I couldn't breathe below the sea, but it does breathe underneath me

[sovay]

So I have just been shown a review of Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror, edited by Lynne Jamneck and forthcoming from Dark Regions Press. According to Alison Lang in Rue Morgue Magazine:

The crown jewel in this collection is "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts" by Sonya Taaffe, which opens with a female descendant of the legendary Waite family attempting to drown herself in a decrepit bathroom. Told from the perspective of Anson, a proudly queer "child of Innsmouth," the story lovingly describes the fishy attributes of his kin with language more poetic than Lovecraft himself could have imagined. "Over the warm rosewood of her skin, the faint olive tinting of her nascent scales shone like the patina on bronze," begins one passage. Taaffe's story turns the tables on the Lovecraftian skill of describing the ineffable, the awful and the unimaginable and makes it deliriously lovely and wholly human. Through her tale, she affirms that anything can happen when new voices are permitted to run wild in Lovecraft's realm of fearful symmetries. And that's why Dreams from the Witch House deserves to be read—widely.

I will talk more about this story when it is more widely available, but everyone who knows me can be shocked, shocked that I read "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and sympathized instantly with the sea-people, the shape-changers, the inheritors of the sea-city that glimmers at the bottom of the narrator's dreams: "Great watery spaces opened out before me, and I seemed to wander through titanic sunken porticos and labyrinths of weedy cyclopean walls with grotesque fishes as my companions." Of course I write of their metamorphosis with envy and admiration: I have singularly failed to grow scales for most of my life, though I taught myself to swim in the Atlantic with my eyes open to the salt. It didn't occur to me until just now, but there are ways in which this story is probably in dialogue with Splash (1984) as well as Lovecraft. I have wanted sea-change as long as I can remember. I have been disappointed, and hence "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts."

(Anson is queer, and Jewish, in part because it would have distressed Lovecraft, but also because I am. My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit.)

The e-book is currently available as part of the Cthulhu Mythos E-Book Bundle; the print version hits shelves and doorsteps later this month. Contributors include Joyce Carol Oates, Tamsyn Muir, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Gemma Files, Amanda Downum, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Storm Constantine, and R.A. Kaelin among others, with illustrations by Daniele Serra that remind me favorably of Stephen Gemmell's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It is worth your time.

I should go to bed now, but I'm pretty happy.

Comments

[surpassingly]

Oh, your writing, your writing! <333333333

[tam_nonlinear]

(Anson is queer, and Jewish, in part because it would have distressed Lovecraft, but also because I am. My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit.)

This made me smile. Thank you.

[lilysea]

My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit.

Heh! ^_^

[rosefox]

My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit.

May I metaquotes this?

[yhlee]

\o/

I remember you reading from that story and how beautiful it was. :D

I have no sea icons...have a tentacle heart instead???

ETA: oh hey, hadn't realized there was an ebook version...preordered!

[vass]

Here via Metaquotes, and delighted at that line, and at this description of your story. :D

[azurelunatic]

Ooo, this sounds delightful! (Also here via metaquotes.)

[umadoshi]

Your story sounds GLORIOUS. *^^*

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

\o/

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Have I ever mentioned that I'd like a movie in which we get to see SoI's narrator busting his cousin out of the asylum and the two of them lighting out for Ry'leh as "Wave of Mutilation" swells on the soundtrack?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

"Over the warm rosewood of her skin, the faint olive tinting of her nascent scales shone like the patina on bronze"

Yep, that's the sovay I know and love.

My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit. --rock on!!

[audioboy.livejournal.com]

I should live long enough to have something I've created called a "crowning jewel". Congratulations!

[drwex]

in part because it would have distressed Lovecraft

That's interesting. I've had a hard time engaging with Lovecraft in any serious way since I became old enough to learn of his personal anti-semitism. I likewise cannot read or listen to Orson Scott Card any longer.

It's good to see other peoples' responses and perspectives. Mazal tov on the glowing review, too.

[gwynnega]

Congratulations on the wonderful review!

My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit.

Yes!

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I'm delighted to see that you've done this!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

My fish people will be intersectional or they will be bullshit.

I love you.