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Contemporary Fiction Views: Dark tales explore the human condition [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-08
Contemporary literary fiction can be dark and thus daunting to readers. There are novels and short stories that explore tragedies large and small that either doom characters to deep sorrow, or occasionally, show them overcoming despair. But other genres are also useful to explore sorrow and joy, defeat and victory.
Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic, is such a book. Tobi Ogundiran has crafted a wide range of stories with characters that are completely human or pure imagination. Both kinds of characters show ways in which beings are transformed by a combination of circumstance and emotional investmet.
The opening story is a grand example of this. In The Tale of Jaja and Canti, the main character is "exactly what you think" at key moments. Jaja is a creature made of wood that initially was carved as a boy. He was made by his toymaker father to honor his deceased wife. She died before they could have children. Jaja caught only a glimpse of the woman who gave him life, who he calls his mother. When his father dies of old age, and Jaja ahs not changed since he came to life, he decides to find her. He wants to feel love again.
He begins to age from that day on.
His mother is an elemental being known by many names, including Canti. They are believed to be ancient astral creatures that sang the world into being. During the hundreds of years he spends roaming the world, searching for her, he meets people who she has saved with her song. He finally arrives in a town where people know her. But they tell him he should not have gone looking for her, because she can only be seen twice: at the beginning and end of one's life. Stil, he waits.
The end is both sweet and sorrowful.
Other stories in the collection rob the main characters of their future when characters they do not expect to come into their lives. Initial encounters may seem promising or rewarding, but they soon become horror stories. There is no way out. Some of the endings have that Twilight Zone twist. Others bring to mind Neil Gaiman. Some stories may not start out well, but when there is crossover from another tale in the collection, a reader's interest can pick up quickly.
Whether what the characters face is due to their emotions or to something they have thrust upon them, the ways they react to what is happening to them bring out the same realizations about the human condition that literary fiction does. The stories fulfill what Peter Straub once told me in an interview, that he chose to write horror because it allowed him to explore things about people and society.
Ogundiran is a Nigerian writer who now lives in the American South. Cultural imagery, folklore and traditions from around the world figure into the stories in ways that make the stories universal. This debut collection bodes well for future work.
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