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Shriek by Jeff Vandermeer
01/10/2006 . Source: Donna Jones 
pub: TOR-UK. 367 page enlarged paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-4050-5360-7. Buy Shriek in the USA - or Buy Shriek in the UK  check out website: www.toruk.com and www.panmacmillan.com
In a rented room, adjoining the bar of the Spore of the Gray Cap, the failed gallery owner and sister of Duncan Shriek types frantically. Her purpose is clear, she wants people to know about her brother's work and unsullied and unadulterated by his scorned lover and unsympathetic editors that have motives worse than the Gray Caps themselves.
This is Janice Shriek's attempt at putting the past to rest and facing up to her preordained destiny of ultimate death. But maybe even Janice could not foresee the rushed additions that her brother will make before this manuscript falls into the hands of a publishing house. Suddenly, from the imposed darkness of personal suffering and historical rain clouds, we'll finally see the epiphany that was never intended.
Speaking from experience, Janice covers her life laid bare, a life of excess and running away from herself in the most final of ways. Deplorable interactions with past lovers that for her trouble place her in difficult situations even when they might appear to be trying to help. Janice Shriek has even witnessed first hand as a war correspondent the ravages of the War of the Houses, a battle which saw the Gray Caps influence in the most awful of ways up close and personal to her.
One thing is for sure, you will never be able to look at Ambergris in the same light or through any type of rose-tinted spectacles again!
I want to insert one thought into your heads before you continue. Blown away! Hold that thought while you read the rest!
On the face of it, 'Shriek' is a blast from 'City Of Saints And Madmen's' past but it is so much more than that. We re-visit Duncan Shriek's life through the tainted eyes of his most indomitable critic - his sister! Although due to her familiarity with the written word she has, in her own way, shown us who Janice Shriek is, too.
Thanks to an unswerving method of writing a first person account with notes from the editing brother, it appears to be more than a first person narrative but a kind of game of tennis played with criticisms and reflections upon each other that are sublime to read. If you want to be entertained right the way through your read, this is how it's done!
'Shriek' should be a rather melancholy, depressive tale that tangles you in knots and leaves you reaching for a knife and running a bath of hot water for your own sorry demise. Quite possibly, its most endearing feature is that it does not do this at all. It remains a volatile method of drawing upon a characters existence, but turns into a poignant translation of life in the raw.
The story could be set in New York, Dublin or Tokyo were it not for the fact that in the end Ambergris, much like in the predecessor, becomes a third character of itself. Driven by the insatiable need to know the nature of the city and her underground gray capped inhabitants.
I loved it, so much I cherished reading this book. Every time I sat down to read, I savoured what was being said. I could imagine having this book on a desert island and reading it over and over again and still finding new insights upon each further read of it.
The morsels that are given at each stage feel important and then you get to see how important slightly later and then like a snowball rolling down a steep snow lined incline it gathers speed.
The depictions of war and the terrible fungal bombs that Vandermeer has created are similar to nothing else that I have read. But at the same time you get this overwhelming sense that this isn't just about a fantasy realm, it's a reflection through the looking glass of our culture.
The night when Duncan takes his lover below for safety was the chapter that really made my heart race and in reality not that much happens to either sibling during that time, it's the anticipation of it that freaks you out.
What really makes this novel stand out from any that I have read recently is the way Vandermeer keeps one thread throughout the narrative tickling at your curiosity. One thread which is so subtly woven into the whole that when you get to the end it's like someone throwing an ultra-bright light switch and you realise that every step of the story has been carefully and meticulously planned out.
You get a sense that the scene where Janice talks about Mary Sabon and her 'flesh necklace' is vitally important in the whole telling. It's this that you cling to and wait with wonder. But inevitably Vandermeer undermines this tainted scene with glorious accounts of growing up as a member of the Shreik family. This is peppered with images of the past told in such a way you really start to feel that you are sitting next to Janice as she types or in amongst the memory as it unfolds around your ears.
It simply is a literary bomb. I don't know whether Jeff Vandermeer has ever been through depression or known someone who has, but his view of it, his unassuming role in showing one of 'Shriek's' characters blossom into full blown suicidal tendency is perfect.
It speaks volumes that such a book wasn't written in a flit. Seven years to write. 'Shriek' for me will always be a cherished and well loved volume.
Donna Jones
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