Artificial Fire conjoins two works — a collection of short stories, Fireworks, and a short novel, Love. Carter revised these nearly twenty years after their original publication dates and, for the latter, offers an afterword that speculates on how the characters’ lives might have developed in the intervening years. Linking the story collection and the novella for this publication makes sense as the writing in both cases is fierce, frank, unsentimental, and a bit scary.

Carter tends toward narrative exposition and description, as against dialogue, character development and plot. The stories reach heights of stylized expressionism that make “The Love of Lady Purple” or “Flesh and the Mirror” or “Master” a master class in control and execution. But any of the stories in the collection could accept that praise for these are each, though sometimes cold and distancing, never less than remarkable. I kept thinking as I read, “Who writes like this now?” and failing to come up with a name.

The novella, Love, follows the lives of two half-brothers, Lee and Buzz, whose early lives are so contorted by their mother’s madness and their politically polarized aunt that no expectation of a “normal” life arises. And none is found. Lee is all contrivance and manipulation. Buzz is closer to the pure madness, perhaps. So it might not be surprising that they are both enraptured by the truly mad Annabel, who Lee takes in, cares for in his way, and eventually marries. But these characters are all only temporarily in the world of the ordinary (despite the Kantian dictum that Lee repeats but cannot embrace). From the moment Annabel experiences her crise after hours in the nearby park, their steps lead insistently down to a hell of their own making. It is unrelenting. Hard to take, and hard to take your eyes away from.

The added afterword is at first distracting. But it enables the reader to reconsider, as Carter does, such a story with a bit of emotional distance. Far from weakening the horror of her story, the distance helps us to appreciate what an achievement it must have been at the time. Of course it also might just be merely a publisher’s excuse for the repackaging of a favourite author’s back catalogue. So be it. Anything that puts Carter’s writing back in print again and again is worth it.

Recommended. ( )