Synopsis (GoodReads):
Somewhere away from the cities and towns, in the Valley of the Rocks, a society of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their history recounted by Nate, the storyteller. Requested most often by the group is the tale of the death of all women.
They are the last generation.
One night, Nate brings back new secrets from the woods; peculiar mushrooms are growing from the ground where the women’s bodies lie buried. These are the first signs of a strange and insidious presence unlike anything ever known before…
Edition:
Kindle E-book (library loan)
My Thoughts:
Holy Body Horror, Batman!
Imagine a world where a sickness has killed off all the women on the planet. Now imagine that where each of those women lie, buried or otherwise, a strange fungus begins to grow.
That fungus eventually takes on the form of the women from which it grew, and so too does it harness the essence of woman – it offers the men comfort, pleasure, and yes, even carnal pleasures – although none of this is given in the ways in which the human men have become accustomed to. This fungus comes to be known as The Beauty.
Nate, a storyteller, is the first among his colony of men to come across The Beauty. He is inititally unsure what to make of such a creature.
“The ground shudders and from the hole climbs a thing. A woman. A thing. It is yellow and spongy and limbed, with a smooth round ball for a head. It is without eyes, without ears. I press myself against the rough wall as it emerges and stands like a human, like a woman. It has breasts, globes of yellow, and rounded hips that speak to me of woman, of want, and that disgusts me beyond words.”
However, The Beauty are not without wiles of their own. Just as humans know how to manipulate people and situations to meet their needs, so do The Beauty. The men they claim begin to become dependent upon them, in spite of their revulsion.
This story hammers away relentlessly at society’s constructs of gender, and even humanity. You may find yourself doing as I did at multiple points throughout the story – asking yourself who, exactly, the monster is here? Is it really The Beauty? Is it the men? Humanity as a whole? Or just modern world society? Maybe it’s everyone and everything? For such a short story, it asks a hell of a lot of questions, and leaves you with a hell of a lot to think about.
There was also a bonus story in this e-book (although at nearly half the length of the book being devoted to it makes me wonder why it is a bonus and not just a second short story, but whatever, I digress). This second story is called Peace, Pipe which I found good, but to me it was less interesting than The Beauty – but really, that’s only because The Beauty was incredibly interesting. It is also a really solid story, though. If you take nothing else from this section, just take this: both stories in this book are fantastic. Rather than dealing with gender politics, Peace, Pipe focuses on the intricacies of language.
An alien ambassador-type is being held in quarantine after a failed mission on another planet. This individual converses with a pipe which may or may not actually exist. It’s a mind-fuck, much as The Beauty is, but ultimately I felt it just lacked the punch of it’s predecessor (while again, still being a totally solid story. I. Cannot. Emphasize. That. Enough. Aliya. Whiteley. Can. Write. Stuff. Good. – did that emphasize it enough, ya think?)
About the Author:
Aliya Whiteley writes across many different genres and lengths. Her first published full-length novels, Three Things About Me and Light Reading, were comic crime adventures. Her 2014 SF-horror novella The Beauty was shortlisted for the James Tiptree and Shirley Jackson awards. The following historical-SF novella, The Arrival of Missives, was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, and her noir novel The Loosening Skin was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award.
She has written over one hundred published short stories that have appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction.
She also writes a regular non-fiction column for Interzone.
(from the author’s website)
Rating:
This is fun, dangerous, fungal feminist horror at its absolute best. And I sincerely doubt that I will ever be able to say that again. This is worth reading on its bizarre premise alone (but stick around because it’s so much better than all that!).
The Beauty By Aliya Whiteley Titan Books Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopia ISBN: 1785655752 Published: January 16, 2018 (US) First Published: September 2014 by Unsung Stories (UK) Kindle, Paperback, Mass Market Paperback 224 pages Author's Website: https://aliyawhiteley.wordpress.com
