A debut collection of 13 rather creepy stories, most describing ordinary people who undergo extraordinarily bizarre events. While not exactly a surrealist, Slavin has a warped sense of humor and enjoys rubbing the reader’s nose in her wit. What’s surprising is the ease with which she draws one into her gags, which are fantastic rather than symbolic and carry themselves off with good grace. The title story is typical of the collection as a whole: it describes a crusty middle-aged WASP who becomes involved with a Jewish real-estate developer—mainly because of his interest in her family connections—and chooses to (further) scandalize her crowd by amputating her own leg (with a Cartier knife) at the local country club. In “Swallowed Whole,” we—re given a new variant on the sex-hungry housewife tale, in which a suburban matron becomes so infatuated with the boy who mows her lawn that she swallows him whole and carries on an affair with him in the privacy of her own stomach. “Dentaphilia” describes the travails of a young woman who grows teeth all over her body and eventually tires of the process, while “Blighted” tells of another woman’s unhappy relations with the oak tree that falls onto her house. Some of the stories are more straightforward: “Covered” concerns a middle-aged man trying to cope with the death of his mother and the slow realization that he has failed in his career; and “Rare Is a Cold Red Center” portrays an alcoholic waitress’s disappointment with her own life. Plenty of domestic angst is available, as in “Pudding” (about a middle-aged Soccer Mom’s discontent at the direction her family is headed in). Purposefully weird but sharp: Slavin has a careful ear and a good eye for detail—even if her tastes run to the baroque. Despite the outlandishness of her constructions, there is a precision to her narration that’s remarkable.
Pub Date: July 7, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-6085-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
The down-to-earth stories in this debut collection from a Chicago Tribune columnist are pleasing, although they occasionally fail to connect to larger themes. Several of Obejas's narrators are lesbians trying to understand how relationships ought to work. In ``Wrecks'' the narrator explains that she regularly gets into car accidents when romance fades, and since her girlfriend has just left her she is preparing for a crash. The narrator of ``The Cradleland'' confides her fantasy of being ravished in a public bathroom and worries about safe sex even between lesbians since her (male) roommate and best friend is dying of AIDS. In ``Forever'' a lesbian activist trying to sort our her past (she says of her ex-lover, ``We're good lesbians: we've been painfully breaking up for two years'') subjects her current lover to ``the porch test,'' which means trying to imagine the two of them old together, sitting in a rocking chair on a porch. These are very accessible, sweet stories that, while appealing, do not have the lasting effect of the darker work here. The title story, the history of an immigrant Cuban family from the daughter's point of view, is more successful as well as more complex. Fragmented memories contain telling details, such as the summer the narrator's father finally buys a television set after insisting for years that it would be too difficult to transport one back to Cuba, and therefore symbolically accepts that they will remain in the US. ``Above All, a Family Man'' follows a dying man and his married lover as they drive from Chicago to Santa Fe. It both traces their relationship back to its origins and covers the married Rogelio's insistence that he cannot be at risk for AIDS because he is not gay. In ``Man Oh Man'' a heroin addict tells of the last time shooting up with a man named Ice who is now dead. Brings the marginalized front and center.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-939416-92-1
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Cleis
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
Many readers will see themselves in—and find themselves rooting for—the women in Malatji’s solid debut.
The complex romantic lives of South African women drive these astute short stories.
The women in Malatji’s collection are "black diamonds," members of the black middle class that sprang up after apartheid ended, or they're striving to join them. Though the stories are not connected, what unites them is each woman’s professional ambition and, more obviously, the compromises they are—or aren't—willing to make within their intimate relationships with men. If there is a statement that illustrates the spirit of the book, it’s this advice, given to Anna, the central character of the title story, by her mother: “My girl! You must know that to sustain marriage as a woman, you need a certain level of stupidity!” Whether a woman is willing to suspend her intelligence to placate a man is the core question of most of the stories. For many of the characters, the answer is an unequivocal "no." Suffering the male fools who populate their lives is something they decline to do, choosing to remain single, seemingly embracing the idea that “as much as we cannot survive without human affection, we also can’t survive on love alone.” For others, the decision is more complicated. In “My Perfect Husband,” a dutiful churchgoing wife is compelled to feign stupidity to aid her husband, who has brought tragedy to their lives. But the twist at the end is a satisfying high point, one of many examples Malotji presents of the gambits women make in the delicate dance that is romantic partnership. Woven into the insightful observations on love and relationships is the omnipresent tension between tradition and the ways that being a South African woman today challenges previously held ideas about women’s roles.
Many readers will see themselves in—and find themselves rooting for—the women in Malatji’s solid debut.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946395-03-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Catalyst Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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