Paula Guran Reviews The Proper Thing and Other Stories by Seanan McGuire
The Proper Thing and Other Stories, Seanan McGuire (Subterranean ISBN 978-1-64524-192-8, 508pp. $50.00, hc) April 2024. Cover by Carla McNeil.
Probably best-known for her Wayward Children series, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winner Seanan McGuire is also a prolific writer of short fiction. McGuire’s second collection (she has two others writing as Mira Grant) is both massive and enchanting. The two dozen stories tend toward darkness but, more often than not, offer a spark of hope as well. The author’s notes preceding each entry provide context and clarity, especially regarding her childhood as a bright but poverty-stricken kid in Northern California to whom libraries – as in the moving “Now Rest, My Dear” and “Good Night, Sleep Tight” – are important locales, scholarships (“Foundational Education”) a necessity, and even the United States Postal Service (“Belief”) is a lifesaver. In some ways, McGuire is a twenty-first century Ray Bradbury – if Bradbury were a queer woman attuned to the dangers of childhood (even fantasy portals cannot provide escape as in the horrifying “In the Land of Rainbows and Ash” and Halloween, naturally, can be perilous: “Heart of Straw”) as well as pandemics (“Ratting”; “So Sharp, So Bright, So Final”; “Vegetables and Vaccines”), dystopian futures dominated by mega-corporations (“File and Forget”), and apocalypse in general (“Coafield’s Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events”). McGuire is nothing if not thematically versatile. She touches on superheroes (“Pedestal” and “Love in the Last Days of a Doomed World”), kaiju (in the poignant “What Everyone Knows”), artificial intelligence (“Mother, Mother, Will You Play With Me?”), discrimination against the mentally ill (“Come Marching In”), racism (“On the Side”), and the need for music (“The Levee Was Dry”). McGuire even offers a Victorian adventure narrative with “Under the Sea of Stars”. There are several reimagined fairy tales. Snow maiden Snegurochka from Russian folklore turns up as babysitter for a privileged and dysfunctional family in the (literally) chilling “Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow”. The story of Snow White is the take-off point for “Rise Up, Rise Up You Children of the Moon”; the clever “Sweet as Sugar Candy” references Hansel and Gretel. One of the strongest entries, novelette “Phantoms of the Midway”, set in a traveling carnival, is loosely based on the Greek myth of Persephone. The magic of cheese, metaphysical retail outlets, and animals transforming into humans are found in the title novella, the delicious “The Proper Thing”. Like several other stories, this final entry in the collection was previously published only on McGuire’s Patreon. So, despite, the lack of original fare (all were published from 2017 through 2020) readers are likely to find fresh tidbits to taste. Highly digestible, often memorable, every delectable – if dark – story in The Proper Thing and Other Stories is worthy of devouring.
Paula Guran has edited more than 40 science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than 50 novels and collections featuring the same. She’s reviewed and written articles for dozens of publications. She lives in Akron OH, near enough to her grandchildren to frequently be indulgent.
This review and more like it in the May 2024 issue of Locus.
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