Tag Archives: short story

Seasonal Work – Short But Not Sweet

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I am usually not a fan of short stories, unless they are by Saki or O’Henry, but my tastes have changed during the neverending pandemic. Laura Lippman’s collection of sassy and wry short stories in Seasonal Work has small bites of reality mixed with humor, and sometimes horror. Just right for the impatient cynic who needs a bit of time being in somebody else’s world – but only for a short time. Lippman notes her stories were written between 2007 and 2019 but her Baltimore settings are often much earlier – before the world turned upside down with the pandemic but also before awareness of language and ideas became more carefully adjudicated.

Lippman offers a peek into the lives of children, a grifter stepfather, a woman in her prime, a book stealer, a con artist, victims who get revenge, a ghost who finally escapes into the light, and more.

One of my favorites is “The Everyday Wife” with references to watching the Watergate trial and The NewlyWed game on TV in the seventies. Judith, the young bored wife, has a mother who calls her every morning to check in. Judith walks the neighborhood and soon discovers its secrets with an exciting event leading to Judith working for NSA. I have a friend who worked for NSA and her response was close to Judith’s when asked what she did: “I can’t tell you…”

Having recently seen the movie “Enola Holmes” about Sherlock’s younger sister who yearns to be a detective like her brother, I had high expectations for eleven year old Sheila Locke-Holmes in Lippman’s collection. With “Harriet the Spy” as her tutor, Sheila snoops but accidentally uncovers a piece of her father’s past in her mother’s jewelry box. The ending has a poignant lesson in growing up.

The collection is divided into four sections, with three stories in each section. The last section has “Slow Burner,” about a cheating husband, a suspicious wife, and an extra cell phone. The last story, “Just one More,” the only story updated to today, is set during the pandemic. Amazing what people will do to stay entertained during lockdown.

All the stories feature strong women and follow the O’Henry model of ending with a surprise but more in keeping with Edgar Allan Poe. In some cases, you will know it is coming, but others are unexpected.

A great colllection of short stories. I thought I might just read one and come back later, but I found myself looking forward to the next and the next, until I’d read them all. But, beware, if you are looking for a cozy mystery, Lippman does not go there. Revenge and murder are more her style.

One of my favorite books by Laura Lippman is “Sunburn” – here’s my review from when it was first published in 2018:

In Sunburn, Lippman keeps the reader off balance, acknowledging as the story opens that Polly Costello has killed her abusive husband and abandoned her two girls, one disabled with cerebral palsy. Nevertheless, Polly seems to be a sympathetic character – her life sentence is pardoned by the governor, and she wins an insurance settlement against the hospital where her disabled daughter was born. The handsome private detective, hired by a crooked insurance salesman for his share of the money, falls in love with her. Will he turn her in or run away with her? Lippman’s clever twists are not that simple, and she maintains the suspense – juggling the good guys and bad guys, and flipping intentions back and forth with another murder in the middle of it all. It’s fun to read, and the ending is a satisfying surprise I did not predict.

Time to Read Americanah

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an award winning novelist and short story writer, produced a short story for the Book Review of the New York Times – The Arrangements.    The title had me  wondering if the story would mimic Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements, set in Nantucket, but the political cartoon on the page promised something better.  No matter what your politics, this “Work of Fiction,” will have you wondering and laughing.

9780307455925_p0_v2_s192x300     I have not yet read Americanah, Adichie’s acclaimed story of a young Nigerian woman who emigrates to the United States for a university education and stays for work.  I now have it on order at the library.

Have you read it?

The Matisse Stories

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9780786158270_p0_v1_s192x300Only three short stories in this small volume – The Matisse Stories – by A.S. Byatt, with each story revolving around a Matisse painting.

Each includes a feminine protagonist pushed to her limit. The women are ordinary at the beginning – an older classics professor and her hairdresser, an overworked mother and her housekeeper, and a college dean with the task of deciding the fate of an erratic doctoral student.  The beauty of Byatt’s writing is the familiarity of the circumstances that morph into crisis mode.

in “Medusa’s Ankles,”when the professor is sitting in the chair listening to her hairdresser, you may recall your last conversation with yours.  Most likely, though, your hairdresser was doing the listening.  In Susannah’s case, her patience snaps when she is faced with a redecorated salon and a substitute messing with her hair.  Ironically, the hairdresser sublimely sees Susannah’s extreme action as a sign to move on – perhaps to another career.

In “Art Work,” Mrs. Brown, the housekeeper, patiently observes her frantic overlords – a woman trying to juggle career and family as the primary breadwinner, with an artist husband who thinks too much of himself and his untalented work.  In the end, Mrs. Brown launches her own artistic sensibilities into a lucrative career, and perhaps motivates her former boss to finally follow her own dream.

The last story, “The Chinese Lobster,” focuses on a luncheon conversation between the graduate dean and the advisor of a doctoral student in art, whose final project has drawn criticism and the possible end of her pursuit of a degree.  In retaliation, the graduate student has filed a complaint against the advisor, who adamantly holds that the student is incompetent, does not appear for classes, and does not complete requirements – all true.  The standoff is now in the hands of the dean, who is trying to convince the advisor to pass the student on, forget about her, give her the degree, and move on, to avoid the trauma of a long investigation.

At first, the advisor is appalled, but in the end proclaims: “At the same time, exactly at the same time, I don’t give a damn…” – unfortunately, a situation I have seen in my own experience many times.

 

 

Honeydew by Edith Pearlman

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9780316297226_p0_v2_s260x420The short stories in Edith Pearlman’s Honeydew are zingers.  When motivation to read a full novel is lacking, the compact pleasure of a well-constructed short tale delivers me from my inertia.

The setting for the first short story in Honeydew, “Tenderfoot,” is Paige’s pedicure parlor.  Bobby, a college instructor who lives across the street, befriends his neighbor but secretly spies on Paige and her clients from his upstairs window.  His torment revolves around a car accident and his “failure to act.”  The pedicurist becomes his confessor, but the mutual resolve of the story neatly ties them together while leaving the reader with a thoughtful problem.

After reading Laura Van Den Berg’s review in the New York Times – Edith Pearlman’s Honeydew, I skipped to the two stories she had noted: “Honeydew” and “Castle 4.”

“In the title story, the headmistress of Caldicott Academy finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. Her lover, the father of her child, also happens to be the (married) father of a student who is mired in the dark wilderness of anorexia. The affair tumbles ahead; the headmistress suspects she will be forced to resign once her pregnancy is revealed; the starving student studies the stomachs of ants…” 

…“Castle 4” illuminates the intersecting fates of the characters — an anesthesiologist and his doomed patient among them — connected to a hospital that “was named Memorial Hospital but was soon referred to as the Castle…”

I’ve deferred the other stories for a while, when I need something short to get me going.

Now, I want to read a novel.

 

Tessa Hadley – Under the Sign of the Moon

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Another Tessa Hadley story about a train – this time a short story in The New CV1_TNY_03_24_14Juan.inddYorker – Under the Sign of the Moon – involved me with her usual talent for creating relationships in unusual encounters.  What better place than a train for meeting strangers.  In this tale, Greta is traveling to visit her daughter, and meets a strange persistent man on the train.  Hadley melds the landscape around Liverpool with Greta’s life, describing the moving scene as Greta remembers her past, and wonders about her fragile future.  The ending offers a chilling possibility – who was that young man, really?

Hadley offers her perspective in an interview with Deborah Treisman – This Week in Fiction – Tessa Hadley, but you might want to read the short story in the March 24th issue and decide for yourself.

Review of another Tessa Hadley train story: The London Train

 

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