Partial Eclipse and Other Stories

Graham Joyce, author of Requiem, Indigo, and other award winning novels, has written some of the most indelible fiction of the past ten years. His work is intelligent, provocative, and utterly unpredictable, and has won him a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. Subterranean Press now proudly presents Graham's first collection of shorter fiction: Partial Eclipse, a hugely entertaining volume that features an impressive variety of styles, subjects, and narrative modes. The stories and novellas gathered here range from wartime England to Leningrad under the siege, from the coal mines of Coventry to the hallucinatory beauty of the Greek islands. Some of the stories ("Gap Sickness," "The Careperson") utilize overtly science fictional premises. Some ("Under the Pylon," "Black Dust") recall the overall ambience of The Tooth Fairy, Graham's unforgettable portrait of adolescent rites of passage. Others, such as "Candia" and "Xenos Beach," are accounts of magical, erotic, and dangerous encounters in exotic ports of call. And some of the stories transcend all traditional categories. One of these is the unforgettable novella, "Leningrad Nights," a story of suffering and survival in a frozen, surreal city ruled by "the blind justice of the Whistling Shell." Partial Eclipse is a book of dark, disturbing, sometimes beautiful dreams. It is also, as the extraordinary title story tells us, a book about the primal importance of dreaming. For admirers of Graham Joyce's novels, this is an indispensable volume. For those who have yet to discover his work, it is a varied, elegant introduction to one of the singular dreamers of our time.

Partial Eclipse is Graham Joyce's first collection of shorter fiction. The stories and novellas gathered here range from wartime England to Leningrad under the siege, from the coal mines of Coventry to the beauty of the Greek islands. Some of the stories ('Gap Sickness,' 'The Careperson') utilize science fictional premises. Some ('Under the Pylon,' 'Black Dust') recall the overall ambience of The Tooth Fairy. Others, such as 'Candia' and 'Xenos Beach,' are accounts of magical, erotic, and dangerous encounters in exotic ports of call. One of these is the novella, 'Leningrad Nights,' a story of suffering and survival in a frozen, surreal city ruled by 'the blind justice of the Whistling Shell.' Partial Eclipse is a book of dark, disturbing, sometimes beautiful dreams. It is also, as the title story tells us, a book about the primal importance of dreaming.