I didn’t know Lena Valencia before a couple of weeks ago when Electric Lit published a story from this collection. I loved it, and found more by her for a bigger post. Then I ordered the book.

Mystery Lights, Valencia’s first novel, is a collection of literary horror fiction. Ten short stories, most with some sinister human or supernatural force involved. The protagonists are all women, but the stories vary widely in style. Many of them have a cinematic quality to them — either something brief that feels like a setup for a slasher thriller (“Dogs”, “You Can Never Be Too Sure”), an episode of something like The Outer Limits (“Mystery Lights”), or even a short-run HBO series (“The Reclamation”). There are also recurring themes of mother-daughter alienation and lots and lots of spooky things in the desert.

Here’s a quote from an interview Valencia did with Brooklyn Rail about the book, that validates my own impressions of it. I didn’t read this until after I was done the book:

Mystery Lights is the title of a story in the book, and I chose it for the collection because it conveys an almost pulpy sci-fi sensibility, which is something that a lot of these stories are flirting with.

And I definitely had movies in my mind as I was writing these stories. For some of them, I was visualizing them as if watching them on a screen. I was thinking a lot about how light and dark work on the page.

Mission accomplished!

One of the spooky things is a phenomenon that gives the book its title. The Marfa Lights are a thing in Texas that I didn’t know about until now. Here’s a fun piece in Texas Monthly that goes deep into the lore, and comes out as a bit of a well-written wet blanket on the fun.

The stories are all engaging and memorable — Valencia excels at channeling classic horror dread, the slow creep of certainty that something ain’t right — and many of them have a throwback, pulpy feel to them. She does setting extremely well, a snowed-in college dorm on Thanksgiving weekend, a desert hike with smoke-filled air obscuring the way, a creepy retirement home. The desert figures prominently in at least half of these stories, and the sense of isolation and danger sets a sinister mood.

Turns out there’s a good reason for that. In the Brooklyn Rail interview, she talks about the desert too:

The desert is a place I’m familiar with, but it’s not a place I’m from, which is why most of the characters in the book are outsiders encountering it maybe for the first time. They’re pretty unprepared. And immediately that brings this sense of tension to the story. It makes me very anxious, watching or reading about someone facing a natural space and they’re unprepared for it. 

The last story in the book has a callback to the one published in Electric Lit, which was a nice touch. The idea of all of these stories existing in a shared universe is a good one that has rolled around in my head in the days since finishing the book.

In the first story, “Dogs”, a mother takes a walk while listening to a playlist made by her daughter, and marvels at the depth of feeling in the music. Turns out Valencia also made us a playlist of songs to suit each story in the collection, you can read about them here, at Largehearted Boy. The songs line up pretty well, and I discovered a couple of records in there that I’m going to be listening to more of.

Mystery Lights is a fun, surprising collection, and I could see some of these stories being a springboard for a novel or screenplay.

(aside: that’s a clever thing that he’s doing over at Largehearted Boy, be sure to peruse his stuff, there’s lots there)

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