Getting right to the point, it should be noted that Connie Willis (“Passage,” “D.A.”) is Colorado’s most consistently creative and excellent writer. While the level of quality of other writers may occasionally drop and falter, Connie Willis’s prose never fails to rise to a certain level of competence; and most of it remains art of the highest order.
Her peers in the genre of science fiction and fantasy have heaped accolades on her: Seven of her novels and novellas have won awards, ranging from the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novel “Doomsday Book” to the Hugo-winning “Inside Job” in 2005 (a spot-on bit of sarcasm and high-verbal comedy regarding the penchant of Americans to believe in almost anything).
No surprise, then, to find that the first anthology collecting the greater part of her large body of short fiction finds nearly half the selections to be award-wining stories, while an equal number were nominated for one award or another.
“The Winds of Marble Arch” is a cornucopia of witty tales, wry observations and a weighty testament to an undeniable talent and facility – with words, characters, dialogue and plot – that makes itself known on every page of this anthology.
Like the best American humorists, Willis knows good fiction mixes both darkness and light, and the Hugo Award-winning title story does just that, telling a tale of mortality and marital strife while using one of the author’s favorite settings – London, and its underground rail system – as a bit of symbolism.
Like most writers, Willis fondly revisits themes and symbols and tropes: From the London blitz to 1940s-style screwball comedy films to marriage and faith and holiday traditions.
She also abhors political correctness and intellectual sheepishness, and manages to good-naturedly poke fun at both in her Christmas tale, “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know,” wherein a caller to an America radio talk show blames a worldwide snowstorm on terrorists. And when one scientist asks another if a genuine “discontinuity” is at hand, the other answers by saying, “Nothing qualifies as a full-fledged crisis until the cable news channels give it a logo of its own, preferably with a colon.”
For a more reverent, but no less thoughtful, tale of the season, readers can turn to “Inn.” Willis takes other opportunities to get serious, such as with “Jack,” a bizarre and horrific mystery, and the hair-raising “All My Darling Daughters.”
“Daughters” is one of the many award-winning stories in this comprehensive collection, along with the title story, and “Fire Watch” (a tale of time traveling and the London blitz), “A Letter From the Clearys” and “The Last of Winnebagos” (two different takes on grim futures), “Even the Queen” (which turns a “curse” into comedy), “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” (an unusual “re-imagining” of an H.G. Wells tale) and “At the Rialto” (which mixes comedy and quantum physics).
The stories in this collection range from the mainstream (“Chance,” which takes on marital strife) to horror (“Jack”) to historical science fiction.
Along with her writerly skills, the breadth of knowledge – scientific as well as religious and literary – packed into each of Willis’s stories never fails to awe. Her stories are both pompous and populist, touching upon everything from Shakespeare, Christmas, 1940s movies, love and death, marriage and divorce, and popular music and television, to the latest developments in physics and how to properly cook a goose.
“The Winds of Marble Arch” finds Willis’ love for her craft and the vagaries of the human heart on ample display. At 600 pages, it’s a book, but it barely contains the scope of such a talented and important American writer.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
FICTION
The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories
By Connie Willis
$40
