I do not typically reach for Christmas books. And while I love Doctor Who and Star Trek (team TNG in case you are wondering), it takes a lot for me to shift my reading towards science fiction. However, I do love excellent storytelling, and I do like science fiction when I am in the middle of it. Genre and setting are almost irrelevant to me if the story is good enough.
When I finished reading Connie Willis’s Black Out and All Clear, I went looking for interviews with the author to try to understand her better. I had loved To Say Nothing About The Dog for several years and was so completely taken with her WWII books that I wanted to know more. When I heard about A Lot Like Christmas I wasn’t excited. Christmas and quirky science fiction. Just not my cup of tea.
But then, our Card Catalog friend Kristi Stansfield told me that she thought I might be surprised by the Christmas book. It was included in my Audible membership, so I decided to try it and see if I could like it.
“. . . Christmas stories are much harder to write than they look, partly because the subject matter is fairly limited, and people have been writing about it for merely two thousand years, so they’ve just about rung all the changes possible on snowmen, Santas, and shepherds . . . In addition, the Christmas-story writer has to walk a narrow tight-rope between sentiment and skepticism, and most writers end up falling off into either cynicism or mawkish sappiness. And yes, I am talking about Hans Christian Andersen. He invented the whole three-hanky sob story . . . even Dickens, who had killed a fair number of children in his books, didn’t kill Tiny Tim. But Andersen, apparently hell-bent on ruining everybody’s holidays, froze innocent children, melted loyal toys into lumps of lead, and chopped harmless fir trees who were just standing there in the first, minding their own business, into kindling.”
Wow! This is just the start of her introduction. She had my number and I loved what she was selling. She articulated so perfectly why I find Christmas stories so difficult to enjoy. Even if you do not like science fiction, the introduction is well worth reading. She gives us what she considers to be Dickens’s recipe for the perfect Christmas story.
“But Dickens did the impossible – he wrote not only a masterpiece that captures the essence of Christmas, but one that was good enough to survive its own fame.”
She goes on to explain that to write a good Christmas story you have to really love Christmas. You have to be a student of human nature, “remembering the past, truly seeing the present, imagining the consequences of our actions, and the ways we actually grow and change.” And you have to know a lot about writing. In A Christmas Carol “the plot’s terrific, the dialogue’s great, and the opening line – ‘Marley was dead: to being with’ is second only to ‘Call me Ishmael as one of the great opening lines of literature. He knew how to end stories, too, and that Christmas stories were supposed to have happy endings.”
And, my favorite part of the introduction, “If I sound passionate (and sometimes curmudgeonly) about Christmas stories, I am. I love Christmas in all its complexity and irony, and I love Christmas stories.”
With this recipe in mind, she has been writing Christmas stories for years and has pulled them together for this collection of short stories. All of them are deeply human while also being about everyday people. All of them deal with some aspect of humanity that needs the kind of transformation that only the Christ of Christmas can bring. And all of them end well even if it is unclear, while you are reading, how that can possibly happen. But, signature Connie Willis, all of them have a sci-fi twist of some kind as well. And that makes them more unpredictable and, frankly, more fun.
Whether the story is about an android who wants to be a Rockette or a shop girl who hates It’s A Wonderful Life, each story is delightfully ordinary with unexpected twists and turns. Some of the stories are more charming than others. One left me more sad than I think she intended. Some of her storylines made me feel like she was channeling a bit of Flannery O’Connor. But overall, I think I will likely revisit this one every year at Christmas, because it was that entertaining.
A word of caution: this book is absolutely for adults. While there is nothing explicit or graphic, one man is actively involved in an affair, others are contemplating divorce, and there are a handful of “f-words” that took me by surprise.
The audio is currently included in my Audible membership, and it is very well done. There are several narrators, but each story is read by only one voice. I also own the paperback which is 509 pages long. I bought the spine because I wanted her Christmas lists: An Advent Calendar of Great Christmas Movies to Watch, And a Score of Christmas Stories and Poems to Read After You’ve Gone to Bed, Plus Half-Dozen TV Shows You May Not Have Seen That Haven’t Succumbed to Very-Special-Christmas-Episode’ Syndrome.