In recent years, several important critics have suggested that Scottish author Mackay (The Artist’s Window, 1999, etc.) is...
The romantic, bizarre, and sometimes murderous underpinnings of seemingly drab suburban lives are deftly revealed in ten densely written tales..
Mackay’s distinctive trick of inhabiting multiple points of view in even comparatively brief compass gives her stories an arresting and wonderfully tangled texture, and her vivid confrontational style is richly seasoned by spectacularly acute and amusing sidelong observations (e.g., a neighborhood busybody is “a pillar or something smaller, such as a hassock, of a local evangelical church”; a tarty young woman’s bold countenance is like “a cat’s, who rubs up against your legs while knowing there is a dead bird behind the sofa”). The terrors of domesticity are memorably skewered in the edgy title piece, about an unwelcome relative’s return “home” from Hong Kong and the resumption of his poisonous effect on his brother’s family; “The Last Sand Dance,” in which a faded actress and a failed playwright compulsively erode the flimsy fabric of their loveless marriage; and especially “Barbarians,” a withering portrayal of a “serial adulterer” complacent in his own (fourth) marriage of convenience, casually exploiting all the children he produces and encounters. Larger “worlds” are explored in a savage lampoon of pompous aging-male bonding (“The Wilderness Club”); the tale of a lonely shopgirl victimized—and moved to vengeance—by a loathsome molester (“A Silver Summer”); and the superbly imagined “The Day of the Gecko,” which features a woman editor whose fixation on a Bruce Chatwin–like writer-traveler blossoms into a fever dream fantasy complete with wickedly funny allusions to Tennessee Williams’s Night of the Iguana.
In recent years, several important critics have suggested that Scottish author Mackay (The Artist’s Window, 1999, etc.) is one of Great Britain’s, if not the world’s, best writers. This fifth brilliant and exciting collection shows us exactly why they think so.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-55921-247-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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