THE SHORTEST DAY, a quick hit of Irish magical realism from Colm Tóibín

THE SHORTEST DAY
COLM TÓIBÍN
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In Ireland, a man of reason is drawn to a true mystery older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge in this enthralling story about ethereal secrets by New York Times bestselling author Colm Tóibín.

During the winter solstice, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, the ancient burial chamber at Newgrange is empowered. Its mystifying source is a haunting tale told by locals.

Professor O’Kelly believes an archaeologist’s job is to make known only what can be proved. He is undeterred by ghost stories, idle speculation, and caution. Much to the chagrin of the living souls in County Meath. As well as those entombed in the sacred darkness of Newgrange itself. They’re determined to protect the secret of the light, guarded for more than five thousand years. And they know O’Kelly is coming for it.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS STORY FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I can't imagine too many people I know need to be told what and where Newgrange is.

this image via newgrange.com

It is a stunning and majestic sight, though the location you see has been reconstructed...a fact whose advisability is, to put it mildly, debated in the archaeological community. No matter; here it is, here it stays, and good goddesses isn't it *spectacular*?!

The story Author Tóibín tells us is a simple one: a man of resolutely practical materialistic worldview is contemplating his imminent visit to Newgrange. It is almost Christmas, and in his deeply rooted preciseness of action, he has arranged to be gone *just* until Christmas Eve morning so as to, as always, spend his holidays with wife and children.

The Yule Solstice, a time of great power in Neolithic societies (if the number of archaeological sites with demonstrable connections to the Sun's position on that date is any evidence), has come to his attention as an important time at Newgrange as well. He feels duty bound, as the first archaeologist to possess this information, to investigate despite his unshakeable materialism:

The job of an archaeologist was to make known only what can be proved. The rest was idle speculation.

So two things are immediately apparent from this. First is that this is a story set in the past, as the site in its present state dates from after 1982 (see link beside the photo). Second is that there are those who know more than they have told about the site in the many years of Ireland's fussing about with it. That's very interesting....

As the tale is a short one, I don't want to give too much away. I am sure that the author's fans will, or already have, preordered the story. I know they won't want to know everything...but the story's best qualities are those that Author Tóibín uses in all his works, that remarkable ability to bring you with him as he astrally projects himeself (or whatever sorcery he actually does) into the worlds and eyes and minds of people perfectly real.

His gift is deployed on several strands. It makes me feel completely and happily immersed in the world he's created for them to enact this delightful confluence of streams of thought. It is a damn near perfect read for this wonderfully numinous time of year. Why, even Professor O'Kelly experiences an unaccustomed immanence while he is at Newgrange on the morning of the Solstice:

The professor was almost tempted to note that these people, if studied in the light of these designs on stone, knew something about what was palpable and also what was tangible: they knew about spirit, and they knew about line.
–and–
They must have loved the sun, or trusted it. They lured it down this corridor as though they were pulling it into the chamber by rope.

Even if it's just a hair too ungenerous with the Professor's character-building (that missing quarter-star explained), it is a delight and a worthy enhancement of your avoidance of the stressful events awaiting us on the third.

Peter Pan's tale told, at last, with truth and guts: THE CHILD THIEF by Brom

THE CHILD THIEF
BROM
EOS
$15.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is not Neverland.

Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?

There is always more to lose.

Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries—one where he must learn to fight or die among the "Devils," Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children.

There, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the "Flesh-eaters" and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.

My Review: Retelling the Peter Pan legend with heaping helpings of Celtic myth, genuine teenage angst, and surprisingly scary-to-me horror. I think the huge majority of people remember the basics of the story, Peter enticing kids off to Neverland to fight Captain Hook and never, ever grow up, right? Well, same here, only Neverland is one emm-effin' SCARY-ASS place, the kids are society's fallen-through-the-cracks abusees, runaways, and misfits, and the reason they never grow up is they mostly die in their first few minutes there.

Peter himself, the Happy Sociopath, well, his backstory is one of the revelations of the book...he's a changeling child, an apparently immortal and certainly immoral survivor of pagan Ireland. The author delved deeply into the Celtic myths, and has gifted us with a reconstruction of the actual, underlying story, trimmed of repetition, variations among the versions smoothed out, selectively applied, and a new, vibrant, and compelling tale made from the old, raggedy myths.

It's superb. It's 480pp long. It's *beautifully* illustrated. It's enormous, at 7 x 10. I adore it, book and content both. No one may borrow my copy, a gift from a ridiculously generous friend, because if a corner gets bent or a page gets food-baptized, There Will Be Blood.

I wasn't much of a child. I thought about stuff kids just don't, like why it was okay for girls to have different names after they got married, but not boys; why the Bible said it was okay to fuck your daughters like Lot did, but not other boys; and that all those yahoos clappin' for Tinkerbelle, clearly the *lamest* fairy ever in the history of fairies, should oughta just go straight to the milk and cookies and leave me alone with the gin. Disney shit made me gaseous, as I said to my mother, who paused, laughed, and never inflicted anything Disney on me again. So it was with great and well-founded trepidation that, after reading a gushsome review of this book, I decided to move out of my comfort zone and give it a whirl.

Oh my heck.

I had to put it down every so often because the pain in my gouty wrists and fingers got so nasty, and no book-holding device I possess was up to this tome's heft (lost that Levenger reading desk, dammit!). And a darn good thing, too, since I was rather often scared poopless by some action or another. It's a real story, this Child Thief...a real, balls-out, the-world's-a-meanass-place Matterhorn of a journey, made in excellent company and told in truthsome, sparklingly grim prose.

I want Tim Burton to make this mini-series, starring Johnny Depp as Peter, don't care how old he is he's the *perfect* beautiful sociopath with no fear for scare...animate it, do the thing they did with The Polar Express whatever that's called, and BTW that's one of the all-time great Xmas stories isn't it?, but let's get this fucker made (to quote Bela Lugosi from Ed Wood, another Depp masterpiece) and not shilly-shally!

In case you can't tell, this book is Recommended with Joy.