In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers

Rating:
Summary: She did it again!
Review: Caitlin Kiernan is THE master of horror short fiction. Her stories are always very affecting and touching, emotionally powerful and gothic in style. Her writing is always beautiful and shocking, poetic and dark. And even though her latest effort, In The Garden of Poisonous Flowers, isn't her best work, it is still a very enjoyable read.

The story (more a novella, really) introduces us to a slew of strange and very original characters that will all come together in one grand finaly. You have the albino teen, Dancy, who is kidnapped by a trio of vampires, led by The Bailif and also compromised of a boy and of Dead Girl. Then you have a group of strange women who's favorite pass time, it seems, is taxidermy. They steal dead bodies to porform autopsies on them, just for the fun of it. Add to this a beautiful teen who guards a strange antique bottle (that might or might not have mystical powers) and a talking dead bear, and you end up with a very strange, very interesting cast of characters. Kind of like the house of horrors gone wrong.

Revealing too much of the story would be giving it away. Instead, I will just say that In The Garden Of Poisonous Flowers veers in many different directions and never takes you down the most likely path. There are some very memorable moments, and some very touching ones, that will remain with your for a long time.

This is classic Kiernan. You can always count on her to deliver the goods and she does not disappoints this around. Full of imagination and wit, this is like a fairy tale gone gothic. Once you're done reading it, you will be tempted to start this magical little story all over again. Yes, it's that good!

Rating:
Summary: Decent-- but read Threshold first.
Review: Caitlin R. Kiernan, In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers (Subterranean, 2002)

This novella may be slight, but that's not the only reason it was a one-day read for me. Kiernan, perhaps the premier stylist in gothic literature (she eschews the term "horror," and in truth her work does often seem to head more into the dark fantasy realm) today, is quite simply a fine writer on top of it all.

In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers is a prequel to Kiernan's novel Threshold, introducing the albino Dancy Flammarion, who does such things as talk to angels and stuffed bears (who talk back, of course) and kill monsters. Fate, destiny, or whatever you'd like to call it has Dancy hooking up with a carload of very strange folks on their way to Savannah to take in a meeting with a rather odd group of Southern belles who give a whole new meaning to the term "ladies' auxiliary." A strange boy with a bottle fits into the tale, as well (but readers are advised that how it is, exactly, he fits will not be revealed under later in Dancy's career).

I get the feeling Kiernan is one of those writers you either love or hate. Her stories are, for the most part, style over substance; there's meat on the bones, but it tends to be somewhat lean and smell slightly of mange. Like the majority of modern horror writers who work in multiple-volume tales (thank you, Stephen King, for this annoying trend), when you find yourself finishing this tale, you'll probably end up with more questions than you had when you started. (Answer a few, and end up with a whole lot more, by reading Threshold. Then we'll talk.) So in other words, what you have with In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers (and, in my experience, the majority of Kiernan's tales) is a slice of what amounts to a very weird and otherworldly life. It's taking the hyperrealism of, say, Joyce Carol Oates' early work and dropping it wholesale onto a dark alternate universe. I can understand how it would jar. What makes Kiernan worth your time, though, is the beauty of the language, how the words come together to paint the pictures in your head. That's what this book is all about, in the end.

It didn't do as much for me as did Candles for Elizabeth or her contribution to Wrong Things, but it's still a pretty fine piece of work. ***