Through the Drowsy Dark: Short Fiction & Poetry

by Rachel Swirsky

Through the Drowsy Dark collects ten stories and nine poems by Nebula- and Hugo-nominee Rachel Swirsky, “a terrific writer who’s been making a name for herself with a string of intelligent, perceptive stories,” as critic Jonathan Strahan characterizes her. In Through the Drowsy Dark, Swirsky's characters struggle with too much and too little emotional control, with heartbreak, with grief that has gone deep underground; they search for nothingness, for difference, for oneness. One commits a terrible crime because she believes it's the moral thing to do, while another digs up a dead dog because the very thought of kissing it on the lips makes her clitoris throb. Swirsky's explorations of the heart and mind are fearless—and dangerous fictions indeed.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

158 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2010

About the author

Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and is a graduate of Clarion West. Her work has been short-listed for the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Sturgeon Award, and placed second in 2010's Million Writers Award. In addition to numerous publications in magazines and anthologies, Swirsky is the author of three short stories published as e-books, "Eros, Philia, Agape," "The Memory of Wind," and "The Monster's Million Faces." Her fiction and poetry has been collected in THROUGH THE DROWSY DARK (Aqueduct Press, 2010). A second collection, HOW THE WORLD BECAME QUIET: MYTHS OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, is forthcoming from Subterranean Press.

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swirsky manages to include in this collection, to varrying degress, each of my favorite genres. What I remember most include the title story, with two characters who I deeply sympathized with and liked as though they were real people. Heartstrung, a limited view of a family in a dystopic and detached world. Detours on the Way to Nothing and No Longer You felt similar, both urban-fantasy stories. The Debt of the Innocent is the shiny gem in this collection, a terrifying story that is too easy to image happening. This one made my eyes water up but I'm not putting it on my i-cried shelf as I was not bawling. Everything in this book is sad. I felt heavier after reading. Swirsky is an amazing and gifted writer.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to get this after reading Swirsky's short stories on Tor.com. I don't think anything in this collection makes it to the level of A Memory of Wind or Eros, Philia, Agape, for me, except perhaps the final story, 'No Longer You'. But they are all good, interesting, little views on other worlds (even if that other world is only someone else's headspace). One or two of them are very powerful.

There's poetry as well as prose, here, which I'm not as interested in. It was competent enough, some nice imagery, but it didn't get my attention.

[Eva Folsom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several of the stories in this collection are profoundly emotionally evocative. I read the collection on a crowded airplane, and at several points, it was all I could do not to break into tears in front of my fellow passengers. I found the unflinching, painful honesty of these stories moving, and am impressed with Swirsky's courage in confronting the truths they capture. As Swirsky has a character say in “The Debt of the Innocent,” “To stare into the heart of (these) arguments was to stare into the sun.”

In these emotionally-fraught tales, Swirsky renders abstract feminist ideas of identity, bodily sovereignty, and social justice into gripping and persuasive narratives by grounding them strongly in the human and the emotional. Through strong character development and skillful evocation of physical sensation, the ideas Swirsky grapples with are rendered real.

The intensely emotional stories are interspersed with more thought-driven pieces, which provide leavening and a balanced reading experience, along with the fun and enjoyment of engagement with the ideas themselves. The final story, “No Longer You,” co-written with Katherine Sparrow, is perhaps the best of these. As a stand-alone story, it might be too emotionally distanced for my taste, but coming as it does at the end of the collection, it provides a welcome transition out of the emotional intensity of the previous pieces, back into the world outside the book.

[Hasina Aby]

Thus He caused drowsiness to overcome you as an assurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky on you to cleanse you with and to remove Satan’s blight from you, and to bind up your hearts and brace your feet with it. So your Lord inspired the angels: “I am with you so brace those who believe. I shall cast panic into the hearts of those who disbelieve; so strike at the nape of their necks and beat every [last] fingertip of theirs!” 8| 11,12

[Mely · Rating 2 out of 5]

Early work, mostly finger exercises. Carefully structured, maybe too carefully, you can see the author shaping things, and sometimes metaphor slips into allegory. "No Longer You" with Katherine Sparrow is a real story, though not as good as some of Swirsky's more recent work.

[tish]

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