Fair enough. I don't think they're quite as mindblowing as they once were. There are a lot more epic YA fantasy series out there now than there used to be.

ETA: I like the Welsh bits.

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So, after seeing the discussion here, I checked the online catalog for my local library, then went across the street to check out Smoke & Mirrors, since it's been something like a decade since I read Murder Mysteries.

If you look at the summary of the events in the story, I think it's reasonable to think that it might be gendered violence. However, in the actual context, it doesn't ping me at all.

Some reasons why: If you're talking about love and death and murder and justice (which the story is), then there has to be love and death. There's just no way around it. I find a male narrator for this story to be less problematic than a female one for a host of reasons. Ok, so then his primary victim can either be male or female. Given that the angels are coded male (for all that it's made clear that they're not, really), making his victim male changes the story in very significant ways (for all that it's not fair, homosexual relationships are not seen as universal). Now, the roommate or the kid could have been male without there being a significant change (apart from the thing about women named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan), but I don't think that's the primary objection.

As for the necrophilia...sometimes Gaiman writes some sick shit, yo. I think the point of that was that it was sick. But also, to emphasize the feeling within the nature of love (as presented in the story) to have and be had entirely, rather than moved on from, or spit in the sink. There are a couple of bits of dialogue that I think are key:

"I love you," she said.
"Thank you."

and

"Susan's upstairs, asleep," said Tink. "She's all I live for. Would you like to see her?"

If one had a fucked-up view of love, one might ask how Tink could love him, but Susan is all she lives for (much as was the case with Saraquel and "Death").

Were I in high school, I would write a literary analysis essay about how Gaiman is proposing that love is a fundamentally flawed concept.

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Susan's upstairs, asleep," said Tink. "She's all I live for. Would you like to see her?"

I think that is the point at which he lost it, jealousy of her love for her child. The parallel with the angel story implies that to me.

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Okay, now that I'm home and have reread the story...

It can't be both?

It it is certainly possible for a story to be both. Given that this particular story is explicitly about justice and vengeance and jealousy and love and whether anyone but God can really be considered responsible for anything that happens as a result of His Divine and Mysterious plan... I feel like context matters.

Plus I think the ending is fairly ambiguous about retribution. He is narrating it from 10 years later, yes. We don't know where he is. The story he tells us ends with him confined in a small silver room, at peace, waiting for someone to let him out. Which is how Raguel's story began.

I believe his crimes are meant to be a disturbing revelation (so to speak) and to raise questions. I don't know how to address your concerns because I don't understand what they are. I don't mean that dismissively, just... I genuinely don't understand.

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Is anyone else following Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" on Twitter @NYerFiction. It's striking me after six tweets that I'm not caught up yet, and I have much less patience with not being caught up than I would on a page.

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If you're talking about love and death and murder and justice (which the story is), then there has to be love and death.

Part of the problem is, I don't think the parallel works the way it's set up. He's in LA by chance and didn't know she was there, and there's no sign, in his description of their encounter, of anything that would lead to murder. Now you can argue that he's remembering it wrong because of Raguel taking his memories, but

a) There's a point at which the narrator becomes so unreliable it's impossible to say what the story really is, and

b) That actually makes it worse, since now *all three* victims are reduced to objects we know nothing about. They're only there to produce an emotional reaction in the reader.

He is narrating it from 10 years later, yes. We don't know where he is.

Actually, he refers early on to a wife, children, and a vocation. So it sure looks to me like he got off scot-free.

Bottom line: a woman invites a man into her home and has a sexual encounter with him. As a result, she, her daughter, and a female friend are all corpses rotting in the ground, while the man is forgiven by literal divine fiat. And while I see DebetEsse's point about context and the need for parallels, I can't believe it was impossible to do that without dragging out the refrigerator.

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Oh, I don't think it qualifies as fridging, as it does not serve to give him something to react to (given that he doesn't remember it, and you can easily read the story and miss it entirely.). I also find it less disturbing and problematic than I would if he had, for example, beaten a girlfriend (to death or not) or stalked and raped someone. Triple homicide and necrophilia is far enough removed from what I can readily port into my own life that there isn't a hint of the "well, you should forgive him if he did it because he loves you" message that either of those would have.

But, then again, I think that the story posits that the concept of "love" that's hard-wired into the Universe is broken.

there's no sign, in his description of their encounter, of anything that would lead to murder

Not a pre-meditated murder, certainly.

(And I think Gaiman consistently lives right on that boundary for your point a. Like, he has a summer house there.)

But I think his current state, and the disconnect he feels from the events he's retelling (all new cells every 7 years) are an indication that forgiveness, wiping the slate clean, lead to him having a good life. Vengeance would not have done that. It wouldn't have brought them back or anything good into the world.

literal divine fiat

Angelic, at best. More likely: demonic. Which I think is relevant.

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Actually, he refers early on to a wife, children, and a vocation.

Well...he says:

I feel uncomfortable, as if I've received a gift, unasked, from another person: a house, a wife, children, a vocation. Nothing to do with me, I could say, innocently.

I think there are multiple ways to interpret that.

They're only there to produce an emotional reaction in the reader.

I presume that you read the story at least once without realizing that the narrator was a murderer. And from googling you are not the only person who had that experience. I mean, I have issues with Gaiman but... I don't think it's subtle accidentally. If it was just there to provoke, don't you think he'd have made it clearer?

When you mention refrigerators, in my mind that lumps it in with stories where brutality against women is just a way of demonstrating how awful the bad guy is so we can root for his comeuppance, and/or to torment or inspire vengeance by the good guy. This does not read to me that way.

Bottom line: a woman invites a man into her home and has a sexual encounter with him.

I don't know how to respond to that. I mean, if that is genuinely how you'd sum up the story... I can't say you should not feel that way, I just... don't know what you wanted the story to do, I don't know what you thought it was about, and I don't know what you think fiction is for. I think the story is meant to make the reader ask questions, and I think the perceived injustice you are reacting to is quite deliberate. If Gaiman wrote the story so in the end the narrator is arrested and jailed and after he dies he goes to hell and all of that is clearly a just punishment... I think that would be a fine moral, and a shit story.

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Strega:

I don't think it's subtle accidentally. If it was just there to provoke, don't you think he'd have made it clearer?

I actually think (and let me emphasize, this is ONLY my opinion) that the reaction he wanted is probably exactly the one one I'm having: to go through the piece once, enjoying the mythic, and then only at the end or on a reread, realize the man we've been sympathizing is a multiple murderer, specifically of a woman he had a sexual relationship with. I agree with Debet, that Gaiman sometimes writes boundary-breaking stuff to make his strongest impact, but I reserve the right to say, "THIS is way outside any boundary I feel comfortable enjoying."

I mean, if that is genuinely how you'd sum up the story...

As far as Tink, Susan, and the unnamed friend are concerned, that IS the story. They don't know about Raguel, and are too busy being eaten by their own microbiome to care.(They are connected to it, both by the narrator and Raguel, and by Debet's point about the broken nature of love in this universe) But to deny them their perspective is to, again, reduce them to objects that only exist to make an emotional impact on the reader.

(I think my definition of Women In Refrigerators may be broader than most; I pretty much mean the existence of a female character who only exists to make emotional impact on a character or the reader by her death.)

Debet:

I think Gaiman consistently lives right on that boundary for your point a. Like, he has a summer house there.

That much we agree on, no question.

an indication that forgiveness, wiping the slate clean, lead to him having a good life

I have an extremely large problem with someone who isn't the wronged party extending forgiveness. And that IS something we see in the world around us, more often than triple homicide, etc.

I should probably emphasize, I'm not claiming anyone's interpretation is invalid, just insisting that mine isn't, either.

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(I think my definition of Women In Refrigerators may be broader than most; I pretty much mean the existence of a female character who only exists to make emotional impact on a character or the reader by her death.)

Under that definition, Jenny from Love Story would apply, and I think she's a lot more than that. Just one example.

Out of curiosity, what would you call a male character who exists only to make an emotional impact through his death?

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