One Eye Opened In That Other Place

Not all authors write short fiction and those that do, do not always have enough to fill a complete collection, never mind several. Christi Nogle is a talented short story writer as their previous collections have already shown. One Eye Opened in That Other Place is one of the trickier collections to gather; these are not stories about a particular subject or a particular genre, these are all stories about the other, the parallel, the unknown, “stories from the spaces between places.” Can Nogle grip the reader with the unknown? 

There is no doubting that Nogle is a talented short story writer and can write them in many ways from those with a decent length and a classic shock ending, to short stories of a page or two that evoke more a sense of unease than narrative. Other of the writer’s collections that were based on horror or strange science fiction felt like they had more in common and a centre. The theme of this collection is more a sense of the other. 

The collection opens strongly with Playmate a modern fantasy story that reminded me of Studio Ghibli. A mother takes her daughter to visit her childhood home and the entity that once dwelt there. From here it feels like an eclectic mix; Dorian Gray told from the perspective of the artist, magical clothing and more. It is hard to say that there is a connection to the tales. 

As a reader I have always struggled with dreamlike writing or dealing with the ethereal, so did struggle with several of these stories. They read more like extended poems, or paintings in written form. There are not as many structured stories for me to get to grips with. A sense of lockdown comes into the book with several stories touching on people or families stuck in a place together, you get the sense that the author was thinking about this a lot themselves. 

The tales that chimed the best with me had more structure, making them some of the longer stories. A Chronicle of the Mole-Year is an interesting urban fantasy story about a town that all vote to have a ‘mole-year.’ In this year they live parallel to the real world and time is stuck in some ways. Nogle can explore some of the interesting quirks that would come with such a concept, like what happens to a child born in a ‘mole-year.’ 

Gingerbread is a nicely contained story about a house that draws a person in to be its new owner. Fall into Water, Become Someone New, was a creepy little folk horror tale. There are several stories in One Eye that do make you think as a reader. I liked the structured stories, or the creepy horror stories. Many of the other stories fall into a more dreamlike style, which I struggled with. Readers who enjoy an ethereal style of story will take a lot more from this book. As a collection I enjoyed some of the stories in One Eye but preferred more found in Nogle’s earlier Promise.