Portable Childhoods - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

Emerging from a unique and powerful voice, this innovative collection offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies hidden just beyond the ordinary, skirting the border between childhood and adulthood. Mysticism, heroism, cruelty, and compassion thread through these multifaceted tales—which range from the origins of the Manhattan Project to a culinary object-lesson, from 1950s corruption to a slight glitch in Creation. Collected here for the first time and including an excerpt from her breakout first novel The Green Glass Sea, these stories are timeless and delightful, chilling and beautiful.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful writing, elegant twists and Magic June 11, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Just finished reading Portable Childhoods and I am very sorry I couldn't make it last longer. There is other information here to give you an idea of the subject matter and what the stories are about, but what isn't noted is the tenderness (not in a sentimental or 'twee' manner) of observation that is present. Different stories moved me in different ways; none of them left me untouched. Very rich reading (that actually I made myself spread over several days to make it last).

The stories and the charactors are memorable, often dealing with the complex mix of the desire to protect and at the same time allow independent growth in a relationship (between parent and child, lovers, past and future). This makes it sound stodgy - it's not - there is plenty of Magic, people find fairies or turn into tropical fish or time travel or.....maybe you should just find out for yourself.

I hope I don't have long to wait for her next collection.

5 out of 5 stars

A Must-Read May 1, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Ellen Klages is one of the best sf short story writers around. Portable Childhoods has all of her best stories, like "Basement Magic," (won a Nebula Award), and "The Green Glass Sea," that became the novel that won the Scott O'Dell Award. There's an introduction by Neil Gaiman too. A great collection.

Boing Boing just said Klages is "The kind of sf writer that comes along once in a decade..." Very true.

5 out of 5 stars

Portable: capable of being transported or conveyed July 1, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Sixteen tales of varying length. Some are two pages long. Some are twenty-eight. Realistic sometimes, and sometimes deeply magical. In her Afterword, Klages says it best when she mentions that, "My stories have been described as fantasy, dark fantasy, science fiction, not science fiction, children's, mainstream, and/or horror. (Often in different reviews of the same story)." More telling is her final sentence, "Many of my stories appear to have happy endings." Appearances being, as they are, deceiving, the tales found in this book can be hopeless and heartless one moment and then bounce back with something that "appears" to be cheerful the next. With an Introduction from fellow adult/children's author Neil Gaiman, the book's stories last just as long as they need to, never overstaying their welcome or bringing you up too short, too soon. Their connections demand a little more work.

The mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and realistic fiction is seamless here. It's all the more fun too when you think you're in one genre and then realize too late by the end that you're in another. A story where God is a kid who's helping his grandmother in the kitchen (he has, as J.B.S. Haldane once said, "an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles.") is followed by the historical fiction tale "The Green Glass Sea." The amusing "Ringing Up Baby" where a child orders a baby sister with... let us say unusual properties is preceded by the mostly realistic, possibly sci-fi "A Taste of Summer" and all that it entails. For the most part they fit with one another. I've always thought that the arrangement of short stories is a difficult task in its own right. You want the book to flow from tale to tale rather than start and stop in a herky-jerky manner. The sole story I found out-of-place was a tiny two pager called "Be Prepared". A kind of To Serve Man but lighter. It's a fun story but I didn't quite see how it fit in with the rest of the book.

Every author writes, to some extent, from what they know. The funny thing about Klages is that you can't figure out what she has conjured versus what she's experienced. Ms. Klages writes in such a way that you cannot separate her memories from her fictions. Everything, every single little thing, seems deeply drenched in fact. Dripping with it, I say. From the Afterword we learn that her little sister Sally was born with Down Syndrome. So you get an understanding for why the story "Guys Day Out" about a father and his Down Syndrome son, feels so right. Then again, Klages really nails the time traveling aspects of "Time Gypsy" too. And the feeling that you're flying when you snorkel as in "Flying Over Water". Many of these tales are about socially awkward girls who are comfortable with their own passions and interests to the exasperation of the mainstream adults around them. So how far do you feel comfortable assuming that you know an author from their works? With Klages you end up making all kinds of assumptions. Certainly they cannot all be correct.

Certain themes do crop up throughout the tales. Homosexuality, and how quickly we forget what strides have been made, is a theme. Powerlessness, particularly the powerlessness of children. That's there. Girls tend to either vanish or find themselves transformed (both literally and figuratively) in this book. And as Neil Gaiman says in the Introduction, "I expected them [the stories] to be funny and bustling, and they weren't. They were something else entirely." Not unfunny, but not a barrel of laffs and larfs either.

Then there's the writing. It all comes down to the writing. When I read a book like this, I like to mark the sentences that catch my eye and let me smile when I read them. They never really have the same effect when you pluck them out of their context and try to make them bobble about in a review on their own. I'll try anyway, though. Otherwise, how could I tell you about the lovely moment in the story "Basement Magic" when little Mary Louise receives a compliment from her family's housekeeper, Ruby. "She does not get many compliments, and stores this one away in the most private part of her thoughts. She will visit it regularly over the next few days until its edges are indistinct and there is nothing left but a warm glow labeled RUBY." Or to say of a woman that "she still had all of her marbles, though every one of them was a bit odd and rolled asymmetrically." A good author, a competent author, knows how to elicit an almost visceral response when they mention things like "a small, curled whip." Klages does that.

Some stories feel familiar. The story "A Taste of Summer" brought to mind Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (a fact duly noted by Cory Doctorow). "In the House of the Seven Librarians" begins with a premise not too dissimilar from "The Baby in the Night Deposit Box" by Megan Whalen Turner. Kudos to that story, by the way, and not just because I'm a librarian. In a very small moment the tale alludes to the fact that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a classic tale. There's also a mention of Nero Wolfe, which I appreciated quite a lot, being a Rex Stout fan and all. The stories in this book are rarely so familiar that you feel you've seen them before, of course. Nor do they vanish from your brain mere moments after the reading. Some stay around longer than others, but for the most part they're all there. Shifting about.

I've done some freelance work in the past where I've had to collect short stories relating to a variety of different topics. When I did this "Portable Childhoods", I found, was a particularly useful collection to have on hand. Consistently well written and emotionally stimulating, the book is one of the loveliest you'll find. It's not for children, but many of the stories in this title conjure up the feelings we all associate with our own youth. Well worth a gander.

5 out of 5 stars

Stories like Petit Fours September 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

You know when you look at a case of petit fours and they're so elegant and perfect that you almost feel guilty eating them? The stories in Portable Childhoods were so delicious that I found I was pacing myself so I wouldn't finish too soon.

Petit fours, though, aren't quite the perfect metaphor in this case. The stories are wonderful confections, but they're not saccharine. Perhaps a better comparison would be to those brightly inked images on the pages of illuminated manuscripts--small, intense, beautiful.

I've already given away two copies....

5 out of 5 stars

Phenomenal second book February 6, 2008
There are stories, and there are Stories. The former are idle pleasantries, constructed to amuse, entertain, teach, or otherwise create an effect. The latter, ah the latter, are not constructed but rather, are born. They exist for no other purpose other than it is entirely right and proper that they do, and (I suspect) are written for no other reason than that they must be. In the last few weeks, I have been lucky enough to encounter, not one,
but TWO volumes of the latter.

They come to me on two very different paths, yet two that are entirely appropriate.

Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages, arrived very directly. At Minicon, last year, I asked Charles de Lint what I should read next, since I had run out of Nina Kirki Hoffman books, He recommended The Green Glass Sea, which Dreamhaven was kind enough to let me purchase. So, I was looking for her next one, and Amazon.com notified me when it came out. I just finished reading it.

Interestingly enough, "Basement Magic" and "In the House of the Seven Librarians" bookend in similarly to Courting Disasters, with the latter ending the book with hope. The former is quite difficult to read, but the latter is joy from the beginning to the end. I don't want to spoil anything in it, but if you like books, you MUST read "In the House of the Seven Librarians".

* "Intelligent Design" has a very interesting take on the creation of the universe. I've seen similar, but nothing quite like this -- a perfect example of inspiration from a quote.
* "Triangle" is horrible and will make you cry. Of course, it's excellently written too. Many will appreciate it, but it may not be a pleasant read.
* "Flying Over Water" is about when you're not exactly a child anymore and not yet an adolescent. For those of us who had difficulty with this transition (all of us?), it's hard to read... and it's sad.
* "Mobius, Stripped of a Muse" and "Be Prepared" are experimental fiction.
* "Time Gypsy" is about physics and time travel. I loved it, others likely wouldn't care a whole lot.
* "Travel Agency" is about the lands within books.
* "Ringing Up Baby" is a wonderful story with a wonderful twist. Anyone who interacts with young children will like it.
* "Guys Day Out" is one of the most touching stories that I've read in a long time. It's about a boy with Down Syndrome. It's painful to read. Be warned.
* "Portable Childhoods" is an amazing story about a single mother raising a child. Unlike absolutely everything else on this list, there are no fantastic elements, no magic, no gimmicks. It's just a collection of thoughts and observations and is amazing in it's shear honesty. If you have kids or are planning to, it's a must read.

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