Interfictions – Christopher Barzak

The opening story in Interfictions is Christopher Barzak’s ‘What We Know about the Lost Families of —– House’.

A strange story of the generations which have lived in a certain house, it reads like Shirley Jackson or as a small town novel.

The house itself, never named, looks throughout the story like a shape in fog, always slightly out of focus but palpably taunting the reader. The unnamed narrator tells us of the families who have lived there and the fates which befall them. Though we are told which state the town is in, it could stand for anywhere as a symbol of a constant traveller’s dislocation from his home.

It shows illustrates one of the themes of the anthology, that an interstitial story can be comfortably read in many ways and genres, resisting typecasting itself.

Barzak’s tone and control of language throughout takes the story somewhere else. I’m already waiting in eagerness for his debut novel, One for Sorrow.