Another sublime compilation from a consistently impressive wordsmith.
Characters in this volume of short stories shuffle through lives steeped in regret, uncertainty, and the inevitability of death.
In the opening tale, “The Woman Who Loved Trees,” an aging poet writes his latest verse. But as he reflects on a past that entails fame and praise that no longer interest him, he may be anticipating and welcoming death. Others in this book are more fearful of the end. Rascoe, for example, a blacksmith in “Ironwork,” scoffs at ostentatious newspaper headlines. But as 1999 comes to a close, those headlines, coupled with Rascoe’s ominous dreams, make Y2K a truly daunting forthcoming event. But Lowell’s stories aren’t typically bleak, notwithstanding the despondency that many of her characters endure. In “The Frog Prince,” Teresa Slade is on a “surprise vacation” with her husband, Ray, and her daughter, Claire. Though her overwhelming unhappiness is apparent, Teresa clings to hope, however fleeting it is. As in the author’s earlier work, the tales here are set mostly in Arizona and neighboring states, including the outstanding eponymous tale. In it, Elizabeth Ryding leaves her contemptible boyfriend in Alaska and returns to Arizona, her home state. But as her mother is oddly unavailable, she stays with her delightfully assertive Aunt Tinny along with, quite possibly, a ghost. Lowell displays a knack for indelible, concise descriptions and subtle humor. “The Witch of the Stacks,” for one, begins with: “Long, long ago, almost before computers.” In other instances, characters provide the charm, like Aunt Tinny—“Ahnt,” she repeatedly stresses—who answers her door with a sizable Rottweiler at her side and a hefty Colt .45 in her hand. The author also plays with different narrative forms: In “Love and Death,” a collection (within this collection) of “short short stories,” there’s flash fiction as well as a fragmented tale showcasing a killer’s frightening perspective.
Another sublime compilation from a consistently impressive wordsmith. (acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-68003-193-5
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Texas Review Press
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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