Compelling and compassionate, mysterious and melancholy, Soft & Rage by Myka Silber is an extraordinary set of short stories. Sure-footedly spanning a dazzling array of genres and styles, the collection feels fused together by its beautiful writing, clear-eyed point of view, and profound concern with the human condition.
Although it treats many different themes and ideas, at its heart Soft & Rage is, above all else, a deep meditation on grief and loss. Viewed through the variety of lenses afforded by the range of story types, Silber comes at the issue from many different angles and is able to explore her recurring themes with sensitivity and authenticity. The author approaches difficult subjects without sentimentality, which is a fine line when talking about the effects of love on her characters.
The stories are mostly within the fantasy and sci-fi genres, but with an extraordinary amount of variation explored within those genres. Of the fantasy stories, for instance, the opening story “Sea Borne” is a beautiful, dreamy folktale, “Werifesteria” is a vignette of a horror monster story, and “The Firebird and the General” is a riff on high fantasy and mythology reminiscent of Borges.
The other stories are just as varied, with the sci-fi “No Pocket Can Hold Forever,” and its hints of the dystopic, to the almost hallucinatory “Root-Found,” to the sharp, understated stabs of realism in stories such as “and the stars were in her hair” and “Deer, Leaping.” There is even, in “Not My Home,” a piece of historical fiction.
Control of form and technique is evident throughout. The longer stories (such as “Firebird”) go at a measured pace, while the shorter ones (of which the shortest, “and the stars were in her hair,” is barely a couple of pages) thrive on the less-is-more principle. Silber’s ability to sketch a character’s whole life in a few brief sentences is remarkable, whether a couple on a road trip (“Transcendent’”) or a ghost trying to connect with her old family (“Fish in the Trees, Wolves in the Sea”). The characters all feel alive, with their motivations convincing and their struggles eminently relatable.
The writing is gentle and often meditative, with first-person narrations unafraid to take their time on impressions and ruminations. The prose never comes across as aimless or meandering, however – instead, this self-reflection is woven into the fabric of the narrative, helping to establish setting and character. If there is a criticism, it might be that some of the voices in the stories sound similar to each other, but that is mitigated by the range of techniques deployed, from immediate, dialogue-driven scenes like in “Fast Car,” through the grander language and shifting perspectives of “Firebird,” to something approaching stream-of-consciousness impressionism in “A Friend Eternal.”
All told, Soft & Rage is a wonderful collection, full of imagination, chills, heartbreak, and thought-provoking meditations, which deserves to be discovered by all readers of serious short fiction.
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