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Here's a selection of short story reviews.
American
Visa by Wang Ping || Selected
Short Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
|| Open
Secrets by Alice Munro || Floating
in My Mother's Palm by Ursula Hegi ||
Secrets and
Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty ||
Life on Earth by
Sheila Ballantyne
American Visa by
Wang Ping
Coffee House Press, 1994
Short stories, 179 pages
"People suffer all the time," says Wang Ping,
author of American Visa. "The point is how to
suffer with grace, and how to grow stronger and
mature through the suffering." Indeed, the
character of the stalwart Seaweed, narrator of
these eleven linked stories, has been honed on
hardship. Narratives such as "Lipstick" and
"Lishao Village," offer glimpses into the
difficulties and drudgery during China's
Cultural Revolution--the way a smear of lipstick
startles the drab Maoist landscape, the
frustration in simply preparing a meal after a
long day of laboring in the fields. Many of the
stories focus on details of Chinese family life
and what it means to be a woman in China. Others
depict the alienation of the new immigrant in
New York City. In deceptively simple and
straightforward language, Wang invites the
reader into the life of the steadfast and
determined Seaweed as she weathers setback and
self-doubt, and never abandons herself or her
dreams. C.W.
Excerpt
I looked back at Lishao. Smoke rose so slowly
from the chimneys that it looked immobile, like
columns connecting the sky and the earth. Yaya
was swimming in the stream, diving occasionally
for a fish. Hong Hong was chasing a grasshopper
on the bank. Somewhere down the stream, peasant
women were washing vegetables and clothes. Their
wild laughter, instead of breaking the peace of
the landscape, brought greater harmony to my
soul. I scooped up a handful of water and drank
it. It tasted sweet. I fetched my barrels from
the bank and filled them with the cool stream
water. It would make a better meal for tonight
than the well water.
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Selected Short
Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer by I.B.
Singer, edited by Irving Howe
Random House, 1966
Short stories, 379 pages
The works of Nobel laureate I. B. Singer
bring to life a unique world that is gone
forever. With their dybbeks, demons, and
spirits, these tales recall a time when the Jews
of Europe, surrounded by their own people,
shared the same beliefs, the same superstitions,
the same history. Through such original
characters as virtuous rabbis, humble chimney
sweeps, and the evil wife-killer Pelte, Singer
demonstrates how poorly defended we humans are
from the compelling presence of evil. Some
stories, casually told by the demons themselves,
reveal how the demons work in our midst. Singer
knew his own people well, but he understood
more. His stories, their strong and involving
plots, offer a thought-provoking view of life.
The story dominates, however, as Singer is,
first and foremost, a storyteller. R.T.
Excerpt
I, a demon, bear witness that there are no
more demons left. Why demons, when man himself
is a demon? Why persuade to evil someone who is
already convinced? I am the last of the
persuaders. I board in an attic in Tishevitz and
draw my sustenance from a Yiddish storybook, a
left-over from the days before the great
catastrophe. The stories in the book are pablum
and duck milk, but the Hebrew letters have a
weight of their own. I don't have to tell you
that I am a Jew. What else, a Gentile? I've
heard that there are Gentile demons, but I don't
know any, nor do I wish to know them. Jacob and
Esau don't become in-laws.
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Open
Secrets by Alice Munro
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994
Short stories, 294 pages
In this book of short stories, Alice Munro
writes about women in transition, women whose
conventional lives are disoriented by time, and
who sometimes dare to make changes--changes only
fate will define as good or bad. These stories
are full of partial glimpses into ourselves. As
Louisa says in "Carried Away," "It's a lesson,
this story." But Munro's lessons must be
discerned by the reader, for she gives no
answers. Life's lessons are often as ambiguous
as life. J.M.
Excerpt
Millicent did not continue this useless
chore. She had plenty of other chores to do, and
plenty for her children to do. But at the time
of year when the walnuts would be lying in the
grass, she would think of that custom, and how
Dorrie must have expected to keep it up until
she died. A life of customs, of seasons. The
walnuts drop, the muskrats swim in the creek.
Dorrie must have believed that she was meant to
live so, in her reasonable eccentricity, her
manageable loneliness. Probably she would have
got another dog.
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Floating in My
Mother's Palm by Ursula Hegi
Vintage Books, 1990
Novel in stories, 187 pages
Even though this book calls itself a novel,
each chapter can stand alone as a self-contained
drama. Each story concerns one or another of the
characters who populate the small town of
Burgdorf, a small German town trying to regain
normalcy after World War II. Hanna Molter, the
curious and perceptive child narrator, relates
the stories she has learned from Trudi Montag, a
dwarf and the town gossip. In these stories we
meet Hanna's father, whose "one reckless act"
was to marry her unconventional mother; Rolf,
the housekeeper's illegitimate son and the first
boy Hanna ever kissed; and the townsman,
consumed by fear, who was destroyed by his seven
watchdogs. The presence of Hanna's mother in all
these stories, provides the stability and
security Hanna needs to freely explore her
world. Observed with intense interest and
compassion, the people of Burgdorf stir our
interest and compassion as well. J.G.
Excerpt
The other painting shows the quarry hole
during a storm, the somber sky highlighted by
streaks of silver that make the water look as if
it were bubbling. If I look closely, I can
almost see myself floating in my mother's palm.
Yet when I shut my eyes, I find a different
image of my mother releasing me as we dance in
the storm and twirl in separate circles that
cause the water to ripple from us in widening
rings which merge in one ebbing bracelet of
waves where the borders of the quarry meet the
water, far from the center where my mother and I
continue to spin our bodies in the radiant sheen
of lightning.
Secrets
and Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty
Penguin Books, 1977
Short stories, 130 pages
Set in Bernard MacLaverty's native Northern
Ireland, these stories are spare and quiet
tellings of ordinary people in ordinary
circumstances. Some are painful. The title story
probes the anguish of a young man at his beloved
great aunt's deathbed. He recalls how, as a boy,
he had been caught reading her hidden love
letters and how she vowed never to forgive him.
Some of the stories are humorous, but the humor
is tinged with sadness or desperation, as in the
story of the young wife and mother who
fantasizes about the chimney sweep with a
romantic Italian name. The old, fat,
soot-covered man who comes to the door quickly
returns her to the reality of her life--cleaning
and tending children. MacLaverty's skill is in
making each story, in only a few pages, as
satisfying as a novel. J.G.
Excerpt
His aunt had been small--her head on a level
with his when she sat at her table--and she
seemed to get smaller each year. Her skin fresh,
her hair white and waved and always well washed.
She wore no jewelry except a cameo ring on the
third finger of her right hand and, around her
neck, a gold locket on a chain. The white
classical profile on the ring was almost worn
through and had become translucent and
indistinct. The boy had noticed the ring when
she had read to him as a child. In the beginning
fairy tales, then as he got older extracts from
famous novels, Lorna Doone, Persuasion,
Wuthering Heights and her favourite extract,
because she read it so often, Pip's meeting with
Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.
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Life on Earth
by Sheila Ballantyne
Simon and Schuster, 1988
Short stories, 174 pages
At times provocatively irreverent, always
honest and insightful, Sheila Ballantyne
chronicles the ordinary absurdities of life
while addressing the bigger questions. Is there
a way to balance passion and obligation? How do
we know we're living the lives we're meant to
live? How do we know we're happy? In these
stories we see: a son agonize over choosing a
nursing home for his mother; a wife and mother
grieve as she tries to adjust and make sense of
her husband's seriously disabling kidney
disease; a daughter finally decide what to do
with the ashes of her dead father; the irony of
racing from California to Florida for Disney
World's Main Street U.S.A. Some of these stories
will make you laugh out loud, others press the
heart; if you are a middle class American woman
you will recognize yourself on every page. This
collection belongs on everyone's "must read"
list. C.W.
Excerpt
The years keep passing, but you're absorbed,
you hardly notice. You look back from time to
time, comparing what you have with what you
thought you'd have. You understand the split
between dream and reality, the tension that
split creates. In time, perhaps you say: You
can't live more that one life well; and
eventually, you decide. You aim for that one
thing--call it happiness. It can come when you
least expect it, although you worked for it; and
when it comes, it's often not what you had
thought of as being "it." It's usually something
ordinary--a thing so simple, you look back
afterward and think: That was it? and laugh.
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