ALL SET ABOUT WITH FEVER TREES

by Pam Durban ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 14, 1985

Most of the seven stories in this first volume rest on the tired stuff of good intentions, but near the end there is a sharpening of judgment that results in some fine moments, indeed. The next-to-last story, ""Notes Toward an Understanding of My Father's Novel,"" is a poised and moving achievement. The earlier pieces have more about them of the writing-seminars than of life. ""This Heat"" works conscientiously toward its culminating symbols in a story of grief among mill hands, but it remains more literary and rhetorical than moving. ""World of Women"" is the story of a boy's awakening to sex, done capably but not freshly. ""In Darkness;"" which looks at a marital crisis through the eyes of a ten-year-old daughter, declines at crucial moments into the greeting-card sentiment of words that merely blather on (""You had to be brave. . .a special kind of bravery and love that kept you standing in the dark, in the silence, looking for the light inside you, believing it was there""). The final two stories, however, for the most part leave the dross behind and give a hard clear light by themselves. The title story, about a girl growing up, comes to life thanks in part to a grandmother who at 60 leaves Georgia for a mission in the Belgian Congo. But the big difference is that Durban's eye has sharpened and become her own. ""Notes Toward an Understanding. . ."" may be one of the best stories we have of WW II--confident, alert, and unfalsified. A father has been marked for life by the war he fought in as little more than a boy. ""The wind was blowing toward us,"" says his daughter, 40 years later, in the back yard, ""blowing his pant legs flat against him, and I noticed that one leg was thinner than the other and my heart hammered. I might as well have come across him naked, and I looked away."" A book two-thirds undistinguished, but that rises in the end to that genuine, wonderful thing, real fiction. Previous publication in magazines including Tri-Quarterly, The Georgia Review, and Ohio Review.

Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Godine

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION