New Century Reading

The Thing Around Your Neck

It seems lately that I've been talking about books that I'm scared to read, because I so loved the author's previous book that I'm afraid of being disappointed. I was relieved and delighted by Kate Walbert's latest book, A Short History of Women, which overcame the concerns I had after loving Our Kind. But I still approached this book with the same level of trepidation.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the National Book Critics Circle finalist Half of a Yellow Sun, which ranks way up there on my list of personal favorites. So naturally I was worried when The Thing Around Your Neck appeared. Would I like it as well? And was it even fair to compare them, since the former is a novel, and the new book is a collection of short stories?

Here's the thing. Adichie is a tremendously gifted writer. These short stories are things of beauty. They're stories of Nigerians in America, and in Nigeria, and the cultural clashes that occur on both sides. A group of African writers congregate for a writer's conference where race and gender matter in devastating ways; a young nanny finds herself drawn to the child's mother; a Nigerian emigrant living as an up-and-coming American finds her husband has a mistress back in the home country; and a young woman begins her life as the bride of an arranged marriage.

These are imaginative, deeply textured ideas, but as a whole, they're not as strong as her previous novel. The father in "On Monday of Last Week" teeters dangerously on the edge of stereotype. The second person narration in the title story feels strained. But perhaps the worst thing I can say--and this is something that could also easily be seen as a compliment--is that many of the stories felt compressed, as if they had enough potential to become a novel, but were restrained into the shorter form. The short story is a difficult form to write, and those who do it well (William Trevor, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro) make the story complete, make the length exactly right for what they're doing. In fact, Jhumpa Lahiri's recent collection Unaccustomed Earth accomplished what I think Adichie was trying to do with her book: look at life in America when you're not from America, and life going back and forth between various countries and cultures. But Lahiri's stories were complete in and of themselves, whereas Adichie's feel as if too much has been left out. In particular, the story "The Headstrong Historian" left me frustrated and longing for a full book-length version.

Which is to say, Adichie is a very gifted writer--I may just prefer novels by her to stories.  

Our Kind

Every year I read the National Book Award finalists and winner, and just about every year I wonder how the winner is chosen. Not that 2004’s winner, The News From Paraguay by Lily Tuck, isn’t a good book, well-written, interesting characters, all of the good qualities an award finalist should have. But compared to Kate Walbert’s Our Kind, Tuck’s book should have been a runner-up.

 

Our Kind is the story of a group of women, all part of the 1950’s country club set, who have aged past their supposed glory years. Their husbands have died or left them for younger trophy wives; their children have grown, moved away, forgotten them or come to view them as irrelevant. But these women—Judy, Barbara, Canoe, Esther, Louise and Suzie—are finding ways to reinvent themselves and their lives to make them meaningful to themselves and each other, if not to the family members who have abandoned them. Among their sometimes aimless activities: an intervention for a handsome local realtor who has come to represent the men in (or out of) their lives; rescuing geese; conducting a book club at a local hospice, while reflecting on activities they once thought were important: baby photos, hat parties, education.

 

If it doesn’t sound like much happens, well, that may be true. But Walbert conquers two difficult writing hurdles with her novel. The first is the “novel in stories” structure. More often than not this type of structure becomes a series of stories in which a few are good while the rest are merely filler; rarely can an author pull this off in a worthwhile manner (the last one I can remember succeeding is Jean Harfenist’s A Brief History of the Flood). But Walbert succeeds with this form, with each story a gem, highly successful on its own merits, yet together the novel is more than a sum of its parts.

 

The second hurdle Walbert manages to overcome is the point of view: first person plural. The book is narrated by the women as a whole, a “we” narration that at first is jarring and leads the reader to suspect a tricky, self-conscious writing. But soon the narration begins to make perfect sense. This book is about a group of women who together represent a generation, a time and place, and their story is a group story. Even as individual pieces are being told, they’re all reflective of the group and the generation, such as this description of their devotion to Dr. Spock:

 

“They’re in their birthday suits, the babies, and having none of it, their tiny tomato faces flush with rage. It is all we can do to sit on our hands; if we were breast-feeding, our breasts would leak, but we’ve dried them out on the advice of Dr. Spock; a little crying, he tells us, builds character.

 

“We want character: character and brains and looks and lives led a la Amelia Earhart…In other countries, Dr. Spock writes, mothers leave babies out in the snow and those girls grow to be warriors.

 

“We want warriors, we’d tell them. Warriors with character. Brilliant, gorgeous warriors with character. And pilot licenses.”

 

By the end of this unusual but compelling novel in stories, Walbert has shed light on a nearly forgotten and often-denigrated generation of women. For that, and for her courage in tackling difficult writing and succeeding, she should have won.

Things That Fall From the Sky

A male nanny with subconscious Nabokovian feelings for his eighteen-month old charge. A family splintering apart while the sky literally – and slowly – falls down around them. A society actively working to earn the second coming of Christ. A husband and son struggling to come to terms with the loss of their wife and mother during a power outage. These are the fantastical and heartbreakingly realistic stories that make up Kevin Brockmeier's debut collection, Things That Fall From the Sky.

 

Brockmeier's collection almost defies description, but these stories could almost be described as fairy tales, or in some cases, morality tales. Magical realism exists alongside mental illness and grief, raising interesting questions of the true state of the American psyche. The characters that populate these stories are driven by love, or something akin to it, and their lives are shaped by forces outside their control, as described by the narrator of "Apples:"

 

"The fall of my thirteenth year was a time when all the important events in my life seemed to cluster together like bees. On the same sun-bright afternoon that I won the school spelling bee, my parents sat across from me in the living room and told me that they no longer loved each other, and a great gray ocean of wishlessness filled our house. Days like this would surface around me every few weeks: I was chased to my front door by a stray dog on the same day that I had my braces removed. I answered the phone to an obscene caller on the same night that my mom went to live with a stranger. And on the same November day that I received my first kiss from Allison Downey, I watched my Bible teacher, Coach Schramm, get killed by a bucket."

 

The writing in these stories is sometimes dreamy, sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes deeply realistic and other times rooted in fantasy, but never is there a sense of a writer losing control. Brockmeier's language and characters join forces to create stories that are sometimes creepy, as in "These Hands" with its overly devoted male nanny; other times, such as "Space," with its father and son facing grief, Brockmeier is muted and heartbreaking. And occasionally he's laugh-out-loud funny, as in "A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstiltskin," which brings the fairy tale character – or half of him, as is the case – into the present time to face to trials and tribulations of modern life. Yet even when laughing at Half of Rumpelstiltskin's exploits, there is a glimpse of tremendous pain that gives the whole, absurd premise life and poignance.

 

Brockmeier is a highly imaginative, deeply involving writer with a world of tales to tell, a world larger than the everyday one we all cope with. His worlds, even when based on fantasy, aren't escapist; they're created to illuminate the effort and pain involved in living in our own, smaller world.

A Brief History of the Flood

In A Brief History of the Flood, Jean Harfenist tells a coming-of-age story in a series of connected short stories, two literary conventions that have proved the downfall of many a writer. But Harfenist's book is a strong example of what such conventions can do if they are handled correctly; she stays away from the tired clichés of both genres and instead delivers a compelling story with taut writing and all-too-human characters.

Lillian Anderson, from Acorn Lake, MN, is a young girl in a large household headed by an alcoholic father and a manic-depressive mother. The flood faced by the Anderson family is literal and metaphoric: their run-down house and slipshod lifestyle threatens to engulf them at every turn. In a series of stories that follows a linear timeframe, Lillian loses her virginity, watches her parents seek deeper into their respective crises, and learns the ways of boys and girls, men and women, while struggling to find her place in the world.

What could be a depressing tale is redeemed by Lillian's smart narrative, sometimes arch and sometimes heartbreaking but always real. Harfenist has a way with words but doesn't use them in a superficial, "showing off" kind of way. Instead her gift with language is used to enhance Lillian's character and sharpen her observations of life in Acorn Lake, such as when Lillian arrives home to find her mother with another man:

"A thin-lipped, guilty-looking man is sitting at the table, shirt open to show off a mat of brown chest hair that stops suddenly at the base of his naked neck. Happy's resting her black muzzle on his thigh. Labs will go whoring for a pat on the head.

"Mom tightens the belt on Dad's bathrobe. 'Lillian, I'd like you to meet Biff Brookes, a dear old friend of ours from Minnewashka Valley. He dropped by hoping to catch your father at home. Biff, this is my daughter Lillian and this is her friend Irene.'

"No one moves. Mom looks shell-shocked, and this Biff doesn't have the guts to stand up and say hello, but my pal Irene Marlene Patschky is grinning like she just discovered birth control pills.

"There is no coffee.

"Biff can't help himself a minute longer. He looks at Irene's ankles, then up, over every curve, up five feet, eleven inches until his neck is cricked and his jaw is slacked.

"Irene arches her back to bring her sizable chest closer to his face, and squinting her already slitty eyes at him, she says, 'We don't want to interrupt anything. Lillian and I will go outside and lie down in the sun.' She can sweep a room clean of guilt, doesn't matter who owns it or whether they earned it. Usually that's what you want in a friend."

Each story stands on its own, yet together they create a larger work that meshes seamlessly with no weak links. The concept of a novel in stories is a tough one to pull off; it seems there are always a handful of stories that become filler material, but Harfenist has overcome that pitfall by writing stories that all matter and contribute to the larger story. A Brief History of the Flood is an impressive achievement, but what's more important, it's a wonderful book to read.

Best American Short Stories 2007

Generally I am a big fan of the Best American Short Stories annual series. I think it’s a well-run anthology, highlighting both the celeb-literati and little-knowns who deserve more attention. Having a guest editor choose the top 20 stories each year gives the series a wider range of opinions and choices than anthologies or series who stay with one particular editor.

 

That said, I was intrigued to see Stephen King listed as the editor for the 2007 edition. I’ve often felt he’s an underrated writer himself, someone who has frequently risen above what’s perceived as the limitations of genre writing. In his introduction to this book, King makes it clear that he took his role seriously, going above and beyond the reading duty normally assigned to the guest editor (120 stories selected by the series editor). He’s worried about the state of the American short story, and that itself seems hopeful; short stories always seem to get short shrift from the reading public, and yet at their best, they are works of art on their own. But King also said he read several “kick-ass” stories that made him excited about the world of short fiction.

 

Kick-ass, of course, ends up a subjective concept. Out of the 20 stories in this year’s book, I found six that I personally consider kick-ass: T.C. Boyle’s “Balto,” Lauren Groff’s “L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story,” Aryn Kyle’s “Allegiance,” Alice Munro’s “Dimension,” Richard Russo’s “Horseman,” and Jim Shepard’s “Sans Farine.” Other stories, including Kate Walbert’s “Do Something” and John Barth’s “Toga Party,” were highly readable and stayed with me after I put the book down, but kick-ass? Not quite. Others, like Mary Gordon’s “Eleanor’s Music” and Louis Auchincloss’ “Pa’s Darling” left me wondering what stories were left out of this book so these could have space—undeservedly. The Gordon story is downright maudlin, and Auchincloss’ is the tired story of a woman struggling with the death of her overbearing father. In the right hands, there is still something fresh to be written about that story, but Auchincloss’ story isn’t it.

 

Overall, it’s always worth reading BASS just to see what’s been happening recently in the world of literature. Some of the names (Barth, Munro) are long-respected writers, while others (Walbert, Shepard) are in the earlier stages of their careers, yet seem poised to have a long and successful life in writing.

 

Beyond that—well, Mr. King, you and I don’t see quite eye-to-eye about what makes a kick-ass story.

Best American Short Stories 2006

It’s that time of year again—time for the esteemed entry into the annual series, The Best American Short Stories. The 2006 volume is edited by guest editor Ann Patchett, and her essay opening the book is a tart and well-thought-out overview of the role of the short story:

 

“The first thing the short story needs to think about is casting off the role of The Novel’s Little Sidekick, the practice run, the warm-up act…Who’s to say the short story writer has a novel in him? Is a sprinter accepted to the team on the condition that she will also run a marathon?”

 

A collection that begins with the hardy advice to accept short stories on their own terms, rather than as short-versions or warm-ups to a novel, is a book after my own heart. It’s a book that certainly should include a story by Alice Munro, the acclaimed (and deservedly so) master of the short story, and this book does.

 

However, it’s not Munro’s finest work. That’s not Patchett’s fault; she only had so many Munro stories to choose from during the prescribed period. But the overall choices sometimes feel questionable. The opening store is a haunting beauty, the luminous “Once the Shore” by Paul Yoon. But other stories feel forced in their drama, such as Edith Pearlman’s “Self-Reliance,” or simply go on too long, ruining a good concept, such as Ann Beattie’s “Mr. Nobody at All,” which is a marvelous parody of modern-day memorial services, but would have been even more marvelous at half the length.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I love the short story, read hundreds of them myself every year for sheer pleasure. I think Patchett’s got it right when she complains about writers playing with the form, writers who are not short story writers at heart. But if that’s the case, it would have been nice to see more masters of the form in this collection. More (and better) Munro, for example; or looking at the 100 runner-up titles in the back, I see nothing listed by William Trevor. Did he not publish anything during that year? Because the latest work of his that I’ve read has been wonderful. He didn’t earn a spot in the top 120? Lorrie Moore is a finalist, but Ann Beattie’s story made the book?

 

If I sound disappointed, it’s because I am. I’m a big fan both of this series and of Ann Patchett. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but the stories that are included in this year’s volume don’t strike me as the cream of the crop, for the most part.

 

The good thing about this series is that there will be a new guest editor next year. Someone else will pick the final 20. And I’ll be ready and waiting when it comes out in print.

Best American Short Stories 2005

If it’s fall, then it’s time for the annual literary tradition of Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Short Stories. The perennial series is selected initially by Katrina Kenison each year, with the final winners selected by a rotating guest editor. For 2005, the guest editor is Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon.

Chabon’s selections are pleasingly diverse, from the singular elegance of Alice Munro’s “Silence,” to Joy Williams’ eerie “The Girls,” to the supernaturally/emotionally devastating “Stone Animals” by Kelly Link. In his introduction, Chabon notes that he reads primarily for entertainment, yet his definition of entertainment isn’t shallow, as entertainment is often defined. Instead, his selections cover a broad range of human experience, past and present, realistic and supernatural, all entertaining, but all illuminating scenes of life, pleasant and not.

Some of the highlights of the current collection include the incomparable Munro’s story about a woman whose adult daughter disappears into a secluded cult, and how the mother comes to terms with the deafening silence of the daughter’s absence. J. Robert Lennon’s “Eight Pieces for the Left Hand” is a collection of short pieces, somewhat O’Henry-esque in nature. David Bezmozgis’ “Natasha” is a coming-of-age story with a particularly, brutally real-life element to it. Rishi Reddi’s “Justice Shiva Ram Murthy” addresses culture shock and the difficulties of being an elderly immigrant in a new land. Charles D’Ambrosio’s “The Scheme of Things” follows con artists at odds with each other when they find an elderly couple to target.

This year’s edition has a wide array of both realistic fiction (“Silence,” “The Scheme of Things”) and fiction that borders on supernatural or speculative (“Stone Animals,” “Hart and Boot”). It’s easy to see how Chabon views good stories as entertaining; while the themes of such stories as “Natasha” are all too real and distressing, the story itself is compelling. The stories include such supposedly “small” slice of life pieces as Nathaniel Bellows’ “First Four Measures,” in which a young boy learns a hard life lesson, to the emotionally-charged supernatural “Stone Animals,” in which a household in crisis finds their property being attacked in external ways.  

Some of the writing is ethereal, more focused on style than content, while other stories are written in a hard-edged, often funny style, such as the opening to Tim Pratt’s “Hart and Boot”:

“The man’s head and torso emerged from a hole in the ground, just a few feet from the rock where Pearl

Hart sat smoking her last cigarette. His appearance surprised her, and she cussed him at some length. The man stared at her during the outpouring of profanity, his mild face smeared with dirt, his body still half-submerged. Pearl stopped cussing and squinted at him in the fading sunlight. He didn’t have on a shirt, and Pearl, being Pearl, wondered immediately if he was wearing pants.”

Once again, the Best American series delivers a volume of highly readable—and, as Chabon would likely agree—entertaining stories.

Best American Short Stories 2004

Ah, it’s that time of year again: time for the annual edition of Houghton Mifflin’s exemplary anthology series, The Best American Short Stories. The 2004 collection is guest edited by one of my favorite writers, Lorrie Moore (although can I just say, Lorrie! You should be writing! Don’t spend too much time reading everyone else’s stuff!), and so I went into the book with heightened expectations. Lucky for me, Moore and series editor, Katrina Kenison, did not disappoint.

 

My one quibble might be with the number of well-known authors. Sometimes this series sheds light on little-known writers who deserve a wider audience, but

Moore

chose mostly high-profile authors: John Updike, Alice Munro, Annie Proulx, Charles D’Ambrosio, Edward P. Jones, and Thomas McGuane, all of whom had their stories originally published in The New Yorker. But at the same time, it’s hard to argue that their stories don’t deserve to be here; these are writers at the top of their game, and their stories are wonderful contributions to this series. Alice Munro, in particular, keeps writing and publishing some of the most beautiful and complex stories of any short story writer today, and her story “Runaway” is no exception.

 

Among the other gems in this year’s collection is the opening story, Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” a deceptively simple story about an alcoholic homeless Indian in Seattle who sees what he believes to be his grandmother’s powwow regalia in a pawn shop window and sets out to find the money to buy it. Paula Fox’s entry, “Grace,” spotlights some of the lonely, lost people in today’s society who can only recognize their own emptiness when confronted with the companionship of a pet. And Charles D’Ambrosio’s story “Screenwriter,” set in a mental hospital, considers the fragile nature of sanity, especially when human relationships are involved.

 

There are critics who periodically claim the short story is dead; that readership in general is down, and those reading fiction only read novels. The Best American Short Stories series consistently demonstrates that there are artists out there creating wonderful stories that are not simply condensed novels, but works of art that stand on their own and would not benefit from being stretched into a novel. Readers who avoid the short story would do well to give them another chance, and this series is one of the best ways to explore the story.

Best American Short Stories 2003

I’m a sucker for this series. Every fall I start itching for the arrival of the latest Best American Short Stories with its brightly colored cover and guest writer/editor. Series editor Katrina Kenison culls through thousands of short stories to deliver 120 to the guest editor, who then chooses 20 for publication. The outcome, of course, is dependent on the quality of fiction published during the year, and there have been years where the pickings were slim. This year’s edition, selected by Walter Mosley, does not disappoint; it must have been a good year for short stories.

 

Published in publications as large and grandiose as The New Yorker or as trendy as Zoetrope and Tin House, the stories include pieces by well-established authors such as E.L. Doctorow and Louise Erdrich, but also by writers in the early stages of their careers, such as Ryan Harty and Dean Paschal.

 

The highlights of this diverse collection, for me, were Ryan Harty’s “Why the Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down,” a haunting and eerie story of the father of a robot child who is having seizures, and Kevin Brockmeier’s heartbreaking “Space” (included in his amazing collection, Things That Fall From the Sky), in which a father and son struggle to come to terms with the death of their wife and mother. Adam Haslett’s story, “Devotion,” is quiet but powerful (and can be found in his collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here) as it examines the results of a long-ago decision made by a brother on behalf of his sister. ZZ Packer’s contribution, “Every Tongue Shall Confess” (included in her collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere) is a riotous but humane look at an evangelical women’s faith and loneliness, a topic which could have been clichéd or condescending in less capable hands than Packer’s. Dean Paschal’s “Moriya” follows a mechanically minded boy as he learns the deepest secrets of a robotic doll.

 

And now that I’ve read them, some of them more than once, I have little choice but to wait for 2004’s edition. Of course, as noted above, most of these stories have appeared or are set to appear in future collections by the individual authors. Looks like I’ll have plenty of choice reading material for the winter ahead.    

Best American Short Stories 2002

What can I say: I'm not an objective critic when it comes to Houghton Mifflin's Best American Short Stories series. I await each year's release like some people wait for the Super Bowl. I have a great deal of bookshelf space allotted to these brightly-colored volumes, each reflecting the (somewhat subjective) preferences of the revolving guest editors. The primary editorial selections are made by Katrina Kenison, who reads literally thousands of short stories each year in publications well-known and obscure; she then culls them down to 120 for the guest editor, who is usually a luminary of contemporary American literature. They, in turn, select what they believe to be the finest 20, with the remaining 100 referenced at the end.

What never fails to amaze me is the wide range of choices selected by the guest editor, who often chooses work very dissimilar to their own. These editors are nearly always generous with their praise and their range of choices. Sue Miller, the guest editor for 2002, is no exception. The stories comprising her volume vary from well-established story writers like Alice Munro and Richard Ford to less known writers like Meg Mullins and Karl Iagnemma. The stories are set from current day all the way back to the early 1900's, and take place all over the U.S. as well as Canada, Europe and post-World War II Japan.

The sheer enjoyment that comes from wallowing in these stories is not only of the high quality of each, but of the representation of the collective quality of today's writers. Imaginative, detailed, surprising, and always well written, these stories show that fiction in America is live and well.

As for personal favorites, I have several, but this is again an admittedly subjective list. Any time Alice Munro appears, she tops my list, and "Family Furnishings" was one of the best stories I read in The New Yorker last year. Michael Chabon's "Along the Frontage Road" and Richard Ford's "Puppy" both take seemingly innocent events and use them to inform and transform. Beth Lordan's "Digging," which is a twisty-turny tale of generations of Irish-Americans, uses a wonderful narrative technique that could have fallen apart in lesser hands. Melissa Hardy's "The Heifer," possibly my overall favorite, takes a decidedly saccharine-free view at pioneer life.

The bottom line is that readers can't go wrong when picking up a copy of Best American Short Stories. Unlike a novel, or a collection of stories by one author, there's little risk of not finding something worth reading in this collection.