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    Carpe Glitter
    Carpe Glitter
    Carpe Glitter
    Ebook65 pages1 hour

    Carpe Glitter

    By Cat Rambo

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    What do you do when someone else's past forces itself on your own life? Sorting through the piles left behind by a grandmother who was both a stage magician and a hoarder, Persephone Aim finds a magical artifact from World War II that has shaped her family history. Faced with her mother's desperate attempt to take the artifact for herself, Persephone must decide whether to hold onto the past—or use it to reshape her future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMeerkat Shorts
    Release dateOct 29, 2019
    ISBN9781946154347
    Author

    Cat Rambo

    Cat Rambo (they/them) is an American fantasy and science fiction writer whose work has appeared in, among others, Asimov's, Weird Tales, Chiaroscuro, Talebones, and Strange Horizons. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, where they studied with John Barth and Steve Dixon, they also attended the Clarion West Writers' Workshop. They are currently the managing editor of Fantasy Magazine. They published a collection of stories, Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight, and their collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories, appeared in 2007. They live and write in Washington State, and “Cat Rambo” is their real name.

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    Reviews for Carpe Glitter

    4/5

    16 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What more is there to say? "Carpe Glitter" has just won the 2019 Nebula (awarded in 2020 for 2019 works) for best Novelette. It's a treat.I received a review copy of "Carpe Glitter" from Meercat Press through Netgalley.com.
    • 5/5
      Carpe Glitter in a finalist in the novelette Nebula Award category, and it's easy to see why. This 60-page story is engrossing from page 1 with its deep family drama with a supernatural spin. Persephone is a woman with a terrible task before her: cleaning through the hoard left behind from her late grandmother, a Vegas stage magician with an extra-magical bent. And not just one house to clean through, either, but three, all interconnected and full of rotting papers and weird odds and ends, the kinds of odds that bring government agents to the door--and even worse, Persephone's mother.I read through in one sitting and greatly enjoyed it. I also related on a personal level, as my grandma--like many in her generation--had the tendency to hoard as well, though fortunately not the kinds of materials in this novelette.
    • 5/5
      Publisher’s synopsis:What do you do when someone else’s past forces itself on your own life? Sorting through the piles left behind by a grandmother who was both a stage magician and a hoarder, Persephone Aim finds a magical artefact from World War II that has shaped her family’s history. Faced with her mother’s desperate attempt to take the artefact for herself, Persephone must decide whether to hold onto the past – or use it to reshape her future. As a child Persephone had loved being allowed to explore her grandmother Gloria’s labyrinthine home. It was an amalgam of three houses which had acquired various additions and extensions over the years, thus providing a magical fascination for a young child. One of her grandmother’s favourite expressions was carpe glitter and that shiny glitter, so redolent of her stage persona, was one of the things Persephone remembered best about her. However, at home she was a “grubby hoarder”, never throwing anything away, instead piling things up, in an apparently random fashion, to fill every room. It is only when Persephone inherits the house and begins sorting through decades of accumulated possessions, that she realises what a daunting task she has taken on. If she was being honest she was looking for treasure, but what she was finding was mostly worthless, much of it so old that it fell apart as she handled it, and even the things which held sparkling promise were turning out to be of little value.However, one intriguing object she does find during her first week in the house is a metal hand; fully-articulated and finely engraved with a pattern of swastikas and lightning bolts, it both fascinates and disturbs her. What is it? What is its significance? Why is her mother so desperate to gain possession of it? Little does Persephone realise that it holds the key to the long-held family secrets which have shaped her history, and that what she decides to do with it will affect her future. When I came to the end of this magical mystery story I was left feeling in awe of Cat Rambo’s ability to create, within just fifty-four pages, such a captivating, powerful and multi-layered tale. From the start I felt as though I was accompanying Persephone on her journey of discovery; as she uncovered the secrets of her family history through the layers of her grandmother’s possessions; as she tried to work out the significance of what she was unearthing and then as she faced making decisions about what to do with them. The increasing tension, ghostly creepiness and magical elements were handled in such an assured way that I found myself totally convinced by the unfolding story.The writing was so evocative that I could almost see the dust and smell the smells which were released as she started on this overwhelming task. I could feel the ancient magazines crumbling as she touched them, feel her horror at the creatures which scurried away as she disturbed their comfortable habitat (my skin actually felt itchy as I was reading!) and could share her moments of despair, when she felt unable to decide which artefacts were significant (or valuable!) enough to keep and which should be rejected. I felt equally caught up in her yearning for answers, in her need to understand how to piece together what had gone before; what she should hold onto from the past and what she needed to relinquish in order to be free to create her own history and to move towards the future. I found this story a revelatory joy to read and especially loved the various ways in which the author combined numerous fantasy elements and dark humour with an exploration of complex family relationships. In a psychologically convincing way, and with well-depicted characters, she demonstrated how, following a death, secrets will often emerge which enable survivors to make better sense of their history. The story made me reflect on how most of us accumulate possessions which are of particular significance to us, but which are then left to others to dispose of, offering no clues as to why we kept them in the first place! These thought-provoking themes would certainly provide some interesting points for reading group discussions, as would some reflections on the consummate skill of the author in demonstrating, with beautiful, lyrical prose, just how powerful such a short story can be ... carpe glitter seems to capture my experience of reading this magical piece of work!With thanks to Meerkat Press for a copy of this wonderfully memorable story in exchange for an honest review.

    Book preview

    Carpe Glitter - Cat Rambo

    finalcover.png

    Table of Contents

    COVER

    TITLE PAGE

    CARPE GLITTER

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    ALSO BY CAT RAMBO

    COPYRIGHT

    Landmarks

    Cover

    CARPE

    GLITTER

    a novelette by

    CAT RAMBO

    Meerkat Press

    Atlanta

    For Wayne, Always.

    CARPE GLITTER, my grandmother Gloria always said. Seize the glitter.

    And that was what I remembered best about her, the glitter: a dazzle of rhinestone, a waft of Patou Joy, lipstick like a red banner across her mouth. Underneath all that, a wiry little old lady with silver hair and vampire-pale skin.

    Not that she was a vampire, of course. But Gloria Aim hung with everyone who was anyone during her days in the Vegas crowd. Celebrities, presidents, journalists, they all came to her show at the Sparkle Dome, watched her strut her stuff in a black top hat and fishnet stockings, conjuring flames and doves (never card tricks, which she hated), making ghosts speak to loved ones in the audience. And when she stepped off the stage, she left in a scintillating dazzle, like a fairy queen stepping off her throne.

    All that shine. And at home?

    She was a grubby hoarder.

    I mopped sweat off my forehead with the hem of my T-shirt and attacked another pile of magazines. Dust wafted up to fill my nostrils and make me sneeze, drifted down to coat the hairs on my forearms with grit. Something had rotted in the corner; I was doing that side once I’d cleared a path to it and breathing through my mouth in the meantime.

    This had once been intended as a guest room, but it had been taken over by a troupe of china-headed dolls, stacked atop piles of brittle newspapers and magazines. No cat pee—I’d been spared that in these back rooms, closed off for at least a couple of decades.

    Grandmother had bought the house when she was at the height of her first fortune. She’d just burst onto the stage magician scene, a woman from Brooklyn who’d trained herself in sleight of hand and studied under the most famous female stage magician of her time, Susan Day.

    The nearest heap of magazines, in fact, flaking away at my touch, showed Grandmother and her mentor on the uppermost cover, a poster from their brief tour together, just after World War II. Glamorous older Day, blonde hair worn in a sleek chignon and eyes blue as turquoise. Grandmother bright and shiny not just from the rhinestones glittering across her chest, but starry-eyed—her grin so wide it stretched her mouth.

    The stack held dozens of copies of the same issue, no matter how far down I went. A swarm of silverfish scurried away as I lifted the last one. I’d get the room cleared before bringing out my arsenal of bug spray for an onslaught.

    Yellowed confetti bits fell away as I put the stack on the heap to be bagged up and trashed. By now I’d learned that paper flaking that badly meant the appraiser’s regretful headshake and the murmur, Too badly eroded, Miss Aim.

    As with each of the seven rooms I’d managed so far, I sorted the contents into piles. Throw away was by far the largest. To be appraised had interesting things in it beyond the scads of dolls Grandmother had collected. Keep was actually two subpiles, one for Mother and one for me.

    Object after object to be evaluated and sorted. Old magazines and flutters of candy wrappers. So much clothing, most of it absurdly formal, scratchy with ancient starch. Theater props piled on top of grab bags she’d picked up at church rummage sales, still unopened. Half-filled perfume bottles and compacts full of sweet dust.

    And then there were oddities: a picture stitched of human hair, showing a castle on a cliff; an enormous crystal ball, a good foot and a half wide; a mechanical banjo trio that played itself, complete with a library of antebellum songs to choose from; a basket stuffed with sandalwood fans.

    The rotting thing turned out to be a heap of furs that, when stirred, sent up a stench reminiscent of old sauerkraut that sent me out into the hallway for a while to lean against the yellowing wallpaper and breathe in fresher air.

    The doll collection was worth a good bit, perhaps, I’d been told. But nothing on the scale of financial windfall I had hoped for. Grandmother had been wealthy, even though she kept her spending discreet, aside from this strange mishmash of a house. Where had all that money gone?

    And why had she saved everything? I thought that it was perhaps a return to her childhood days, which had been uncertain and full of moves. My great-grandfather had been a con man, always on the edge

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