Spence is content at Ironside until he befriends Leila, a quiet woman who, despite being cured, wants to find her old group - ostensibly to bring them back to Ironside so that they can be cured, too. God help us, it showed us what we wanted to see.” The infection boosted them, it stripped out everything else. “We had the narrative - constructed over the long haul by misunderstandings, groupthink, pop culture and paranoia. “There was the infection and then there was the narrative, the one holding the door open for the other,” says Spence, our narrator, two years into his recovery at Ironside, a facility for rehabilitating those who’ve “woken up” from their infection. That reality often involves their having murdered those closest to them in what they sincerely believed to be self-defense. The infected clump into groups and live out a violent fantasy apocalypse in which they’re the last remnants of humanity fighting off undead contagion - until something happens to break the narrative’s hold on them and allow them to see reality for what it is. One day, people from all walks of life suddenly begin seeing those around them as horrifying flesh-eating monsters - “Others” - when in fact they’re looking at their children, parents, friends. Malcolm Devlin’s AND THEN I WOKE UP (Tordotcom, 165 pp., paper, $13.99) is a short, compassionate novel of post-plague reconstruction, in which narratives are a vector of disease. Stories can be many things in these books: rigid shackles or malleable clay, weapons or armor, infection or cure. In that spirit, here’s a mix of stories about stories, looking at old myths from new angles, exploding received ways of thinking, and exploring or inventing vast new terrains. But traditions have been in a state of flux for some time, and plans are still just stories we tell ourselves, subject to revisions and retellings as we align with the uncomfortable realities of our world. Against all odds it’s summer again, traditionally a time of blockbusters and big tents and the promise of holidays and travel, new vistas to shake up the everyday.
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