Those who have been following Jeffrey Ford's career have been awaiting this collection eagerly. Ford's reputation has grown with each story published. Each of his novels has established his place as one of the premier genre authors of his time. Finally, the magnificent Golden Gryphon press brings us a collection of Ford's short stories, a collection packed with grade A fiction.

Ford's fiction runs the gamut from the delicately beautifully to the wonderfully bizarre. The masterpiece 'Creation' explores a boy's relationship with his father against the backdrop of a man made out of logs he believes he's created in the forest. 'Creation' is a hauntingly beautiful story that is sure to be included on 2003 award ballets. 'Exo-Skeleton Town' takes place on an alien planet. The alien inhabitants are crazy about vintage movies, and trade balls of dung, which has aphrodisiac qualities, for copies of the movies. The few humans on the planet wear exo-suits (shaped to look like former film stars) to deal with the planet's atmospheric pressure. 'Exo-Skeleton Town' may be my favorite Ford story. Filled with lively and believable characters, magnificently odd plot twists and a touching conclusion.

'The Fantasy Writer's Assistant' tells the story of a best-selling fantasy writer who is losing his gift to 'see' into his created universe and turns it over to his assistant. The assistant learns that the characters in the universe are being exploited by the writer and tries to undo his damage. "Floating in Lindrethool" is a marvelous noirish story about a door-to-door salesman who tries to sell floating brains in a jar but inadvertently falls in love with one of them.

You get the idea. Jeffrey Ford is a consumate storyteller, a master of the written word. This collection doesn't even display the full range of Ford's talent. He has written exquisite stories not included herein, currently available in _The Green Man_ and _Leviathan 3_, that I strongly urge you to read. Whether you've read Ford's stories previously or he's a complete unknown to you, this collection is one that you must read. It's not only one of the best genre collections of 2002, it's one of the best I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

There are wonders here and nightmares. Like Mervyn Peake, much of Ford's fiction seems to have little in common with day to day reality, but beneath the surface you will find more relevance and more wisdon than in most realistic fiction. If you are a fan of Peake or Borges or Gene Wolfe there is much you will enjoy here.

Writer Ashmolean loses touch with his new fantasy world creation and must beg an assistant's aid in finishing the plot. Humans reenact old Hollywood stars and barter movies for an alien potion, and an interview with Jules Verne reveals some unexpected twists to his writings. These are all exquisite fantasy plots which excel in the surprise ending: wonderful examples of Ford's genius.

Jeffrey Ford's new novel is The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, something of a departure from his previous novels, though it does share some of the same obsessions and tropes, and of course it features Ford's easily recognizable prose, lush and at times overheated, but enjoyable and effective for the most part. But his earlier novels were set in exotic fantasy landscapes -- this book is set in turn of the 20th Century New York -- though Ford makes it seem exotic enough!

Mrs. Charbuque is a mysterious woman who engages the services of the novel's narrator, Piero Piambo, a portrait painter who wishes he could be something better. Mrs. Charbuque offers to pay him enough money to allow him to pursue his dream, but on one condition: he must attempt to paint her without ever seeing her. Much of the novel is given to Mrs. Charbuque's stories of her strange life: a father who predicted the future by reading snowflakes, an unfaithful mother, her later life telling fortunes, and her unusual relationship with her husband, who is allowed to see her no more than any other person. Piambo's struggles to paint his mysterious patron are complicated by the growing jealousy of both his lover, and of the apparently estranged Mr. Charbuque. At the same time his old friend Shenz, another portrait painter, offers to track down clues to Mrs. Charbuque's identity. And finally a mysterious plague is infesting New York: women are found bleeding to death through their eyes.

The resolution is striking and oddly pulpish. The novel is great fun, mixing outlandish mysteries with sensitive philosophical speculation, and garish adventure with concerns about the character of the artist. These perhaps disparate elements in the end work together quite well: this is a quite satisfying book.

A bizarre mystery full of intriguing characters! I was mesmerized by this book and had trouble putting it down, just as Piambo was intrigued by the enigmatic Mrs. Charbuque. Even though the ending was not quite as potent as the rest of the novel, Mr. Ford deserves five stars for a brilliantly conceived fantasy novel.

This novel sparked my imagination from its first pages. As the painter, Mr Piambo, laboured to capture the likeness of his invisible patron, Mrs Charbuque, I found myself urgently making my own mental portraits of her, as if to beat Piambo to the goal. Ford writes cleverly without being pretentious, and maintains real suspense throughout the book. I couldn't put it down - and will never be able to smell nutmeg without fond memories.

I quite liked Jeffrey Ford's previous two novels in his "Physiognomist Cley" trilogy, _The Physiognomist_ and _Memoranda_. _The Beyond_ is the final novel in the trilogy. Although all three novels share the same main character, Cley, they are all quite different books. Cley is originally Physiognomist for the Well-Built City, and in the first book he helps overthrow that City, while in the second book he ventures into the brain of the former dictator of the City, searching for a cure to a disease which has ravaged the newly free residents of the new city Wenau.

In _The Beyond_, Cley has ventured into the eponymous wilderness of his strange world, in company with a tamed, intelligent, demon named Misrix. Cley is searching for the "true Wenau", and his lost victim/love Arla Beaton. The story is told on two tracks: in one, Misrix tells of his lonely life in the ruins of the Well-Built City, and the eventual discovery of him by the people of Wenau. In the other, Misrix narrates Cley's adventures in the Beyond, which he "remembers" by use of the drug Beauty.

In Misrix' tale, he befriends some of the residents of Wenau, but is feared and hated by others. Eventually he is accused of killing Cley, who has never returned from the Beyond. He yearns only to be treated as human, and only by submitting to justice and a trial can he maintain that status.

His tale of Cley's journey is very strange. After Misrix returns to the Well-Built City, fearing that the effects of the Beyond are making him forget his humanity, Cley continues on with his dog, Wood. He survives demon attacks, and a terrible winter, eventually discovering a cave and a mysterious dead person. He wanders through other environments: a desert, an inland ocean, a strange mountain, everywhere encountering strange people, some human, others different: fish people, plant people, huge lizards. He befriends a woman he finds in a besieged city, eventually settling with her in a lonely hut in the woods, but he has one more quest: hopefully to revitalize the dying Beyond.

To an extent some of this wild invention seems arbitrary. In the end, however, Ford redeems his vision, and the weird imaginative strands of the story make some sense, and they interweave with Misrix' own tale, as well. The conclusion is ambiguous and mostly sad, and rather striking. A fine novel.

The writing of Jeffrey Ford, is in a word, genius. "The Beyond," his third book detailing the exploits of the one time Physiognomist and antihero, Cley, is beautifully written with vivid imagery and lyrical prose. I hope to one day hear that Ford's literature is being taught in schools, for the man is a modern day Kafka with a gift for words and the ability to create fantastic worlds in which his characters make the ultimate discovery - themselves.

If you enjoy reading Haruki Murakami, then this man is right up your alley. Hopefully, Ford's writings will one day be translated into Japanese for an audience I know would be hungry for his work.

The final (?) book in the trilogy is well written and certainly holds the reader's attention. People looking for the usual "they lived happily ever after" ending will be disappointed; not because the ending itself is disappointing, but because it is an enigmatic to ending to a character who himself is an enigma.

The book was a delight to read, and Ford raises many possibilities of other future subjects to explore.

Wenau, the edenic commune formed by the former citizens of the Well-Built City, has once again fallen under Below's curse. Now it is up to a reformed Cley, who is now a herbalist, to journey into the werewolf-infested ruins in search of the antidote, only to discover that Below himself has succumbed to his engineered plague, and the only antidote is concealed inside Below's mind.

"Memoranda", the second in the Cley trilogy, suffers from a tone of absurd pomp, as the previous one suffered from its lugubrious arrogance. The plot is unsatisfying, because there are no undertones, no backstory or foreshadowing, no emotional significance. The narration suffers from sudden bouts of pointless immaturity, instantly preventing any and all suspension of disbelief (like Quismal, the horse that frothes at both ends). The characters are meaningless to the reader, because they are extremely flat, and, in any case, Ford presents them as mere figments of Below's imgination. Ford has perfected the fleeting, episodic feeling of dreams, but it is time to move on, or at least expand the topic. Why use such sophisticated language if it goes to waste? Ford states facts and events, without involving the reader, who ends up being a disinterested, neutral presence: the island is flating in the air ("Is that so?"); the Delicate eats people ("Oh, is that what it does?").

Many readers (myself among them) feel compelled to see this series to the end, but reading "Memoranda" is like reading a napkin.

Jeffrey Ford's previous novel, The Physiognomy, won the 1998 World Fantasy Award. If The Physiognomy is as good as its successor, it's easy to see why it won that award. Memoranda is an extremely impressive novel, at times reminding me of Borges, at other times of John Crowley, and throughout striking and original. The bulk of the novel takes places in the strange memory palace, or memory island, that the villain Drachton Below has constructed. Unlike conventional memory palaces, Below has populated his island with his memories of real people, who have some form of independent life, and who conduct experiments. Thus, in a sense, the memory island is actually thinking for Below. The hero, the former Physiognomist Cley, makes a strange journey into Below's mind, and his memory palace, meeting the four people with whom Below has poulated his memory, and falling in love with the one remembered woman, Anotine. But the memory island is falling apart as disease ravages Below's mind, and Cley must enlist the help of the "residents" to try to save Below, and his memory, long enough at least to find the antidote to the disease.

This whole landscape is original, and odd, and often beautiful. The form and setting of the novel provoke thought about the nature of memory. Ford also considers the nature of love, and addiction, and how a wholly evil man can still engender good. The plot is interesting enough, and fairly well resolved, but it's a minor source of pleasure. The prose is very fine, with many excellent images. I found the names of drinks and drugs especially memorable: shudder, sheer beauty, Rose's Old Sweet, Tears in The River, and more. Some of the horrific images, such as the Delicate and the Fetch, creatures Below uses to control his memories, are also very memorable. The characters are nicely realized and affecting, particularly the lost demon Misrix.

Even though this is the middle book of a trilogy, it has a self-contained story that is finished in this volume. That said, you will want to read The Physiognomy once you've read this book, and so it would probably be best to read it first, in the order published. And while the central story of this book is concluded, Cley's life story is definitely left hanging at the end, and I for one eagerly anticipate the third volume, The Beyond.

A rich and haunting tale--by turns horrifying,heartbreaking and hilarious, but always surprising. Ford is an eloquent tour guide of inner worlds; his vivid characters, thrilling journeys and impossible landscapes engage us with the startling elusive logic of dreams. A worthy successor to the excellent THE PHYSIOGNOMY, MEMORANDA stands on its own as a beautiful meditation on memory--that most familiar and mysterious inner world. Bravo!

From the Ministry of Whimsy Press, publishers of the fantastic LEVIATHAN anthology series, comes this first in a new series: ALBUM ZUTIQUE. "A series," the back cover notes, "devoted to the surreal & decadent." Yes, yes, and so it is. But is it good? You bet. The fifteen stories contained herein are all beautifully written, truly a feast for the eyes and the mind. There were a couple stories that I'm not quite sure I got, and a couple more that I'm quite sure I didn't get, but even the few that went right over my head in terms of content were so beautifully written that I almost didn't mind. Standouts are the pair of stories by the always fantastic Rhys Hughes, and the hauntingly beautiful entry by K.J. Bishop. But there wasn't a dud in the bunch; not a one I didn't enjoy reading. So why only four stars? Two reasons. First, as I noted, there were a couple stories that I didn't get. Second, and more importantly, while this is a beautiful, beautifully produced volume, the cover price is a little steep considering the 200-page, 50k word size of the volume. Even so, ALBUM ZUTIQUE #1 is a welcome and more-than-worthy addition to my bookshelf.

Next up: ALBUM ZUTIQUE #2, which will be Rhys Hughes' A NEW HISTORY OF INFAMY. I, for one, can't wait!

Recommended

I have mixed feelings about Jeffrey Ford's science fantasy novel The Physiognomy. While I rank it above the average, it's still frustrating to read a book with so much potential so needlessly wasted. Jeffrey Ford had great ideas for it but I didn't like the way he handled many of them. I'll let you know about my biggest gripes in a minute, so keep reading.

For this review, I split the novel into three parts. Act one is, in my humble opinion, the best chunk of the book. Here we witness as Cley, renowned physiognomist of the Well-Built City -- the urban brainchild of overlord genius Drachton Below --, is sent to the rural landscapes at the edge of the known world on a trifling mission he's not very pleased to carry out. Cley is a cruel and conceited individual, intelligent but at the same time blinded by his own knowledge and an addiction to a drug known as Sheer Beauty. With a charming personality such as this, it's no surprise he vents his frustrations on the hapless peasants, whom he rates pathetic creatures after only a quick glance at their physiognomic traits. Jeffrey Ford shows great talent for dark humour in his portrayal of Cley, but it's a pity it only lasts for the first part of the novel. Granted, Cley isn't a character you could easily identify yourself with, but I still liked him a lot at this stage. (...)

Cley is also perhaps the only truly well-developed character in The Physiognomy, while all the others seem flat by comparison. Unfortunately for him, though, things are about to change.

The story goes a bit downhill from here. Luckily not into the Forbidden Zone of Badness, but downhill nevertheless. For starters, things happen too damn fast at times, especially from the second act on. Jeffrey Ford seems in a hurry to finish the book, and its scanty 244 pages add to that impression.

During the second part of the novel, Cley endures a set of conditions that gradually change him into a man of healthier disposition. Possibly because the narrative seems so rushed, his moral metamorphosis felt awkward to me. Not unlikely, but still awkward. Or perhaps the surrealism of the world around Cley made it feel that way, I don't know. What I think is a pity is that the protagonist begins to flatten and lose complexity as a result. Oops. On the other hand, Jeffrey Ford writes up some more cool concepts, fewer than in the first part, but fortunately not as squandered.

The third act gives us Cley's return to Drachton Below's Well-Built City. Without going into particulars for the sake of spoilers, I'll just say I didn't appreciate the novel's kind-of vacuous antiscientific message, nor did I like to see Cley made into a wimp at the end. The rating goes down a notch here as far as I'm concerned, though I understand other people's views on the subject might vary.

Like I mentioned at the start of the review, The Physiognomy boasts quite a few first-class concepts -- I'll tell you of Drachton Below's pet, a clockwork-animated werewolf, just to tease your appetite. Sadly, Ford leaves a trail of undeveloped ideas behind, instead exploring those I wouldn't like to go into -- for instance, he describes an expedition to Paradise in more detail than I'd have cared to have. The bottom-line is he ended up murdering the whole thing's sense of wonder for nothing, and any author who pulls one of those without a pretty damned good reason gives me cause to lop a couple of points off the book's score.

So, when the time comes to fill your shopping cart, is this book worth picking up? I'd say yes. The Physiognomy is an original and interesting read in spite of its flaws, the mass market paperback is cheap, and the whole thing wouldn't take you more than an idle weekend afternoon to finish. Personally, I'd encourage you to give it a try. You might even like it better than I did.

The Physiognomy is a story in three acts, in which protagonist Cley shows his despicable nature, then travels through purgatory and is given the chance to redeem himself by doing right by those he had wronged. It's a simple story arc, told against a dark and surreal backdrop: The Well-Built City, crafted in the image of the mind of it's maker, the Master, Drachton Below. The territorial town of Anamasobia, inhabited by plebians whom Cley sees as almost bestial. The sulphur mines of the island of Doralice, run by twin brothers and an intelligent monkey. Not to mention Cley's vocation: Reading the nature of people by measuring the character of their faces and bodies.

Ford proves to be an able scripter, and despite its sometimes-gruesome subject matter the book is filled with dark humor, often taking the form of some character saying something totally unexpected. Cley's predicaments are often novel and challenging, and the story moves right along. Small touches fill out the story and make the whole place seem vivid and real... at first glance.

The Physiognomy's greatest weakness is that it never really gets below the surface of its story. Physiognomy is an impressive device, filled with the potential for all sorts of moral quandaries, but its use diminishes quickly and drastically after the first third of the book. The nature of the Well-Built City is never really explored, the ramifications of (essentially) living in someone's mind not really plumbed. For that matter, Cley himself is something of a cipher. We don't really know where he came from, what led him to Physiognomy, or why he stays in his position. Greed? Ambition? Fear? Devotion to the Master? All seem plausible, but none any plausible than any other.

Moreover, arbitrary events occur at various points in the story without any reason I could see. This often lowers a scene to the level of cheap melodrama: Rather than testing his mettle, Cley sometimes is either overcome quickly and pointlessly, or saved in a deus-ex-machine fashion.

It seems that the book is meant to be a sort of allegory. Perhaps a sort of twisted Garden of Eden (there's a fruit, an Adam and an Eve, and all sorts of exiles), or perhaps a simple (if heavy-handed) story about how we tend to judge people based on superficial characteristics, and that we all will go to any ends we have to to advance our position (and, perhaps, that the 'solution' to these problems is to eliminate the need for positions in society). But none of these options feels true or sufficient. The conclusion feels devoid of purpose.

The book's strength - beyond Ford's writing style - is the mass of churning ideas and the way in which Ford expresses them. There are ample quantities of neat stuff to keep you reading, even if you don't quite figure out how they all fit together. The character names are also neat, sounding very evocative, but you're rarely quite sure of what.

The novel which The Physiognomy most reminds me of is Sean Stewart's Resurrection Man, which also painted a portrait of an intriguing world with its own rules, but which also felt like it didn't follow through on the promise of its concepts. Neither is a bad book, but both feel essentially unfinished, like they're lacking the soul to give them true strength.

While it's being shelved under science fiction, and while it no doubt is science fiction, The Physiognomy feels more like fantasy for most of its length. Two thirds of the novel are spent outside the dystopian Well-Built City (which itself has an interesting mix of old and new technology), setting for only the last third of the book. We don't get in touch, for those two thirds, with the technological advance of the City, and that explains the fantasy feel.

The story is interesting, though The Physiognomy feels incomplete. That's because it's part of a trilogy (the next novels are Memoranda and The Beyond). Cley, the protagonist, is a physiognomist, which is a state function- the state being under the totalitarian rule of Drachton Below, a man with a severe god complex - that combines, in a fashion, the functions of investigator and judge. Remember Judge Dredd? Cley is almost like Dredd, only he doesn't execute people. People are executed by a gas that inflates their heads until they pop. Not by the physiognomists themselves. Those only point their fingers at certain people, and find out if they're guilty of a crime by the measurements of their bodies. They can also predict the future using the same science, the Physiognomy. The Physiognomy was created by Drachton Below so...you get the picture.

At the beginning of the story, Cley is a corrupt, morally disgusting individual. He is sent by Below to investigate a crime in the 'territory'. That's the starting point in a journey of, say, self and world discovery, and soon enough Cley is one terrific guy (suspension of disbelief necessary, for sure). The Physiognomy is well done and entertaining, and very worth the read. I would have appreciated more solid world building (things are sometimes just too vague), but the novel is fast paced and interesting, with very surreal imagery (if you're into that, the book's a treat). I'll read the next two.