stories

Georgic Stories

gwen — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

University of Missouri, Kansas City, BkMk Press

Mariko Nagai’s Georgic Stories is a book worthy of its acclaim, but that does not necessarily imply that I want to read it again. When I recounted it to a friend once I finished reading it, I did not feel as if I was describing the stories or engaging in critique as much as I was repeating a terrible testimony. The stories demand retelling: they are compelling views of a world where the pinnacle of joy is a child’s possible, but not guaranteed, escape from starvation.

With its title inspired by Virgil’s work on rural life, the tales contained in the pages manifest his observation, “Shameful work conquers all.” The characters and their predicaments are so fundamental that they aren’t even given names. Well, one protagonist is; the prostitute, Monkey, is referred to by the insult given to her by customers when she started her profession.

Nagai’s ten stories unfold in a torn and barren landscape devoid of any poetry other than that of pain and desperation. Virgil’s didactic hexameters provided detailed descriptions of the plow, the merits of the olive tree over the vine, and the virtues of a simple bucolic life over the corrupt bustle of the city. The tales in this Georgic offer a manual on how to survive the unsurvivable in a world where all are corrupted by need.

The narratives brutally manifest Brecht’s “Food before ethics.” “Grafting” starts with words as meager as the village stores: “Harvest. Another failure. Third year in a row.” After the second failure the villagers sold their daughters, now they attempt to reduce want by carrying their elderly off to a mountain to abandon them.

In “Bitter Fruit,” rare kindness is displayed when a bathhouse proprietor advises a prostitute on how she might induce a miscarriage by standing in a freezing river. The attempt fails, and her child is born into prostitution. A woman in a different story adopts the vocation when a plague-stripped land and town desolated by war leave her with no other means of procuring food for her children, and the sole male in the community to serve as client is the village idiot. Some stories come directly from the trials of history; women in Manchuria at the end of WWII, a woman imprisoned for her role in a town’s execution of a downed American pilot. One is inspired by a folktale and contains vicious whimsy.

I can wholly recommend Georgic Stories. Instead of keeping it to reread, perhaps you can give to a friend. Perhaps she will be inspired to write the georgics of China, Darfur, the Ukraine, Argentina, Chile, and all other lands ravaged by flood, drought, and war, lands too many too name.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, April 25th 2011

Heart of the City: Nine Tales of Love and Serendipity on the Streets of New York

payal — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Ariel Sabar

Da Capo Press

I believe in magic. I really do.

I am fresh off the boat but I have already learned that there is some divine sleight of hand that makes any form of human connection possible in New York City’s bustling boroughs.

Ariel Sabar believes that sleights such as: a missed train connection; a turn one block too early; and a misplaced address brought his collection of strangers together at a prominent New York landmark and then kept them together, married, presumably, happily ever after.

The couples selected by Sabar in the nine stories that comprise Heart of the City are a hodgepodge: in "Central Park" he narrates the love story of a teen runaway and a gallant sailor, in "The Subway" it is a Filipino bank teller and an American classical music reviewer and in "Liberty Enlightening the World" a German factory worker collides happily with a bubbly Long Island divorcee and her family.

Sabar venerates romance and marriage. He is clearly enamored with his cast of lovers, and this is charming and a testament to the many hours he spent interviewing them—in one case more than sixty years after their love first blossomed in New York. But Sabar’s micro-detail of that first lingering gaze, the agonized "she loves me she loves me not" internal chorus, the pouting lips that invite an inaugural kiss, the first amorous letter signed "love and kisses" is closer to banal than magical.

The love stories are a bad fit for a collection of short stories and I might have found them more endearing had I stumbled across them piecemeal in the "Weddings & Celebrations" section of the New York Times. Having said this I must add that none of Sabar’s couples are black or Hispanic, and none are same-sex—these groups do get to tell their fairy tale stories too in the "Weddings & Celebrations" section of the New York Times.

Written by: Chiseche Salome Mibenge, March 19th 2011

I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore

tina — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Anne Purdue

Insomniac Press

My grandmother was a nurse. She's retired now, but I remember how she used to chastise her grandchildren, scolding us about washing our hands, eating certain foods, and getting exercise. Above all, she was straightforward about our bodies. When we were too shy to put on our swimsuits in the changing room at the pool, she used to say, "We all got the same thing you got.” Another time she scolded me for cringing at a violent scene in a crime show, "Well, we all have to go sometime, sweetheart."

Because of her, I have always associated nurses with a sort of grandmotherly sass and frankness about the human body. This immediately came to mind when I picked up Anne Perdue's I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore and I can honestly say I was not disappointed by the book. With episodes ranging from dental self-surgery to an accident involving a vat of wax, Perdue's plots often revolve around physical crisis. Her stories are not for the squeamish. Perdue uses unhesitating honesty for her descriptions of people and their bodies, offering up characters that are flawed and deeply compelling. The result is a collection that shows us the painful—and often darkly funny—conflicts of friendship, marriage, and parenthood.

Perdue's stories typically begin by introducing us to a common scenario: a couple on vacation or a family at dinner, but then she shows us how the character’s smoldering inner desires and regrets build up into a violent climax. In "Inheritance," a Botox-injected car salesman fantasizes about his youthful dreams of becoming a musician while building a deck for his house. As he’s working his children torment and disobey him, but we are privy to his inner thoughts. The story culminates in a relative's fall, a lost tooth, and a backyard grill tragedy. "Inheritance" introduces two of Purdue's common themes; one is regret. Characters in I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore lament a youth subculture ("Theories of Relativity"), bad marriages ("CA-NA-DA," "Inheritance"), and failed careers in musical theater ("The Dry Well"). The other common theme is parenthood. There are some sympathetic parent-child relationships in these stories, but parenthood in I'm a Registered Nurse is often more painful than it is fulfilling: Children are distant and unappreciative, defying their parents' efforts at reconciliation.

Perdue's prose is crisp and direct, presenting fresh ways to describe our physical selves ("Bodies aren't a whole lot different from houses. They're made of matter and they crack and tear and sometimes things grow in them that shouldn't") and reinventing old clichés ("If we are what we eat, Leona was oxidized, fused to the vegetable crisper, ripe for fruit flies"). She writes engaging dialogue, transferring from one character's head to another with a sometimes absorbing and sometimes vertigo-inducing speed. Perdue is at her best when she stays with one or two characters throughout a story, as in my favorite piece from this collection, "Pooey." "Pooey" follows the relationship between Jackie, a single woman pursuing artificial insemination, and her sick and aging mother, Leona. "Pooey" masterfully blends pathos and dark humor—you cringe as Leona takes a drunken fall on her seventieth birthday, as Jackie falls over the punch bowl at a bridal shower—but you root for these women all the way. In "The Dry Well," the marriage between new homeowners Heather and Keith slowly unravels as the house around them floods and falls apart. The story transitions between Heather’s and Keith's thoughts, using crawling mice, leaking roofs, and sinister repairmen as the backdrop for the story.

At times I wanted to know more about the victims of the violent outbursts in these stories, about the world after the catastrophe. Perdue's structure can feel a bit redundant—near the end of I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore I found myself patiently waiting for the fire, the fistfight, or the flood that would come and sweep the story away. But these stories also give us splendid moments of release, moments where the passion of inner life mirrors the explosive and painful physical action of the stories. Perdue's stories are edgy and fresh, providing just the right dose of sympathy and satire.

Written by: Barbara Barrow, January 30th 2011

Fast Girls: Erotica for Women

tina — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Cleis Press

Fast. The word itself is a contradiction. By definition, fast can mean unrestrained and held tight; reckless and secure; promiscuous and faithful. A fast girl can be one way and then another or often both at once. A fast girl can be wild, even when caught in the firmest of knots.

In Fast Girls, fast means quick thinking and quicker action. Fast girls see what they want and take it, cleverly making the most of circumstances around them. Fast girls crave attention, thrive in the spotlight, and live in the moment. A fast girl goes all the way, every time, and loves it. A fast girl makes her own choices and loves to defy expectation. Taking her pleasure as she chooses, a fast girl follows no rules of conduct.

The women here are connected by their willingness to experience life as it comes, taking chances and being handsomely rewarded for their bravado. These stories cut directly to the action, focusing on the sex rather than on preliminaries. From quiet arousal to public masturbation, sex in a communal shower to exploration of marital roles, this collection has something for everyone. Many stories explore the darker side of erotica, as women find their pleasure in pain, submission, and public displays of need and desire.

Orgasm is a given in each of these stories; each woman knows what she needs to reach it and she will not be denied. Explicitly detailed, you are privy to each woman’s thoughts, her reactions to every touch, lick, slap. With a lover, stranger, or customer, the woman’s body is the focus and her pleasure the priority.

Fast Girls is a celebration of sexual liberation, where women single-mindedly follow their desires. They have girl on girl sex, sex with boys and sex in groups. They have sex where, when, and with whom they want, without offering any apology. If you are looking for explicit, edgy erotica, dive in anywhere. These girls like it fast.

Written by: Melissa Ruiz, December 15th 2010

Lesbian Lust: Erotic Stories

payal — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Sacchi Green

Cleis Press

The stories featured in Sacchi Green’s edited collection of lesbian erotica are intensely sexual. As the name of the volume, Lesbian Lust, implies, each of the stories focus on the deep sensual and sexual desires of the characters featured in them. The narratives are varied in their settings, characterizations, and kinds of sex offered for the reader’s (and their companions’) interest. As Green writes in her introduction to the volume, “Variety is also the spice of lust.”

Many of the stories are not for the faint of heart; there are few typically “vanilla” sex acts and story lines included in Lesbian Lust. This said, the volume presents a wonderfully wide-ranging assortment of active, desiring lesbian subjects who are in charge of their own sexuality, whether they play out their own fantasies or submit at their own will to the desires of their partner(s). The stories are kink-friendly and as one might imagine of a collection written by and for lesbians, sex- and woman-positive. Overall, this was my favorite aspect of the collection of stories. Even if any one story didn’t fall within my own particular set of turn-ons, I appreciated reading the entire group of stories for their collective interest in portraying lesbians in powerful positions, engaging one another in both playful and serious emotional, psychological, and/or physical situations.

Perhaps my favorite story of the collection, “The Office Grind” by R.G. Emanuelle, brings sex to the boardroom as Casey secretly tends to Nina, company Vice President, while Nina participates in a business meeting with her pompous and oblivious male co-workers. The story is simultaneously sexy and funny, and makes the introduction of cunnilingus to the workday seem a brilliant idea to chase away the staid boredom all too typical of a desk job, especially for a female executive who is used to being treated as a second-class citizen both by her boss and her subordinates. “The Office Grind” turns on its head the conventional voyeuristic tale of men getting off on watching lesbians having sex, emphasizing Nina’s business and sexual power in the face of her ignorant co-workers. Using wordplay to drive the story home, “The Office Grind” brings a whole new meaning to the terms “powerpoint” and “working lunch.”

I highly recommend this story, and the Lesbian Lust collection as a whole to the reader looking for multi-layered tales of sex, romance, and power in all sorts of lesbian relationships.

Written by: Stefanie Snider, November 18th 2010

Going Away Shoes

priyanka — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jill McCorkle

Algonquin Books

The protagonists of Jill McCorkle’s exciting collection of stories, Going Away Shoes, are middle-aged heterosexuals deep in the doldrums of life’s disappointments. Whether because of a stalled career, a divorce, a death, or simply the exhaustion born of juggling family, work and social obligations, these are women who’ve been battered by everyday tragedies and everyday pressures.

The title story introduces Debby Tyler. The oldest of three daughters, she has been left to care for her infirm mother. Since she has never been married, her two siblings assume that she has no life. Taut and spare, the story zeroes in on the role of memory in assuaging both guilt and desire; in addition, fantasy enters the mix as Debby imagines packing her bags and exiting the domestic hell she is mired in.

Marilyn, the protagonist of “Intervention,” is a retired woman who has become increasingly terrified of her husband’s escalated alcoholism. Her mistake, however, is mentioning this problem to her children, both of whom set out to plan a family intervention that will send their husband and dad into rehab. What ensues on the day of the expected confrontation is a fantastically moving reflection on long-term love that is both heartbreaking and filled with warmth and wisdom. The ways couples insulate themselves, and the ways the agendas of parents and children sometimes collide, makes this a particular stand-out in McCorkle’s eleven-story collection.

Other relationships also come in for scrutiny and sibling love meets sibling rivalry in “Another Dimension,” a tale that centers on the secrets and lies that both bind and divide us. Once kids no longer need to unite against parental forces, what purpose does maintaining long-maintained deception serve? McCorkle’s cudgel is sharp as she pierces the gut of duplicity and illuminates the limits of amends and apologies.

The anthology is heavy stuff told with wit, finesse, and abundant humor. In “Midnight Clear,” for example, the main character, a recently-divorced mother of two, is getting ready for a Christmas Eve bash when she suddenly notices a foul odor permeating her home. In short order the culprit is identified: Her septic tank is malfunctioning. This slice of what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong is made ever more horrific when we learn that the planned party will include the narrator’s ex and his new girlfriend. So what to do? A chance encounter with a guardian angel-cum-repairman—an elderly gent with stories to share—might have seemed contrived in less skilled hands. Here, however, it works and the magic of chance encounters is rendered with both grace and elegance.

McCorkle is a mature writer, someone who refuses to be lulled by blinders and palaver, a writer who notices every nuance and detail. Her woman are strong and capable, if sad. Yet at the same time, Going Away Shoes is a hopeful book in which the lure of untapped possibilities remains within reach. Like the golden ring on a carousel, her message suggests that if we keep our eye on the prize it just might find its way into our waiting hands.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 4th 2010

I Think of You: Stories

admin — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:55:00 +0000

By Ahdaf Soueif

Anchor Books

The stories in Ahdaf Soueif’s book collectively form the multivoiced memoir of a woman growing up with academic parents in Cairo and in England and on the cultural margins of both places. Her first narrative, “Knowing,” told in the charmingly declarative voice of a child, tells of the wonders of the Cairo marketplace: fingering guavas, nibbling at the sheep head on a snack tray, sneaking a puff on a waterpipe. Here her world is ordered and patterned, “overflowing with an abundance of pleasures.”

The stories proceed, in progressively maturing voices, sometimes related in the third person, to convey the pain of transition. She is in England for the “Year of the Beatles,” but it is as an outsider: as one who loves the teddy boys and rockers, but is ignored by them in return. She envelopes herself in romantic literature (in many respects, this is an autobiography of a reading life) and increasingly isolates herself from a racist, fiercely class conscious world. Her account of discovering Fanny Hill and the Kama Sutra in her parents’ bedroom becomes a hilarious epiphany at the end of “1964”—one of many memorable moments in the book.

The adult narrative voice is reminiscent of Kate Chopin’s—as evocative, elegant, and simple in its rendering of a woman’s experience of love and childbirth—the sweet and terrible alienation of the individual who refuses to be simply a “mother woman” or conform to some other cultural stereotype. In fact, the ending of the book is eerily suggestive of the conclusion of The Awakening, which is not to suggest the book is self-consciously derivative, but rather to say that it forms, subtly and gradually, a powerful emotional bond with the reader that culminates in the beautiful nothingness of the sea.

Written by: Rick Taylor, February 12th 2007