An often beautiful and insightful set of stories about people both lonely and in love.
Sherlock’s debut short story collection examines characters who push forward, no matter how strongly memory holds them back.
In these tales, a man suffering from a brain trauma distances himself from his sister and navigates his isolation in a world that seems to have left him behind; a retiree turns to sculpture for self-expression, much to the chagrin of his housing community and at the expense of a friendship; and a middle-aged man accompanies his parents on a cruise, trying to cut the cord, with the probable breakup of his marriage hovering in the background. Many of these tales refreshingly put middle-aged characters front and center, whether it’s an heiress conned by her Irish cousin, or a wife discovering that her husband has a second family and that her own life is a sham. There are nods to other works of literature in each of these stories, including a Mark Twain enthusiast, a Harriet Beecher Stowe tour, along with burgeoning authors, English professors, and Shakespearean quotes. These touches could have seemed too self-aware, but instead they’re kind reminders that literature shows us how to live. Profound wisdom bookends these stories, although some are dragged down by too many needless details and back story that take away from the depth of emotion. One of Sherlock’s strengths, however, is believable, rich dialogue. This is an author who knows her characters well, whether they’re minor or major, and who has shaped their individual voices. Nowhere is this command of character more pronounced than in the title story, which may also be the one with the most depth. It explores a relationship between a mother and her daughter who has Alzheimer’s—a role reversal that’s beautiful and saddening. Their mental estrangement between is only reconciled with music, even if those moments of calm are fleeting.
An often beautiful and insightful set of stories about people both lonely and in love.Pub Date: March 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5087-8850-8
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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