Review of The Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente

Is there anything she can't do? Catherynne Valente's oeuvre not only covers a swathe of genres and sub-genres, but does so in a variety of styles and approaches that make putting her fiction in a box impossible. Ensuring that task is truly out of reach is the Japan, Japan-adjacent, Japan-inspired, and Japan touched short story collection: The Melancholy of Mechagirl (2013).

The Melancholy of Mechagirl kicks off with the eponymous poem. The zig-zag of the title becomes inherent as Valente takes the reader on a mini-journey through the soul of a Japanese teen girl. “Ink, Water, Milk” is a 3x3 grid, columns and rows the same names, or as Valente describes it, like three cells from a film roll, one laid on top of the other on a light box. More stories than story, it is a short but brilliant interplay of color, history, emotion, myth, procreation, all bleeding one into the other, separate yet part of the same whole. One of the best of the collection.

Like the thirteen stations of the cross, “Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai” is a series of interconnected vignettes, from the dreams of the tapir, through birth and creation as well as questions of dreams vs reality, and into the inherent disappointment. As advertized, “Ghosts of Gunkanjima” features the whispers of slave ghosts from an abandoned Japanese coal mine previously used to house WWII prisoners. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time” is a braiding of various world myths and cosmologies, set against autobiographical (?) musing on self and creativity, etc. Very Plath—mythopoeic Plath, but Plath.

A world and a secondary world, “One Breath, One Stroke” presents two separate realities that reflect one another—a calligrapher and their magical, mythical creation. Great story. One of, if not the most well-known Valente short story, “Fade to White” is a Fallout-esque novelette featuring a teen girl and boy being prepped for arranged marriage and parenthood. The story is cut with scenes featuring an editor taking a red pen to tv propaganda—nuclear war, fertility, domestic life, etc. While well-written, the story's premise is rather generic.

“The Emperor of Tsukayama Park” is the second poem in the collection. A short piece of classic nature, it is the lament of a concubine forced into situation not of her choosing. “Killswitch” is the short history of a video game which asks: Would you rather be a man or woman in life? Living up to the 'melancholy' in the title, “Memoirs of a Girl Who Failed to Be Born from a Peach” is the third and final poem in the collection, and is followed by “The Girl with Two Skins”, a tale of the dichotomous feminine, the domestic and the animal. It's a prose piece ostensibly about a fox woman coming to terms with herself.

Closing the collection is one of the best pieces of fiction Valente has ever composed, the novella “Silently and Very Fast”. A chameleon story that shifts underfoot, it tells of the birth of an AI and her/his/its highly metaphorical “coming-of-age”. A feast of language and scenes, it's a journey that leaves a mark on the reader and collection. My 'review' of the novella here is only a few sentences as its almost something that needs to be experienced to be believed.

In the end, The Melancholy of Mechagirl is a collection with a poetic soul, and a collection to be savored for ti. It cannot be rushed in an evening, such is the dynamism and subtlety of Valente's prose; read too much and it will overwhelm. A story here, a story there, and the notes—front of the tongue to back—come to life. Otherwise it will be word spaghetti. And prose it properly is. Valente revels in the English language in a way no cheap simile here can do it justice—like a pig in mud. See? And while Japan is the common thread, it by no way overwhelms the collection. It is an unintentional love letter to Japan given how some of the pieces have only a passing connection to the island nation while others show a deep knowledge and appreciation of its lore and culture. It's more that editors saw the throughline in Valente's catalog rather than Valente consciously crafting a collection around a theme.

The following are the thirteen pieces collected in The Melancholy of Mechagirl—poems, short story, novelettes, and a novella:

The Melancholy of Mechagirl [poem]

Ink, Water, Milk

Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai

Ghosts of Gunkanjima

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time

One Breath, One Stroke

Story No. 6

Fade to White

The Emperor of Tsukayama Park [poem]

Killswitch

Memoirs of a Girl Who Failed to Be Born from a Peach [poem]

The Girl with Two Skins

Silently and Very Fast