Friday, March 29, 2024

Out of Body by Jeffrey Ford

This is not an afterlife fantasy. The main character is still alive. But it's about him wandering the night landscape of his home town, very much like a ghost, so - since out-of-body fantasy is not really a thing - it feels a lot like an afterlife fantasy, of the exploring-one's-former-life type.

It's also by Jeffrey Ford, so you know going in that it's smart and well-written and told carefully.

Out of Body is a short novel, probably a novella. I think it's set in New Jersey, from references to nearby "pine barrens," but it doesn't say that. It doesn't say what county it's set in, either, though a county is mentioned. The town is the fictional Westwend, a small suburb in what seems to be a cluster of small suburbs - New Jersey is like that - near those pine barrens, one more small place in a region of small places.

Our hero is a small man in that small place: Owen, the librarian of the town library, a quiet, self-effacing man of ingrained habits and minor dreams.

One day, on his way to work, he's caught up in a horrific scene at the convenience store he stops every morning. He's the only survivor of what seems to be a senseless robbery attempt, knocked out and knocked around but not seriously hurt, while the gunman and the young counter clerk both die.

And, that night, the sleep paralysis he had as a child starts back up. But, this time, he has an out-of-body experience, traveling the streets of Westwend in a ghostly form, seeing the midnight world.

He meets others who can do the same thing: friendly and deadly. He learns of other dangers in the midnight world, and the things he can learn there. He learns of an long-living person, preying on the locals for decades, and gets caught up in a secret organization devoted to destroying those monsters.

Again, this is a novella: it's taught and focused, the story of a few days that transformed Owen, the most important moments of his life. Some people say novellas are the ideal form for SFF, and, when I read books like this, I tend to agree with them.

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