FAMILY REUNION: And Other Stories

by Barry Fleming ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1991

The lead novella in this final and posthumous book is, aptly enough, a comic intrigue concerning a burial that manages, on the way to the family plot, to skewer a lot of southern and northern pretensions in vintage Fleming style (Captain Bennett's Folly, etc.). The narrator here, self-important womanizer Bob Otis, is busy bringing out his novel via a vanity press when a long-lost cousin from the North (""Up There"") calls, wanting to bring ""Dad"" home for burial in the family plot. Otis's wife has left, ""walking out with our five-year-old (who was becoming more real every minute like a negative in the developer)."" Even local members of the family-to-be-reunited can't remember each other's names, and things get further complicated when a black couple from the British West Indies with a similar name, having seen a Broadway play about the family homestead (by Lucinda Fannin of Lucinderella, 1988), arrive to avail themselves of the facilities. The comedy rolls along effortlessly, then comes up against a rather abrupt end, giving it an unfinished quality. Four short stories unevenly pad the collection: ""Afternoon in the Country"" and ""Happy New Year, Mr. Ganaway"" involve supernatural visitations or premonitions (the former, with overtones of ""The Open Window,"" is the more successful); ""War Memorial"" reflects on Nazism and the South in a hospital venue, while ""Beach Party,"" with an abandoned hostess in a leg brace, reads like an unintentional parody of Flannery O'Connor. A graceful writer with a good ear, Fleming is at his best with the wild yet fundamentally gentle satire on familiar turf that he brings off in ""Family Reunion""; the stories seem, by comparison, a writer's exercises and a publisher's afterthoughts.

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1991

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991

Categories: FICTION