Fantasy Book Critic: Lucky Girl How I Became A Horror Writer by M. Rickert (reviewed by Daniel H.)

OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, M. Rickert (she/her) worked as a kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, Disneyland balloon vendor, and personnel assistant in Sequoia National Park. She has published the short story collections Map of Dreams, Holiday, and You Have Never Been Here. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, was published in 2014, and won the Locus award. Her second novel, The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie, was published in 2021. She is the winner of the Crawford Award, World Fantasy Award, and Shirley Jackson Award and has been nominated for the Nebula, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, and British Science Fiction Award. She currently lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: Lucky Girl, How I Became A Horror Writer is a story told across Christmases, rooted in loneliness, horror, and the ever-lurking presence of Krampus written by World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award-winning author M. Rickert.

Ro, a struggling writer, knows all too well the pain and solitude that holiday festivities can awaken. When she meets four people at the local diner – all of them strangers and as lonely as Ro is – she invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner. And when that party seems in danger of an early end, she suggests they each tell a ghost story. One that's seasonally appropriate. But Ro will come to learn that the horrors hidden in a Christmas – or one's past – can never be tamed once unleashed.

FORMAT/INFO: Lucky Girl is a novella of 112 pages written from the first-person perspective of main character Roanoke (Ro). It released from Tordotcom in September 2022 in paperback and e-book formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Let’s get the Krampus in the room out of the way first. Most of the marketing and coverage of M. Rickert’s holiday-themed novella from last year lists the title as Lucky Girl, How I Became a Horror Writer. But a quick glance at the cover shows the sub-subtitle “A Krampus Story” writ larger than the primary. This may end up confusing some, as the folkloric Krampus only appears briefly in mention as a physical being. Yet, the phrase “ever-lurking presence of Krampus” in the official book blurb is still accurate. Lucky Girl is an ironic title about justice and retribution, the exact spirit of what the horned Christmas monster symbolizes. Just don’t expect an action horror here, filled with birch-rod, child-flailing antagonism.

Instead, Lucky Girl is a slow-build horror in the vein of classic ghost stories of one like M.R. James, built around gradual revelation of human monstrosity and trauma among this group of strangers who surreptitiously gather to exchange tales of unease amid holiday isolation. As the novella progresses the reader learns more about Ro and her seasonal companions through the relation of their ghost stories, of the horrific individual experiences that unite them in being alone, fearful of connection. How much of these stories are based in truth and how much are fabrications rests uncertain, but the novella’s conclusion uncovers deeper secret connections between members of the group than first known.

The strengths of Lucky Girl lie in its atmosphere and Rickert’s effective focus on those Krampus-themes of retribution and justice. These elements nicely coalesce within the character of Ro and her back-story, and her point-of-view development works extremely effectively through the novella, with Rickert landing the ultimate ending very nicely.

However, the other characters could have benefited from more development, and an extension of this novella to a longer format, or paring its ambition down to something shorter. A good deal of the length here comes from the episodic nature of the stories and the group’s meetings through time. Yet, that time doesn’t pass linearly, and Lucky Girl does some hopping between times (and Ro’s further pre-group past) in ways that detract from the pacing and momentum of the overall story.

In these regards I’d say that Lucky Girl therefore serves as a very faithful modern-day take on older gothic tales of ghosts or the weird, embracing things that can work well and complexities that can make it a bit muddled in drawing discrete ghost stories together into a surprising and unsettling ending.

CONCLUSION: Although a Christmas-themed endeavor, the novella originally released in September, and truly it serves as something far more general than imparting holiday vibes. If you passed up or missed Lucky Girl last year, I’d recommend seeking it out, either for an immediate subtly unneverving read or to keep in store for the Halloween through Christmas season. Just don’t go into this with any expectation that the Krampus character fits dominantly or directly within it. Readers familiar with Rickert’s stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, or elsewhere, should easily enjoy this offering, as will anyone with tastes that typically align to Ellen Datlow’s editorial preferences. Though Lucky Girl may not offer the satisfaction that a more developped and extended story could, the novella is a successful amuse-bouche of gothic fantasy in a modern setting.