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SECRET LIVES by Catherine Browder

SECRET LIVES

by Catherine Browder

Pub Date: July 31st, 2003
ISBN: 0-87074-480-1
Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ.

Meandering snapshots of outsiders seeking contentment in their daily lives.

Russian, Japanese, Latino, or Iranian immigrants in bland America, Americans in stoic Japan, and hard-working, underappreciated, rustic moms in the harsh Midwest all seek equilibrium as they struggle with a foreignness that swings between intrinsic and ethereal. Throughout Brower’s second collection (after The Clay That Breathes, 1991), a literary-minded tendency toward understated, stark realism collides with the tug of sentimental naiveté to leave characters in interesting enough activities or situations—amnesia, archery, earthquakes—yet sketched in a broad, generalized manner. Sincere immigrants deliver pizza, a tough, generous cop seeks Celtic music, a fiery Latina woman is fixated on her teenaged brother-in-law, and a gentle Japanese animal-lover prowls her neighborhood for neglected dogs. In 11 stories, the consistent, compelling disconnect between characters and their adopted homes is simultaneously affirmative and isolating, yet never quite satisfying. The values and situations seem to exist in a simplistically undefined and timeless past (where a criminal can climb through a window and “insult” a woman rather than “rape” her), and while characters are generally sympathetic, their dialogue remains stubbornly un-lifelike. Truncated endings abound, as with the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of a practical Navy wife in “Girls Like Us.” The story moves well through the meat of the drama—a husband’s absenteeism provokes a complex and juicy affair—but ends in the arduous: the quick reunification of husband and wife, difficult birth, ideal adoption, heartfelt explanation to the older children. Best is “The Juice-Seller’s Bird,” in which an American nun’s ambivalent feelings toward a pair of orphans—one ugly, reticent, and unwaveringly devoted to her charmed, enchanting baby sister—are revealed against the disconcerting backdrop of Mexico City’s devastating earthquake.

Going for the elliptical and understated, Browder arrives instead at the obscure and flat.