Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom.
'But what is the ninth kingdom?' she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. 'It is the kingdom of the frozen will,' comes the reply. 'There is no going back.'
Sylvia Plath's strange, dark tale of independence over infanticide, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.
Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.***
Red neon lights blinked automatically, and a voice grated from the loudspeaker.
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(@FaberBooks, 3 January 2019, ebook, 23 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I'm a huge fan of the author's poetry and love her novel The Bell Jar so was really looking forward to this story. I thought it was an incredible story and it felt like a much, much longer piece of writing. The power of the story is what's not on the page, we're never told exactly what the ninth kingdom is or why Mary's parents sent her there and insisted she get on this specific train but we're given enough information to reach our own horrifying conclusions. I thought this was an incredible piece of writing.
