What are the rules for writing about atrocity? Are there any? Should there be? We come back and back and back around to the issue of rape, but what about torture, mass murder, genocide?
Susan R. Matthews has an unexpectedly compelling touch for atrocity. Unflinching is a word that I keep coming back to with regard to her books: science fiction and fantasy is rarely willing to look the human consequences of atrocity in the eye. Even less often does it find itself able to do so with nuance and complexity.
Matthews has a knack for working with horrific material in a way that acknowledges human capacity for humour, decency, affection, and survival without ever minimising the horror. She also has a knack for writing stuff that really ought to come with nightmare warnings: Prisoner of Conscience, her second novel, is perhaps the book of hers which I appreciate most – but, O Gentle Readers, I’m not made of stern enough metal to come away unscathed from a novel which essentially deals with one long, drawn-out, stomach-turning war crime.
Or perhaps a series of them. It’s a little hard to draw a clear distinction.
[Nightmare fuel. Also, optimism and some small triumphs of decency.]