This week's Short Story Club story is "The Heart of a Mouse" by K. J. Bishop, from Subterranean Press (which means I'm faintly surprised not to have to pay $15 for it). I recognize Bishop's name, and think I have a copy of The Etched City upstairs that I've never gotten around to reading, but don't think I've read anything of hers before.
This is an after-the-magic Apocalypse story. Some time before the start of the story, there was a dramatic and magic change in the world, with basically all high technology disappearing, and people being turned into anthropomorphic animals. Most people became either cats or dogs or "volk," but the nameless narrator was turned into a "mouse the size of a bear," and his son into a gopher-like rodent of some sort. Since then, they have been wandering the post-apocalyptic landscape, scraping by doing occasional work at the pig farms that are the only real civilization still in existence.
So, you can tell from that description that this was a charming little feel-good piece. Yeesh.
I really don't have much to say about this, because while the particulars of the magic apocalypse are certainly inventive, they don't have many redeeming qualities. There's no obvious logic to it-- cars and houses and televisions have magically vanished, but there are still AK-47s, methane-powered cars, and various drugs-- and there doesn't seem to be much of a point. It's all incredibly artificial, in a way that was kind of distancing.
Compounding this is the fact that the narrator is a thoroughly unpleasant person/mouse/whatever. Yeah, fine, you don't survive the magic apocalypse without breaking a few eggs, but I have approximately zero interest in sharing headspace with anybody who hits a child hard enough to leave bruises. Maybe I'm just hyper-sensitive because SteelyKid is walking around with a black eye after a tumble down the stairs this week, but this does not endear me to the character. Put that together with the artificiality of the world, and the moment of quasi-redemption toward the end of the story just isn't enough of a payoff to make me glad I read it.
On a technical level, the writing is good, I suppose, and the world is very original. The logic of the apocalypse in question isn't entirely obvious, though (there's some suggestion that the transformation may have been linked to personal character, but it's not clear), and it isn't spelled out in enough detail for you to get a handle on it by the time the story ends. You just have to kind of roll with it in hopes that it will lead somewhere interesting, and for me at least, the destination wasn't worth it.
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