April 22, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: Robin Black's 'If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This'
Reason to Cheer for Short Story Lovers
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Short story collections are few and far between these days, so it was with interest -- excitement, even -- that I started reading Robin Black's "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This" (Random House, 288 pages, $24.00) a collection of 10 short stories previously published in literary magazines and regional publications.
I've never understood the apparent aversion of publishers for short stories, especially in this era of short attention span Tweeters and texters and writing-on-the-wall Facebookers. A good short story is a gem, to be savored and read over and over again. I've always thought that short stories are more difficult to write than novellas or novels, if only because the author has to pare down the words and craft a perfect plot; there's no wasted space or padding.
Black's stories -- let's retire the adjective "short", a demeaning modifier -- deal with illness, death, family problems (now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one!), infidelity, lack of communication between neighbors and all the other realities of life. Despite the often grim subjects, each of the stories in this collection has a flash, a glimmer, sometimes a gigantic dollop of humor.
Take "Pine" for example. Widowed soccer mom Claire is using Kevin, a longtime family friend and one-time lover, as a surrogate dad for soccer player daughter Alyssa, cheering her on at matches. Kevin obviously wants to take the relationship to a more intimate stage, but Claire is reluctant; after three years, she's still hanging on to memories of Joe, her dead husband. She even envies Heidi, of the gigantic kitchen with every appliance known to man and some whose purpose is yet unrevealed. Heidi lost a leg to cancer when she was a teen, and Claire even envies her stock of artificial legs and the fact that she has a husband.
In "The Guide" Ted takes his soon-to-be-going to college teen-age daughter Lila to a trainer of guide dogs to meet her first dog. Lila lost her sight in an accident with an aerosol paint can at the age of six. Lila has a wonderful sense of humor: she's a cat person and would like to be the first person with a seeing-eye cat: "Some really haughty feline with attitude" she tells her dad, who retorts: "Just like you!" Ted is having an affair with Miranda Hamilton and he's hoping that his daughter hasn't figured this out.
"Harriet Elliott" is a spooky story about the eponymous new girl in the narrator's fifth grade class in an new-age, experimental school. At "self-expression day" -- the school's name for show and tell, Harriet reveals her secret: She was kidnapped at the age of three while her parents were vacationing in Italy. She was recovered after they paid a ransom, but Harriet has vowed to find the "bandits" who kidnapped her and kill them. She tells the narrator the vividly remembered details of each of the bandits just before the narrator's father leaves home and her mother and older sister make plans to move in with her parents in Washington, DC.
In "Tableau Vivant" Jean Kurek is trying to hide her stroke from her husband Clifford, who's fifteen years older. It was a mild stroke, resulting in limited motion in an arm, but Jean tells her husband that her overnight stay at the hospital for the stroke was due to a lung infection. She always expected to be a caregiver to her 80-year-old husband as they moved to a country cottage. "Your father turned eighty and became an old man," she told her children, "while I turned sixty-five and became a full-time caregiver." Jean is also trying to hide her disability from her daughter Brooke, who arrives for a visit. Jean takes a favorite scarf and creates a sling, telling her daughter that she tripped on a tree root and sprained her wrist. During her visit, Brooke has what seems to Jean a lover visiting her in the guest room. Soon the apparent lover, a 50-year-old structural engineer named Aaron, joins the couple and their daughter for an elaborate dinner Brooke has prepared. In this one story, a reader has all he or she needs to know as Black tells us about family secrets and relationships.
In the final story in this wonderful collection -- I hope my enthusiasm shows up loud and clear -- "The History of the World," Kate Rodgers and her twin brother Arthur are touring northern Italy, staying at a charming, rustic farm house and driving a rented Fiat to places they've both visited in the past on separate journeys. Kate's husband Stephen has left her after almost forty years of marriage -- something Arthur knew would occur years before the actual event, although he hasn't told his sister. While driving one rainy day, Kate crashes the Fiat on the slippery highway and, after recovering, has an encounter with a waitress, Anna, whom Kate and Arthur had met earlier in their rambles. The two women become friends and Kate learns that she's not the only person with life-altering problems.
Every one of the ten stories in "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This" is worth reading and rereading. I won't compare Robin Black to Alice Munro, Mary Gaitskill or Lorrie Moore, as the authors providing jacket blurbs do. If you're looking for other comparisons, how about John Updike, John Cheever, Philip K. Dick, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Tyler (I wish Tyler would publish her wonderful stories in a collection or two or three) or any other master of the short story you can think of. Better yet, read the collection and discover a completely original author with her own voice that doesn't need to be compared to anyone. Black understands people and helps us understand people like her characters.
About the author: Robin Black lives in Philadelphia with her family. Her stories have appeared in many publications, including The Southern Review, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review and many others. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Publisher's web site: www.atrandom.com
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BOOK REVIEW: Robin Black's 'If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This'
Reason to Cheer for Short Story Lovers
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Short story collections are few and far between these days, so it was with interest -- excitement, even -- that I started reading Robin Black's "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This" (Random House, 288 pages, $24.00) a collection of 10 short stories previously published in literary magazines and regional publications.
I've never understood the apparent aversion of publishers for short stories, especially in this era of short attention span Tweeters and texters and writing-on-the-wall Facebookers. A good short story is a gem, to be savored and read over and over again. I've always thought that short stories are more difficult to write than novellas or novels, if only because the author has to pare down the words and craft a perfect plot; there's no wasted space or padding.
Black's stories -- let's retire the adjective "short", a demeaning modifier -- deal with illness, death, family problems (now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one!), infidelity, lack of communication between neighbors and all the other realities of life. Despite the often grim subjects, each of the stories in this collection has a flash, a glimmer, sometimes a gigantic dollop of humor.
Take "Pine" for example. Widowed soccer mom Claire is using Kevin, a longtime family friend and one-time lover, as a surrogate dad for soccer player daughter Alyssa, cheering her on at matches. Kevin obviously wants to take the relationship to a more intimate stage, but Claire is reluctant; after three years, she's still hanging on to memories of Joe, her dead husband. She even envies Heidi, of the gigantic kitchen with every appliance known to man and some whose purpose is yet unrevealed. Heidi lost a leg to cancer when she was a teen, and Claire even envies her stock of artificial legs and the fact that she has a husband.
In "The Guide" Ted takes his soon-to-be-going to college teen-age daughter Lila to a trainer of guide dogs to meet her first dog. Lila lost her sight in an accident with an aerosol paint can at the age of six. Lila has a wonderful sense of humor: she's a cat person and would like to be the first person with a seeing-eye cat: "Some really haughty feline with attitude" she tells her dad, who retorts: "Just like you!" Ted is having an affair with Miranda Hamilton and he's hoping that his daughter hasn't figured this out.
"Harriet Elliott" is a spooky story about the eponymous new girl in the narrator's fifth grade class in an new-age, experimental school. At "self-expression day" -- the school's name for show and tell, Harriet reveals her secret: She was kidnapped at the age of three while her parents were vacationing in Italy. She was recovered after they paid a ransom, but Harriet has vowed to find the "bandits" who kidnapped her and kill them. She tells the narrator the vividly remembered details of each of the bandits just before the narrator's father leaves home and her mother and older sister make plans to move in with her parents in Washington, DC.
In "Tableau Vivant" Jean Kurek is trying to hide her stroke from her husband Clifford, who's fifteen years older. It was a mild stroke, resulting in limited motion in an arm, but Jean tells her husband that her overnight stay at the hospital for the stroke was due to a lung infection. She always expected to be a caregiver to her 80-year-old husband as they moved to a country cottage. "Your father turned eighty and became an old man," she told her children, "while I turned sixty-five and became a full-time caregiver." Jean is also trying to hide her disability from her daughter Brooke, who arrives for a visit. Jean takes a favorite scarf and creates a sling, telling her daughter that she tripped on a tree root and sprained her wrist. During her visit, Brooke has what seems to Jean a lover visiting her in the guest room. Soon the apparent lover, a 50-year-old structural engineer named Aaron, joins the couple and their daughter for an elaborate dinner Brooke has prepared. In this one story, a reader has all he or she needs to know as Black tells us about family secrets and relationships.
In the final story in this wonderful collection -- I hope my enthusiasm shows up loud and clear -- "The History of the World," Kate Rodgers and her twin brother Arthur are touring northern Italy, staying at a charming, rustic farm house and driving a rented Fiat to places they've both visited in the past on separate journeys. Kate's husband Stephen has left her after almost forty years of marriage -- something Arthur knew would occur years before the actual event, although he hasn't told his sister. While driving one rainy day, Kate crashes the Fiat on the slippery highway and, after recovering, has an encounter with a waitress, Anna, whom Kate and Arthur had met earlier in their rambles. The two women become friends and Kate learns that she's not the only person with life-altering problems.
Every one of the ten stories in "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This" is worth reading and rereading. I won't compare Robin Black to Alice Munro, Mary Gaitskill or Lorrie Moore, as the authors providing jacket blurbs do. If you're looking for other comparisons, how about John Updike, John Cheever, Philip K. Dick, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Tyler (I wish Tyler would publish her wonderful stories in a collection or two or three) or any other master of the short story you can think of. Better yet, read the collection and discover a completely original author with her own voice that doesn't need to be compared to anyone. Black understands people and helps us understand people like her characters.
About the author: Robin Black lives in Philadelphia with her family. Her stories have appeared in many publications, including The Southern Review, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review and many others. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Publisher's web site: www.atrandom.com
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