David Lawrence Morse takes readers on a fantastic – and fantastical – journey in his debut short story collection, The Book of Disbelieving. The book wastes no time in presenting itself as a thoughtful, magical collection of short fiction. “The Great Fish,” the opening story, follows a whale named Ceta, and the villagers who travel aboard her back, collecting drinking water from her blowhole and eating fish lice from her skin. The villagers exist happily enough in a state of blissful ignorance, but the insistence of the possibility of an outside world – one of land and birds and stillness – instills in them a collective sense of curiosity that ultimately causes one character to face exile. As the story unfolds, Morse delivers not only a captivating work of fiction, but also one that challenges the notions of truth, belief, and conformity.
Truth appears again as a theme in the standout story “Death of the Oarsman.” Near the opening, the narrator says, “We believed no one could die on our island, the gods forbade it, and disaster would follow. And so when the sickness came upon one of us, the oarsmen would row away with the dying islander over the horizon. My father the oarsman and his father before and his father and on and on. No one knew where he went, and no one knew what became of the bodies, but the bark was always empty when my father rowed it back to shore. Some said he floated somewhere over the horizon, waiting for the dying to die, and then heaved the body into the sea. But most imagined there was a place, a watery grave, a shining coral garden among the darker waters, where the bodies could be released and remain.” But readers follow the rest of the story to see how the truth unravels – if it does. Where do the dead – the dying – really go?
While truth is a connecting theme of many of the stories in the collection, the author also attentively explores a vast array of other themes. For example, in “Spring Leapers,” a work that will likely appeal to fans of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Alexander Weinstein’s “Rocket Night,” and Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Morse takes a look at ritual and faith, as villagers take an annual plunge from their roofs to prove their religious devotion. In “The Watch,” Morse turns his focus to examining the complexities of domestic life. Here, a woman is haunted by the object that her dead father leaves her, but her family, in their daily lives and actions, haunts her just the same.
In the titular story, Morse showcases memory and its many facets. With “The Book of Disbelieving,” a man whose wife has recently died finds “a book with a stiff cardboard cover, bound in brown-check cloth, of large, square bulk with an attached ribbon bookmark.” A scrapbook, if you will. What he finds inside it, however, isn’t what he expects. He uncovers written recollections of moments from his own life – unsettling recollections that he believes are not entirely true. He is left to think of not only what his wife’s stories about his own life might mean, but with questions about the very nature of his life.
Throughout The Book of Disbelieving, Morse remains an assured storyteller. The language sings. The plots are layered. The characters come alive. In these nine stories, the situations and worlds often veer into the fantastical, but the heart of these works remain steadfastly in the human world. There is emotion within these pages – emotion that feels authentic and true. In The Book of Disbelieving, the magic is quite real.
The Book of Disbelieving
By David Lawrence Morse
Published: July 18, 2023
Sarabande Books
Southern Review of Books 