The style and originality lacking in these 12 commonplace stories is almost made up for in sincerity. Ardizzone cares about the moral and social dimensions of growing up in ethnic Chicago during the '50s and '60s, even if he articulates his passion in leaden prose. Attentive to detail and atmosphere, the author seldom ventures here from home turf. The story ``Baseball Fever,'' in fact, seems to be an earlier version of Ardizzone's novel Heart of the Order (1986), complete with the deadly line drive by Danny Bacigalupo into the Adam's apple of Mickey Meenan. Chicago's north side is the setting for many of these humorless tales—like ``Nonna,'' about an aged immigrant woman who wanders the old neighborhood, unfamiliar with the new smells and sounds. Most of the pieces, though, concern a child's point of view, as with the young altar boy of ``The Eyes of the Children'' who wants to believe that the bleeding man seen in church was Christ; or another boy, in ``The Language of the Dead,'' who, falsely accused of starting a fight, freaks out when a Christian Brother smacks him around. The long ``Holy Cards'' also relies on that old favorite—the horrors of literally believing the Baltimore Catechism, which the protagonist subverts by developing a martyrology of the Chicago Cubs. Tortured sexuality is part of the profile here: In ``Idling,'' the narrator remembers his first girlfriend and his fumbling deflowering; ``Ladie's Choice'' offers the sexual confusions of a self-described greaser; and ``The Daughter and the Tradesman'' gives a Catholic girl's view as she brutally sacrifices her virginity. Warm memories of an ethnic mom surface on the occasion of her hospitalization in ``My Mother's Stories''; a father and son silently bond in ``Ritual,'' a fishing- trip tale; and a light note is managed in ``World Without End'' when a son escapes his overbearing parents by moving away, even though their visits revive all the conflicts. Nostalgic narratives with no frills.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-252-06483-6
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Univ. of Illinois
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.
Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Superb stylist L’Amour returns (End of the Drive, 1997, etc.), albeit posthumously, with ten stories never seen before in book form—and narrated in his usual hard-edged, close-cropped sentences, jutting up from under fierce blue skies. This is the first of four collections of L’Amour material expected from Bantam, edited by his daughter Angelique, featuring an eclectic mix of early historicals and adventure stories set in China, on the high seas, and in the boxing ring, all drawing from the author’s exploits as a carnival barker and from his mysterious and sundry travels. During this period, L’Amour was trying to break away from being a writer only of westerns. Also included is something of an update on Angelique’s progress with her father’s biography: i.e., a stunningly varied list of her father’s acquaintances from around the world whom she’d like to contact for her research. Meanwhile, in the title story here, a missionary’s daughter who crashes in northern Asia during the early years of the Sino-Japanese War is taken captive by a nomadic leader and kept as his wife for 15 years, until his death. When a plane lands, she must choose between taking her teenaged son back to civilization or leaving him alone with the nomads. In “By the Waters of San Tadeo,” set on the southern coast of Chile, Julie Marrat, whose father has just perished, is trapped in San Esteban, a gold field surrounded by impassable mountains, with only one inlet available for anyone’s escape. “Meeting at Falmouth,” a historical, takes place in January 1794 during a dreadful Atlantic storm: “Volleys of rain rattled along the cobblestones like a scattering of broken teeth.” In this a notorious American, unnamed until the last paragraph, helps Talleyrand flee to America. A master storyteller only whets the appetite for his next three volumes.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10963-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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