Dubiously substantial enough for an entire volume, though two or three well worthy entrants help carry the rest along.
From Gavell (1919–67), 16 mostly rural stories, many set in the south of Texas where she was born.
Kaye Gibbons calls Gavell’s work “magnificent,” places it in the “ageless, classic grand era” of the American short story and declares its life-blood to come from its use of “our regional language.” It’s true that the pieces—all perfectly honed—do evoke the classic tones of, say, Eudora Welty or Katherine Anne Porter. But at the same time they’re often thin to the point of anemia or familiar enough to seem more antique than classic. At her best, Gavell is very good, as in “The Rotifer” (included in The Best American Short Stories for 1968 and in the best of the century in 2000), an adept placing together of three disparate but similar moments in a young woman’s life. Elsewhere, though, she relies on melodramatic extremes of character to push a story into being at the cost of psychological depth, as in “Penelope,” where a middle-class girl gives a gift to poor Mexicans; “Lois in the Country,” about an almost perversely reserved and cautious mother; or “His Beautiful Handwriting,” about a schoolteacher whose well-known mentor was insensitive and bigoted. Sometimes the stories remain at the level of little more than anecdote, as do “Yankee Traders” (a couple goes antiquing) and the title story (a schoolboy tells his mother he needs a play costume—the next day). Still, in execution Gavell never stumbles, and when her ambitions rise to the level of her abilities, the results can be notable—as in the elegantly simple closing tale, “The Blessing,” about belief, marriage, and the nature of dedication over three generations of a rural Texas family.
Dubiously substantial enough for an entire volume, though two or three well worthy entrants help carry the rest along.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50612-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
Carefully worked tales that are as good as many and better than most.
A first collection from Irish-born Keegan spans the Atlantic, touching down in rural Ireland and the southern US—with results often familiar or stretched-for, yet deftly done and alluringly readable.
In the title story, a happily married woman wants to find out what it’s like to have sex with someone else—and does so indeed, in a psychological clunker that crosses Hitchcock with O. Henry while remaining ever-intriguing to the eye. A near-wizardry of language and detail, too, closes the volume, with “The Ginger Rogers Sermon,” when a pubescent girl in Ireland, sexually curious, brings about the suicide of a hulking lumberman in a tone-perfect but morally inert story. In between are longer and shorter, greater and lesser tales. Among the better are “Men and Women,” about a suffering Irish farmwife who at last rebels against a cruelly domineering husband; the southern-set “Ride If You Dare,” about a couple who shyly meet after running personals ads; and “Stay Close to the Water’s Edge,” about a Harvard student who despises—and is despised by—his millionaire stepfather. Psychologically more thin or commonplace are “Storms,” told by an Irish daughter whose mother went mad; “Where the Water’s Deepest,” a snippet about an au pair afraid of “losing” her charge; or “The Singing Cashier”—based on fact, we’re rather pointlessly told—about a couple who, unbeknownst to their neighbors, commit “hideous acts on teenage girls.” Keegan’s best include the more maturely conceived “Passport Soup,” about a man devoured by guilt and grief after his daughter goes missing while in his care; “Quare Name for a Boy,” in which a young woman, pregnant by a single-fling boyfriend whom she no longer has an interest in, determines that she’ll go on into motherhood without him; and the nicely sustained “Sisters”—one dutiful and plain, the other lovely and self-indulgent—who come to a symbolically perfect end.
Carefully worked tales that are as good as many and better than most.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-87113-779-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Welcome, a warm welcome, for this Collection of Short Works, viz. pleasures. Whether it's "Who Am I This Time," the little clerk in the hardware store who only comes alive on his local small town stage; or the schizzy inheritor of "The Foster Portfolio" (pushing close to a million dollars) who lives frugally (his mother) and has to work weekends (playing an obsessed piano in a joint—his father); or the well remembered (Sunday Times) review of the Random House "Dictionary"; or his storm window, bathroom enclosure salesman who appears in two pieces. Quite a few of these stories, including that of the title, are science fiction and full of someday surprises—the Ethical Birth Control pill which destroys the impulse at the source; or the euphoric gadget which supplies killowatts of happiness. There's the shattering "All the King's Horses," a ghastly game of human chess, and the nicest kind of sentiment in "The Kid Nobody Could Handle" and "Adam," All in all, a versatile, volatile talent—inventive, catchy, charming.
Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1968
ISBN: 0385333501
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1968
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