Cover Art: Vince Haig
- Winner: The Fantasy Hive End of Year Awards – Best Collection
- Longisted: British Science Fiction Awards
The employee of a library-planet grapples with industrial espionage. The connection between an indie comic and a local boogie-man is discovered by a group of friends. In a future museum of the mind, a nostalgia-addicted curator tries to understand the emotions of 20th century humans. An Anglo-Saxon traveller narrates her journey into the Artic regions to her Queen. A group of friends try to capture the last pink-footed goose on Planet Earth…
Marian Womack’s new collection of short stories shows us how the then and the now, the future and the past, are made of the same particles. Loneliness, nostalgia and its dark ghosts, and the possibilities for humanity if technology and preservation dovetail, are brought together with Womack’s characteristic crossing of genres, places and moods. Out Through the Window, Into the Dark is a collection for our and future times, movingly demonstrating the devastating consequences of our collective actions.
Read an extract at Literary Hub.
Listen to the Mini-Playlist.
Contents:
(Found) Prologue
I
Player/Creator/Emissary
Pink Footed
The Iceberg in my Living Room
Fox & Raven
Bluebeard Variations
At the Museum
M’s Awfully Big Adventure
II
Voyage to the White Sea
Ready or Not
What Would Kate Bush Do?
Out of the Window, Into the Dark
Blake’s Wife
Acknowledgements
“Confirms her as one of the modern masters of the short story form.” Jonathan Thornton
“Marian Womack writes stories with a watchful, intelligent eye on the world. The tales in this collection discuss many possibilities with a discomfiting yet poetic clarity I hugely admire.” Aliya Whiteley
“In this stunning collection, Marian Womack draws upon themes that are at once universal and intensely personal. Her tales evoke the wild worldbuilding of Ursula Le Guin and the unsettling domesticity of Shirley Jackson, with a meticulousness that’s highlighted by a Borgesian fascination with libraries. The stories in Out of the Window, Into the Dark are unpredictable, yet consistently affecting and rewarding – it’s a collection I’m certain I’ll return to often.” Tim Major
“Marian Womack is a formidable talent. Each story in Out of the Window, Into the Dark sparkles like cut-glass, offering readers a dazzling exploration of power, legacy, climate change, and the looming threat of extinction. A mesmeric must-read.” Helen Marshall
Marian Womack 