Strange Horizons, August 11, 2014

“The Air We Breathe is Stormy, Stormy” by Rich Larson

Reviewed by Louis West

“The Air We Breathe is Stormy, Stormy,” by Rich Larson, is a melancholy story about Cedric, a man so appalled by the physical changes in his pregnant girlfriend, that he flees halfway around the world to work on an oil platform in the Baltic Sea. In the midst of his hard work, loneliness and occasional weed-induced stupor, Cedric discovers a selkie that wants to come aboard. She’s cold and hungry, having lived among the trash and polluted waters around the platform. Cedric is able to secret her into his room, keep her fed and sneak her into the showers all without being discovered. She stays, reads the platform’s maintenance manuals, and eventually learns to work Cedric’s kindle. They become lovers. She learns of his girlfriend and asks if he’s here working for three. He confesses it’s because he’d shoved his girlfriend during their last argument, injuring her. He fears becoming brutal like his father and badly hurting his girlfriend’s child-to-be. His admission seems to change him and, after the selkie leaves, he tries to reconcile with his girlfriend.

How much of this is symbolism—is the selkie real or just a figment of Cedric’s drug-addled loneliness—is unclear. Certainly the selkie is a construct used to get Cedric to rethink his life choices, and without her this wouldn’t be a fantasy tale. Outside of that, the selkie seems superfluous to the primary story, which is that of a loser running from himself until he can’t run anymore. It’s an unimaginative retelling of the old story about coming to terms with the imagined demon in the mirror, about being afraid of what you might become as opposed to fighting for what you yearn to be. I would pass.