A Suite in Four Windows

by David Rix

Four Windows. Four minds riding through derangement and beyond as clouds gather over the city of London. Four music students working hard to analyze a unique and extraordinary musical composition. From 'The Night of the Electric Insects' through the 'Songs of Bones and Flutes' to 'God Music' and the return trip, George Crumb's 'Black Angels'--noble; wicked; madness; ethereality. Listen and the sky turns yellow and lightning flickers like burning alcohol in the distance.

46 pages, ebook

First published February 1, 2016

About the author

David Rix is an author, composer, editor, artist and publisher active in the area of Slipstream, Speculative Fiction and Horror – not to mention hints of absurdism, miserablism, naturism and pissed-offism. Contemporary classical music, the seashore, urban underground, railways, rocks and canals. His published books are What the Giants were Saying, the chapbook Brown is the New Black and the novella/story collection Feather, which was shortlisted for the Edge Hill prize. In addition, his works have appeared in various places, the most notable being many of the Strange Tales series of anthologies from Tartarus Press, Monster Book For Girls from Exaggerated Press, Creeping Crawlers from Shadow Publishing, and Marked to Die from Snuggly Books. He also runs and creates the art for Eibonvale Press, which focuses on innovative and unusual new slipstream writing. As an editor, his first anthology Rustblind and Silverbright, a collection of Slipstream stories connected to the railways, was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award in the Best Anthology category. He is currently at work on his first novel A Blast of Hunters and several novellas.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Suite in Four Windows" by David Rix is the first in a series of chapbooks published by Snuggly Books. The story revolves around a group of four college friends in England. The all attend the same music class and are assigned to listen to and analyze an experimental, avant guard piece of music. As they do so it appears to impact their lives in a dreamy druggie kind of way.

The book is excellently written and does a beautiful job of evolving reality into unreality effortlessly.

Recommended.

This is Snuggly Slim no. 1.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

first, thanks to Anna at Snuggly and apologies for taking so long to post about it.

George Crumb is an avant-garde composer whose work Black Angels serves as the backdrop for this story. Rix's tale revolves around four college friends - Terry, Carrie, Mix, and Kate - who are assigned the task of doing an analysis of Crumb's work for a music course they're in together. The four also share a London house and on "the hottest night of the year so far," one that promises storms, they decide that they 'should probably get on with it." That they do, with some pretty bizarre results.

Since this little chapbook is only 44 pages long, I'm not going into plot at all other than what I've just said, because it is a story that needs to be felt and experienced individually. But I was looking for some background on "Black Angels," and came across this at the webpage for the Kronos Quartet, who did a recording of Crumb's work:

"About Black Angels, Crumb writes: 'Black Angels was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. The work portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption)."

The first time through this little gem I thought "okay, music is supposed to speak to the soul, and that seems to be what's happening here." The second time through, I noticed an added dimension -- that of movement -- from a hellish underground tavern that one of the characters often refers to as "Satan's Vagina," where the story begins, back to the "haunted house" where they live. There, in small chapters that refer to five different "images" from Crumb's work, the story begins in the basement and moves upward, culminating in the attic. I happen to be a closet Jungian, but make of it what you will -- however anyone chooses to read it, it is positively eerie, as is Crumb's music, which I listened to while reading this story.

It is a shame that David Rix is not more well known. His work gives me a perfect jolt every time I read it, and it is so effective in throwing me off-kilter that it takes a while to get my brain back to my normal. Here he manages to do so in only 44 short pages, which is a great feat in itself. Some modern novelists can write hundreds of pages and still not do he what is capable of doing in short form -- he outdoes himself here. I will read everything this man's ever written because it's that good. Once again, I've stumbled onto something right up my alley -- a work that stretches the brain and forces a reader out of his or her reading comfort zone into something out of the box and wholly mysterious. There is nothing more I can ask for -- and he certainly delivers.

[Axolotl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the first in the "Snuggly Slims"© chapbook series by Snuggly Books.

Collegiate angst, ambitious 70s Cagean experimental music, and a sentient geode--Rix packs a lot into this long short or short novella.
Aickmanesque in its refusal to spell things out or provide a wholly satisfying schema for the characters and for its final image which to me, mawkish as it may be, sums up in paltry prose the-- difficult to pinpoint-- power of what music is capable of with regards to human souls--for actual ill/self-harm or to uplift and actualise. In either case it is alchemical and Rix pulls quite a fine trick--keep reading if you're in DTM (doubting thompson mode) early on--your boy Rix does it with aplomb.

"Four works of art, four works total, by which we can understand this historical period. And these four works/they're all about/the same one thing/seen from slightly different perspectives..." --Owls

"angel or devil, I don't care--for in front of that door there is you"
--Scott Walker

[Seregil of Rhiminee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published at Risingshadow.

David Rix's A Suite in Four Windows is the first of the forthcoming Snuggly Slim editions. It's an excellent and captivatingly written novella that gives readers a taste of the author's imagination and writing skills.

Before I'll write more about this novella and its contents, I'll say a few words about David Rix. If there readers out there who are not familiar with David Rix's books and stories, I can mention that he writes intriguing literary speculative fiction and slipstream fiction. His published works are What the Giants were Saying, the chapbook Brown is the New Black and the novella collection Feather. If you've never read anything by him and this novella whets your appetite towards him, I strongly urge you to take a look at his previous works, because they're all unique and rewarding reading experiences.

A Suite in Four Windows has been written in homage to 'Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Lands' by George Crumb. George Crumb is an American composer of avant-garde music. 'Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Lands' is a work for "electric string quartet". The composer is interested in numerology and numerically structured the piece around 13 and 7. The piece is notable for its unconventional instrumentation.

It is a bit difficult to classify this novella, but if I had to classify it, I'd say that it is a fusion of literary fiction, slipstream fiction and modern strange fiction, because it has elements of these genres.

This novella strongly appealed to me, because I enjoy reading literary stories that have strangeness and a touch of darkness in them. There was something surreal and wondrous about it that enchanted me when I read it.

A Suite in Four Windows has been divided into six parts:

- Prelude
- Part 1: Basement. Terry - Night of the Electric Insects
- Part 2: Ground Floor. Kate - Devil-Music, Danse Macabre
- Part 3: 1st Floor. Mix - God-Music
- Part 4: Attic. Carrie - Night of the Electric Insects (Reprise)
- Postlude

This novella tells about four music students - Terry, Kate, Mix and Carrie - who listen to and analyse George Crumb's composition 'Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Lands'. The happenings take place during a heat wave when a storm is approaching London. The students live in different parts of a house and occasionally gaze out of the windows. The author explores what goes on with each of them as they try to make sense of the music and try to deal with the heat wave.

Terry struggles with his feelings towards Kate and talks to a geode called Teeth. Kate tries to concentrate on listening to the music, but his boyfriend, Tom, bothers him with his remarks and she has a row with him. Mix talks with Terry and tells him that he is aware of Terry's feelings towards Kate. Carrie smokes weed and has a feeling that something is not as it should be.

David Rix writes fascinatingly about how Terry, Kate, Mix and Carrie feel about the music and how it affects them. Each of the students seems to be affected by the music and its strangeness in different ways. When they listen to the music, clouds gather above London and a storm approaches. The clouds and the sky change colour in a foreboding way as the students analyse the music and talk to each other.

The music intensifies the atmosphere in the house in an excellent way. The author writes captivatingly about how haunting the sounds are and how the sound of the electric insects creates a feeling of something unnatural and demonic. There's a fine balance between the music and the atmosphere.

The ending of this novella is satisfyingly strange and memorable. I enjoyed the final moments and sentences of the story.

Perhaps it's my own fascination with H.P. Lovecraft and his weird stories, but there's a section in one of the sentences in Part 2 that seems to have a small reference to Lovecraft's fiction, because the famous phrase "and with strange aeons even death may die" has been transformed into an interesting format.

I think it's good to mention that this novella is not to be read in haste. It is best experienced in a relaxed state of mind without hurry, because it has depth and style. When the story grabs hold of you, it'll keep you wondering about what will happen to the students as they listen to the weird music.

David Rix's A Suite in Four Windows is a delicious snack between larger meals. It can be recommended to readers who want to read something different. Don't hesitate to read it, because it's a good and memorable story. It'll linger on your mind and you'll think about its contents long after you've finished reading it.

Highly recommended!

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

And the ‘stoned’ (a geodesic or stoned henge?) level grows as high as the level of four floors and four Windows in this theatrical play-acting with music, leading to the final curtain (lace), as at the end of Tosca, operatic as well as theatrical, a spliffed Ayckbourn… The triangulation of all playing versions. The heat death of the storm breaks and the angels fly as the computers crash. That does not seem to be a spoiler because the spoilers and menders are within your own hands when you improvise with this artfully improviseable text as I have done.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short chapbook revolves around a group of music aficionados living in the same London four storey building whose lives are in some ways transformed by listening to "Black Angels" by George Crumb. To state much more would be to give too much away, but this is a powerful story mixing music with mayhem and deserving of 3.5 stars should that option have been an option. Of course, what I didn't realise whilst reading was that this piece of music actually exists. I will listen to it this evening, on level ground.

[Halber Kapitel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diese abgefahrene Mini-Novelle beschreibt den Weg vierer junger Menschen (Studis? Musiker/innen?) aus einer Kellerbar in schwindelnde Höhen. Landkarte ist dabei eine (real existierende) Komposition Neuer Musik. Kurz und überraschend, sinnlich, witzig, für Fans von Musik und Weird Fiction. Bin ich ja beides. Und nach kurzen reinhören in das Werk weiss ich, dass auch das sich lohnt.
Danke dem Whitetrain Verlag für das Übersetzen und Zugänglichmachen - eure Arbeit kostet viel Herzblut, obwohl sich mit solcher Nischenliteratur (hierzulande) kein Geld verdienen läßt.

[Phil Sloman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this novella from David Rix in one sitting. Loved loved loved the ending. And a little bit envious of his prose and characterisation. Recommended for something a little bit different to the mainstream.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my. Dense with ideas. Sensual and disturbing. Intriguing. More wallop per page than novels ten times its length.