absurdist elements. However, it's mostly written from the point of view of Leda's husband, and the emphasis on the husband's 'manpain' kills it. I lost patience with the book when I got to "Night Blossoms" a character sketch about a father who resents his daughters. I feel a bit guilty for giving up, but life's too short to force yourself to read 150+ pages out of a sense of obligation.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

(9/10) This one is hard to get your hands on, but definitely worth it. M. Rickert is a master on the micro level, stringing together perfect sentences that reverberate with mythological clarity. Her stories are often folkloric, and frequently question the divide between fantasy and insanity.

Rickert's attempts at longer narratives don't quite work as well -- the titular novella is full of excellent moments but fetishizes Aboriginal culture to an unfortunate extent, and the other long story towards the end of the collection seems more like a supernatural-tinged CBS procedural. But most of this book is wonderful, and even the non-wonderful parts sparkle with indisputable grace.

M. Rickert should really be one of fantasy's most heralded authors, but specializing in fantasy short stories is kind of like shooting yourself in both feet when it comes to authorly fame and fortune. But to tell the truth, I almost prefer her as a semi-secret treasure, enjoyed only by the initiated.

[Lesley]

Haven't actually finished, but putting on one side to see if I return to it. It's been lingering on rather.