T. Kingfisher is starting to become something of a familiar face on this blog with a review of Thornhedge last week and Jackalope Wives before that.

What Moves The Dead perhaps shares some kinship with Thornhedge in that it is also a kind of retelling, but not of a fairytale or myth like we might expect, but of a horror classic, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House of Usher.

I’ll admit that although the review of that story appeared before this one did on the blog, I had read most of this story before starting on Poe. In reality, I was a solid 25% of the way through before it occurred to me that the two were related, and about 70% through before I decided I’d better stop and read Poe first.

Whenever I come across these types of retellings, the kind which so obviously share their roots in a previous piece of literature, I cannot help but compare the two and look for deeper meanings. The correlation between H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Dr. Moreau seems fairly obvious, and Moreno-Garcia’s intent for the revision more so (similar subversions can be found in the realm of Greek Mythology in Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Galatea).

Kingfisher seems to approach Poe’s work more from a place of curiosity and wanting to clarify much of the ambiguity in the original. She explains it on the Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre podcast (S2E1 @ 27:27min):

“And I happened on Usher and I was like, I haven’t reread any Poe in a while. And I read Fall of the House of Usher and it’s obsessed with rotting vegetation and fungus. And it’s really short. And they don’t explain hardly anything. And the narrator is frankly kind of a lousy friend because – or bad in a crisis, one of the two, because when Madeline Usher rises from the dead, her brother screams falls down and the narrator just runs out of the house, which then collapses. Okay: running out of the house was a good thing cause the house was collapsing, but it, you stop check for a pulse on his friend who, you know, might have just had a bad shock and fainted. He’s like, Nope, dude, is definitely dead and Madeline Usher is, you know, wandering around, obviously having been buried alive and was clearly not dead but no, he’s just gonna run out of the house and not check anybody for a pulse or call a doctor. And I’m like, this guy is terrible at a crisis. And also I wanted to know what was wrong with, Madeline Usher because you get buried alive, that is a problem. And so I started reading about catalepsy which is what it was diagnosed as at the time and also fungus, there was just so much about fungus and I’m like, okay, obviously these two must be linked somehow.”

I would say ‘obsessed’ (with fungus) is perhaps overstating slightly. The word fungus is only mentioned twice in Poe’s work (same as the word opium) but one of those times is in italics and fairly close to the word ‘sentience’, so it isn’t hard to see how Kingfisher may have sparked upon that and wanted to see where it went.

A small thing, but one which stood out to me as interesting which ties back pretty directly to the original was Roderic’s musicianship. In the original, he plays the guitar, and its discussed that he improvises over a particular tune, ‘Von Weber’s Last Waltz’ (actually written by Carl Gottlieb Reißiger not Carl Maria von Weber). This piece was originally written for the piano, and apparently only started to be performed on the guitar AFTER the success of Poe’s short story.

Kingfisher doesn’t mention a particular tune (that I can recall), but does put Roderic on the piano and in a way, kind of ‘fixes’ the original work.

All of these interactions with Poe’s original story are kind of fun, and interesting to consider while reading, but I felt that the parts of What Moves the Dead that shined the brightest, were the parts that were unique to this retelling. Kingfisher mentioned (above) how short the original is, and while I wouldn’t say WMtD is long by any means, the added work pays off immensely in the areas of Character, and Worldbuilding.

We hardly get to know anyone in Poe’s original. The narrator is just a vehicle and Madeline isn’t even given any lines. Roderic is the character we understand best, with the actual house itself being a kind of quasi second.

Kingfisher’s version workers wonders in changing this, fleshing out a whole backstory for the narrator along with an invented country, Galacia, for them to hail from, unique in the quirks of its language which allow for many more pronouns than English. Madeline plays a larger role as well and so does the house physician. The house itself actually manages a kind of speech (through Madeline) and presents something of a moral dilemma towards the end.

And despite all of these added elements, Kingfisher still manages to continue — or really improve upon — the kind of creeping dread prevalent in the original.

One final thing to consider is this novella’s contention as a 2023 Hugo finalist in the novella category. I haven’t yet read any of the other finalists aside from Where the Drowned Girls Go (sadly unreviewed here on A&A), which ended up winning the award. For what it’s worth, having only read two so far, I think I enjoyed What Moves the Dead a bit more as I may have hit some kind of saturation limit on Wayward Children books.

Give What Moves the Dead a Read?

Yes! I would say certainly give this one a shot. If you’re worried about not having read The Fall of the House of Usher (or not having read it recently), don’t worry. I almost think the story is more enjoyable on its own without the comparisons. Certainly the parts which I liked most about the tale were those not included in the original, mostly the worldbuilding surrounding Galacia, and the narrator’s backstory and use of invented pronouns.

I’m seeing the that there is already a sequel out: What Feasts at Night. I’m looking forward to it already and wondering if it will be another retelling, and if so, of what?

That’s all I have this week. How do we feel about retellings like this? Leave your thoughts in the comment section!

See you next time.