HAIR ON FIRE

McKenzie incorporates Eastern philosophical concepts into this assemblage of speculative tales.

In “A Ghost Story,” one of the pieces in this quirky collection, a married man goes on his yearly solo retreat to a remote beach community to walk, read, and meditate. When strange things start occurring in his rented cottage—utensils stick together, furniture is found stacked in strange piles—the man realizes he might not be alone. In “The Day the Children Remembered,” children across the globe are born with memories they should not possess. It soon becomes apparent that people are beginning to remember their past lives, a trend that completely upends society: “Episodes from their life before would at first appear like flashes or pieces to a puzzle. It was only when they reached a certain age—usually during the height of their teenage years—that the puzzle pieces would begin to fit together and show a pattern.” And in “Like a Man With his Hair on Fire,” a swami rumored to have many extraordinary abilities refuses to share them with anyone other than followers who are “like a man with his hair on fire looking for a pool of water.” On a trip to North America, however, he is confronted by an unworthy student who won’t take no for an answer. In these nine stories, McKenzie skirts the edge of the fantastic, from virtual reality to hidden patterns in paintings to the afterlife, to see what lessons are to be learned there. The author’s prose is simple and smooth, reminiscent in tone of the SF fables of Ted Chiang: “Suddenly, scientists and academics in all fields, from psychology to biology, were expressing their expert opinions in the abstract area of metaphysics, and specifically, on reincarnation—concepts that just years ago couldn’t even be mentioned without fear of reprisal from their colleagues.” Most of the stories feature Indian religious concepts like karma, samsara, or the quest for enlightenment. A streak of didacticism seems to run through McKenzie’s project—perhaps because of this, most of the stories don’t quite land. Even so, fans of a certain stripe of mysticism-tinged fiction will find much to enjoy.

An imaginative if only fitfully satisfying collection.