In the Middle of the Woods is about a family of three: a put upon mother, a tinkering father who makes mechanical creatures out of household items and their son. We stand over the shoulder of the son, not understanding what his father does or why, as we share in the winter of their discontent. They live in an isolated house in the middle of a barren, burnt out woods, maybe the woods are representative of their collective interior landscape; a physical manifestation of a family in name only. Or not. But what can’t be disputed is that it is an icy hell with tormented people acting out daily rituals.
The best part of the story for me was the Hitchcockian steampunk/clockwork Birds moment that invokes a dread and helplessness in the boy. His frustration levels — towards his father, towards the birds, towards his mother — were palpable and nicely conveyed. But despite these pressures — both internal and external — we get a sense that he is afraid to leave the woods, much as any child would be afraid to step too far out of their familiar backdrop despite their protestations of independence.
Ultimately though much of this is just speculation because this is an ambiguous story. Whether the characters and the setting are meant to be something more or not I found it hard to tell at times. This feels, to me, like a piece of a larger whole and I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned up later in a longer work.
This is part of the BookSpot Central Short Fiction Round Table spotlight on stories that will be included in Best American Fantasy 2008 edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and forthcoming from Prime Books. Please see the intro to the spotlight.
