Small Displacements

By Vanessa Furse Jackson
Livingston Press

This tiny, obscure (I am the only person as of this writing to add and review it on Goodreads) volume of short stories by England native and Ohio resident writer Vanessa Furse Jackson ties together eleven tales into a loose theme: sudden changes in someone's life, whether major or minor, and the resulting shift felt afterward. Most of the stories are overtly sad, with others having just undercurrents of a sort of foreshadowed melancholy with abrupt endings. These lead the reader to hunt backwards over what was just read, looking for further clues to piece together some sort of denouement other than the insidious daylight gloom at story's end.

The titular “displacements” experienced by the stories' characters range from the prolonged deaths of spouses, the growing apart of spouses, and the chance meeting of unhappy strangers with something to offer the other. Children are not spared these wounds and scarifications of life, and instead seem to fare the worst in Jackson's stories. Prankster adolescents are thrust from their childhoods by a strange, menacing adult, a fourteen-year-old girl waits with her mother in an abortion clinic, and two young siblings are faced for the first time with the death of a friend and their uncertainty at how to grieve. Though all the stories are brief and the characters necessarily sketched as concisely, the reader can't help but feel emotionally invested in them nonetheless.

I think Vanessa Furse Jackson shows skill as a character artist; her detail and language is sparse, but it doesn't hurt her storytelling and writing prowess. She just doesn't engage in overly flowery or purple prose, preferring to concentrate instead on her characters and the situations and actions in which they find themselves. At 155 pages, Small Displacements is a quick, needle-sharp, and gut-punching read.

Review by Natalie Ballard

Her America: “A Jury of Her Peers” and Other Stories

By Susan Glaspell
Edited by Patricia L. Bryan and Martha C. Carpentier
University of Iowa Press

Popular in her own time, Susan Glaspell has somewhat fallen out of favor in contemporary academic circles while other American writers of realist fiction such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Willa Cather have enjoyed more attention. Yet, Glaspell enjoys a mini-renaissance in Her America: "A Jury of Her Peers" and Other Stories, an edited collection of twelve short stories that joins a growing movement led by feminist scholars to recuperate her work.

Spanning the years 1914 to 1927, these stories are vibrant tales of the United States at the turn of the century and are alternately humorous and touching, speaking to timeless concerns such as individual isolation, our collective responsibility to each other, the illusions we hold about ourselves and others, and the cost of pretending to be someone we’re not. Many readers will easily see themselves and/or their neighbors in Glaspell’s vivid cast of characters—whether it’s the young adopted woman who mourns the discovery that her biological mother was not a gypsy (“Unveiling Brenda”), or the pseudo-intellectual who feels sorry for his brother’s “common” life only to learn that his brother had, in fact, felt sorry for him (“Poor Ed”).

Glaspell’s compassion for the people who populate Her America is striking. This is clear in such stories as “The Manager of Crystal Sulphur Springs” wherein a caretaker chooses to let her elderly patient die rather than have him suffer potential humiliation or in the case of the farmer from the beautifully written “Pollen,” a man who obsessively isolates himself from his neighbors until he realizes that “I can’t have good corn while their corn’s poor.” Yet, even in stories wherein Glaspell pokes fun at her protagonists, she does so with an empathetic touch, reminiscent of Mark Twain’s satirical humor. A memorable instance is the story “Looking After Clara” about a vain man whose romantic overtures are undone by his beloved’s wily cat.

While it’s somewhat unfortunate that Glaspell is almost exclusively known for “A Jury of Her Peers” and the play Trifles on which it is based, it’s no wonder that this is the case. The story focuses on Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale who piece together a neighbor’s motive for killing her husband. While their husbands and the country attorney belittle their attention to Minnie Wright’s jarred preserves, quilt pieces and birdcage—what the men openly mock as “trifles”— these objects hold the key to her motive. These women come to realize Minnie’s desperation, and Mrs. Hale laments, “We live close together, and we live far apart,” questioning what was the greater crime—Minnie murdering her husband or her own failure to visit Minnie. Readers enjoy a pleasant surprise at encountering the story in its original version here. Between 1917 and its inclusion in The Best Short Stories of 1917 published in 1918, Glaspell made several revisions, most significantly deleting the final line, “He [the country attorney] did not see her [Mrs. Hale’s] eyes." Reprinting the original version opens up new interpretive possibilities for a classic of feminist literature.

Besides the stories, Her America opens with a very useful introduction by the editors Patricia L. Bryan and Martha C. Carpentier. It provides background information about Glaspell’s early career and publication history while also introducing the stories’ thematic concerns and summarizing key features of Glaspell’s style. Overall, this book is a welcome text in reviving interest in Glaspell’s shorter works, and its cast of characters should definitely be introduced to a new audience. Since this collection provides just a taste of Glaspell’s skill as a storyteller, one can only hope that a complete collection of her short stories is forthcoming soon.

Review by Dr. Jennifer A. Smith

The Thing Around Your Neck

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf

My friend Francine, who sensibly chose to read English at Cambridge, knowing my insatiable appetite for novels, asked me to taste and see that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was good five years ago. I devoured Purple Hibiscus. Sated and ravenous, I only halfheartedly digested Half of a Yellow Sun, because I felt that it did not reflect the brilliance of the first novel—maybe precisely because Purple Hibiscus could not be matched at all in the way it presented the fragrance, colour, and texture of Nigeria.

I must admit that I was not a fan of short stories before this collection, as I have always felt that they were perhaps a lazy man's (or woman's) way out of writer's block. Because I enjoy breathing and living and feeling characters, I also dismissed them because I felt that there was no time to do so in a short story. In The Thing Around Your Neck, Adichie proved me wrong. She catapulted my prejudices towards the short story upside down, deconstructed my theories inside out, and then proved me wrong again.

Adichie in this collection is simply brilliant. Astonishingly, all of her stories are accessible and beautifully written; they are told with poise, in elegant prose, just as one would expect from a contemporary griot. I expected some "old ladies mutterings" of extravagant and unnecessary details, rather like lashings of mache and parsley over perfectly good chicken from an overenthusiastic chef, but this was pleasantly absent; this is a woman who is not wasteful with her ingredients. Her stories, all unapologetically Nigerian in background, context, and flavour, are intentionally international and modern in their treatment of universal themes of displacement, grief, wonderment, and struggle. Her characterisations are believable; her stories never end with the exclamation marks of implausibility, and her style is almost perfect: dutiful and unlaborious. Adichie's economy of words is deliberate and yet, she still manages to march along with a rhythmic cadence. I do not know how she does it.

The Nigeria Adichie presents is not the stereotypical Nigeria that you see in documentaries that typically depict Lagos, of lives obviously so poor and futile and desperate on the streets of an overcrowded city pregnant with corruption. It is not the Nigeria of Nollywood with Mr. Ebu who deals in juju and first wives who cast spells on mistresses. Nor is it the new Nigeria that is now presented on the television programmes of the BBC and CNN—teeming with possibility (i.e., oil), just outside BRIC in terms of development, couched in fancy names such as "premium emerging markets." Adichie’s Nigeria is somewhere in-between.

Her Nigeria is the Nigeria of contradictions, of academics whose wives visit them in their sleep and tickle their balls, of wives of rich Nigerian Big Men who are jealous of their husband's young lovers, of polygamous, monogamous, gay and lesbian Nigeria, of traditional and Pentecostal Nigeria, of matriarchal pride and incredible sexploitation, of the Hausa and Igbo, of ordinary men and women, cold immigrants and warm home. No topic is off bounds and through this collection we are brought along to witness the astonishing resilience and weaknesses in the cultural, racial, and sexual dichotomies and to some extent, trichotomies that exist. This is second and third generation Nigeria, the Nigeria of the movers and shakers and doers and thinkers—a Nigeria which is staking its claim in the world. Adichie's protagonists' commentaries are sometimes humorous and irreverent, sometimes wise but always timely.

If this book had a fault, it would be that Adichie comes across as determinedly feminist. Her female protagonists are powerful, cunning, smart, and are able to form bonds that are natural, easy, and strong. Womanhood and womanly love seem to feature as an unspoken undercurrent. Most of the men appear as side dishes, certainly dispensable, most times inspiring reproach: they are often impractical, predatory, fumbling, and one dimensional. This is not to say that her approach is without merit, as it is possible that through her eyes, we are perhaps witnessing this malaise in male/female relationships and her challenge, therefore, of the natural hierarchy and of the status quo.

Although I am a natural sucker for an immigrant story and, therefore, love "Imitation," "The Thing Around Your Neck," “The American Embassy,” and "The Arrangers of Marriage," my favourite story is "Jumping Monkey Hill" simply because of Adichie’s voice in it, and her method. She uses and improves the Shakespearean technique of the play within a play to construct a story within a story and then, through this, manages to reveal yet more stories with grace and believability. Each of the stories resolve themselves, yet most of them stay with the reader, leaving us hungry for more.

Review by Akima Paul

Cross-posted at KimaSpeak

Secret Weirdo

By Lauren Barnett

Well, for a twenty-page minicomic that is filled with embarrassing stories about childhood, cat police, imaginary adventures, and an opening page offering “free hugs,” artist Lauren Barnett definitely set herself up for a difficult task. One of her biggest pet peeves as a female artist is having her comics be called cute. “I think ‘cute’ is a terrible way to describe someone’s work,” she exclaims in one of the first frames.

Besides the political cry for gender equality in the artistic community in the first few pages, Secret Weirdo is an eclectic collection of stories (or rather confessions) about the artist’s endeavors as a secret weirdo. Barnett’s comical, autobiographical telling of her obsessive entrepreneurial ventures as a child, unusual birthday present request, sick day science experiment with a frozen egg, kleptomania, and more are interrupted by imaginative pages with the Cat Police and imaginary Adventures of Master Driver and Navigirl—alter egos perhaps?

What most attracts me to her style is the lack of pretentiousness in her art. The cover is a gorgeous abstract watercolor that is both lovely and haunting; the inside frames are made up of simple, flat, black and white line drawings, messy bubbles, and scribbled text that give it what one reviewer noted as a "draw now, ask questions later" style, almost as if she is making it up as she goes along.

While her comics might seem cute superficially, there is clearly a darker, deeper level to her appropriated cute imagery; her “adorable” childhood stories are intersected with short, anxiety-filled frames about adulthood: debt, apartment searches, the dangers of diet soda. These glimpses into her personal, intimate realm are quickly interrupted by embarrassed sarcasm, or more Secret Weirdo stories from childhood, because the reality is far too daunting to dwell on. It leaves the reader wishing for more of this darkness, but still leaving us with the knowledge that there is something else behind the 'cuteness'.

In short, even though the stories are oddly specific and personal, the ambition, sarcasm, curiosity, anxiety, and nostalgia of a child and young woman resonated with me strongly, and I recommend this minicomic to other adults and teens that can handle the occasional F-bomb and sarcasm. Also, although the styles and content are completely different, I enjoyed Secret Weirdo for the same autobiographical, humorous, deeply personal snippets of Erika Moen’s DAR! Comic, so if you like Barnett’s work, read some of this, too!

Review by Abigail Chance

Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella

By Evgenia Citkowitz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

While opening Evgenia Citkowitz’ collection of short stories, the spine creaked in an eerie way far too appropriate for the haunting words among the pages between. In Ether, a collection of seven stories and a novella, Citkowitz captures our attention with seemingly stark characters whose depth is revealed in the strange ways they relate to the world.

Tables, nannies, and even pet hamsters become the vehicles through which characters experience stark realizations about their lives and their positions within them. Citkowitz’ efforts to draw out nuances are visible, but often the nuances struggle to have impact. Entering into a short story with little ground available to paint such rich snapshots of a life often leaves the reader feeling rushed, or worse, at the end of the tale, empty.

The subjects her characters examine—an overwhelming loneliness and sense of questioning—are ones that we may easily identify with as readers, but the stories leave answers either unreachable, or sadly negative. Leaving a family, resolving to accept unwanted circumstances, or worse, having a realization that things are unhappy and unsatisfied, but having nowhere to turn is what the author makes her characters face. The circumstances are realistic—many of us, just like her characters, finally find the answer to our questions. But in this volume, often the answer is most unsatisfactory, and these outcomes leave the reader wounded.

The writing in Citkowitz’ debut book is layered and complex. Readers enter each story seemingly mid scene and are left with a feeling of catching up. Multiple characters and voices layer into the work immediately and though the action may not be fast paced, the reader must stutter step to get on board with the character and identify the lead immediately. This unique exercise does draw a reader in quickly and makes our feelings for them more elaborate; you read shoulder-to-shoulder with the character’s past and present and with their quests for identity or direction; this is a powerful strategy on the author’s part.

Ether isn’t light reading, but is an exercise in elaborate storytelling over a theme. At times, it works too hard and it can often be uninspiring, but the stories’ unique haunting qualities do set them apart.

Review by Dr. Julie E. Ferris

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

By Eve Ensler
Villard

I'll tell you why I bothered picking up I Am an Emotional Creature: (1) I loved the graffiti-like cover, which reminded me of the doodling I used to pen over my books in high school, and (2) I really respect and enjoy Eve Ensler's writing. I saw a performance of The Vagina Monologues and loved the subversive way she used humor and fictional stories to tackle real women's issues around the world. So, when I saw that she had released a similar collection, but targeted for girls and teens, I instantly had to pick it up.

I think this book is so important because young girls today are growing up so quickly, and there are less outlets for them to discuss important issues, like abusive relationships and safe sex, or at least, it isn't coming from a source that is from "their generation." Peppered throughout the collection are statistics called "Girl Facts" with shocking numbers on prostitution, sex slavery, eating disorders, and other girl-related issues. Apart from the Girl Facts, though, I loved how these ideas and issues are tackled through the voices of other young women and girls around the world. This collection of monologues, poems, and short stories creates a sisterhood, almost, of females who share similar bonds, despite background, interests, language, etc. That kind of unity is so great and empowering, especially during that awkward period where young girls feel like no one else feels this awkward emotions or that no one "gets" them. I think with so much real suffering happening in other parts of the world, it's difficult to remember that girls in first-world countries have their own voices and stories needing to be told, and just because it isn't anything newsworthy, doesn't mean it isn't a problem or question or anxiety worth addressing.

That being said, my favorite pieces in the collection were the fictionalized accounts of the young women in other parts of the world (as in, not America or the UK). There is a great story called "Free Barbie," about a young Chinese girl working in an assembly-line doll factory, and probably my favorite piece is an epistolary poem/letter about a young female suicide bomber. In all of these stories, especially the ones from girls in developing countries, there is such strength and resilience in their voices that even someone past puberty can feel their empowerment and be proud to be a girl.

I really love what this collection does. And I love how it celebrates girls. I think, considering the target audience, this book is definitely five stars in terms of relevance and importance, but the writing wasn't always impeccable. I mean, I don't think it has to be Pulitzer prize-worthy to accomplish the goal Ensler was going for in motivating young girls; but to be fair, while some stories about sex trafficking or dealing with being a "masculine" girl were so amazing, some of the more experimental free verse passages didn't always do it for me.

Also, I think I might have benefited more if I had read this about five years ago, when the insecurity and all that was more intense. (P.S. This does reference some graphic sexual and adult themes, which are important to read about, but some more conservative families or younger readers should be aware of that.) Regardless, I loved it and will definitely keep it around to flip through and read a couple more times throughout my lifetime.

Review by Renée McDonald

Cross-posted at Notes in the Margin

Alone With You: Stories

By Marisa Silver
Simon and Schuster

For years, I read The New Yorker for the politics and music reviews more than for its fiction. Aside from stories by some of my favorite novelists—Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith—I was content to skip most fictional pieces.

However, a few weeks ago, I happened upon Marisa Silver’s astonishingly lovely story of youthful shiftlessness and indiscretion, “Temporary.” Imagine my delight—and surprise—when I sat down to my latest short story collection and found that it was not only by the same author; that same story was the first in the book.

Silver is one of those fortunate writers whose work has been selected by the literati for praise. Fortunate though she may be, she is also remarkably talented and deserving of such accolades. In Alone With You, she writes with empathy and grace about a diverse collection of characters. From the humiliation suffered by the Polish immigrant handyman to the embarrassment of young girls whose mother has a little too much to drink at seemingly every inopportune occasion, Silver explores each individual and their unique situation with the sensitivity of an insider. Many of the stories are tinged with sadness, but really, isn’t life just a collection of bittersweet moments?

In my mind, the best fiction comes from personal experience, so much so that it may not deviate far from actual events that once transpired. Though it’s impossible to say for sure, Silver seems to go beyond that limitation and write about universals without necessarily having lived so close to them. Whether you choose Alone With You or another of her short story collections, pick one up immediately.

Review by Brittany Shoot

The Prospect of Magic

By M.O. Walsh
Livingston Press

The Prospect of Magic, a collection of ten stories, sets up a wonderful world where the real and magical live side by side. It’s enchanting. Some of the stories are hopeful, some are tragic, and some are sad, just like real life. All of them feature flights of fancy, just like the best magic trick.

The story centers around Fluker, Louisiana, where the World Famous Ploofop Travelling Circus decides to stay after its owner, Abidail Ploofop, dies. Margo the Mind Reader gives a eulogy, “a speech that, legend has it, wrapped a hopeful message around the mind of every person in attendance.” Soon, the townsfolk are playing poker on their roof with giants, receiving lions in the mail, and angry clown gangs roam the streets, making trouble. These delightful images of a circus gone to seed populate the stories, but never pull away from Walsh's general message of good will and that people can be accepted no matter what.

In "The Cat Who Ate The Boy," the young narrator receives a lion named Big Kitty mailed to the carnival, and after attempting to care for it, takes the beast to his grandfather. The story is told through the boy’s eyes, and Big Kitty that lurks in and out of the story soon becomes a metaphor for his parent’s relationship – an element that is in many ways big, strong and beyond the boy's control.

The title story tells of a teenage boy learning to deal with the magic he has, and how to reconcile it with the reality of the world. "The Dream Tow" tells of a fortune telling machine that reminds the characters to savour what they have in life, whether it’s a musical skill with a trombone or a happy marriage. The final story, "The Ploofop Refugees," follows Margo the Mind Reader’s husband as he deals with her impending death, and the possibility of the circus folks leaving Fluker.

All of these stories deal with the people from the circus and the Fluker townspeople as both everyday people, and people filled with magic. The ease the characters and stories show with the idea of giraffes eating leaves off the trees in the town square in the same story as the death of wife is remarkable, and is what sets these stories apart from other short stories in their sense of fun and community. The prospect of magic indeed.

Review by Taylor Rhodes

Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles

By Panthea Reid
Rutgers University Press

Part of Panthea Reid’s title seems to allude to Tillie Olsen’s 1961 collection of short stories, Tell Me a Riddle. It also seems to highlight the layers of complexity in a woman hailed as an iconic writer and feminist. Reid doesn’t idealize Olsen. This was a woman who began lying at a young age and continued throughout her life. She cheated on her husband, cheated Random House out of an advance for a book she never wrote, and cheated her daughter out of the experience of having a devoted and attentive mother. However, Reid does give full credit to Olsen’s work as a writer, feminist, and social activist. All great figures in history, I feel, have complicated relationships to the world and to other people. It is important to understand and acknowledge a great figure’s humanity as well as celebrating his/her greatness.

Reid was able to interview and get information from Olsen herself before Olsen’s death in 2001, and she also spoke with Olsen’s siblings, one of her daughters, other relatives, and Olsen’s colleagues and fellow writers. The book is well-researched and provides an in-depth look at her life. It doesn’t seem to have been an easy task for Reid. Reid worked on the book for ten years, and the ins and outs of Olsen’s life seem at times overwhelming.

Olsen had many roles throughout her life, and in a quote from her diary from age eighteen, she wrote: “With dozens of selves, quarreling and tearing at each other—which then is the natural self? ...None.” This seems fitting for a woman who ended up intertwined in some of the century’s most historic moments: she was a communist and revolutionary in the 1930s, promoted equal work for equal pay in the 1940s, earned the nickname “Tillie Appleseed” for planting the seeds of feminism and women’s studies, was an anti-war activist in the 1960s and 1970s, and was investigated by the FBI for subversion. The book is broken down by chapter into time periods from “Magnetic Personality: 1925-1929” and “Early Genius: 1934” to “Image Control: 1981-1996” and “Enter Biographer: 1997-2007.” It includes some black and white photographs of Olsen from childhood through to adulthood.

Reid doesn’t necessarily unravel all the riddles around Olsen, but she does an incredible job at bringing the parts of the riddles to light. We see Olsen as a self-absorbed and manipulative woman; Reid definitely knocks Olsen off any saintly pedestal. But she does this without lessening the impact of Olsen’s work. The book is readable and engaging; it isn’t just for scholars.

Review by Kristin Conard

Philosophy: An Innovative Introduction: Fictive Narrative, Primary Texts, and Responsive Writing

By Michael Boylan and Charles Johnson
Westview Press

I was interested in Philosophy: An Innovative Introduction because I so thoroughly enjoyed Steven Church’s Theoretical Killings. Church’s book could appear to be a group of essays on many aspects of philosophy, but actually is as innovative as it is entertaining, ranging from the formally philological to rampant pop-culture rampages. If Theoretical Killings is a fun amusement park ride of the life of the mind, Philosophy: An Innovative Introduction is a more informative museum installation, with relevant interactive exercises at every turn. Muriel Rukeyser stated that, "The universe is made up of stories, not atoms." Applicable to the study of ethics and humanities as well as philosophy, the book utilizes a strong manifestation of ‘fictive narrative philosophy’—a perspective that respects the role of story in philosophical discussion.

Boylan and Johnson’s work innovatively seeks to engage by taking historical figures from dusty pages to serve as protagonists of life’s travails and intrigues. Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hume, Murdoch, and King are included. Short stories are juxtaposed with excerpts from original texts. Students gain comprehension through indirect argument in the stories and via direct, deductive sections. Each group of readings is followed by study questions and essay suggestions as an aid to an understanding and construction of creative arguments. This is a work of relative diversity for its genre, with the Buddha accompanying Plato and Arendt balancing Aquinas. The attempts to humanize these historical figures can be inadvertently amusing—readers learn of Kant’s dinner menu and Marx’s choice of color in neckties—but the overall quality of the fiction is of the caliber indicated by Johnson’s MacArthur Fellowship and National Book Award. Recommended for both classroom and informal study.

Review by Erika Mikkalo

From the Hilltop

By Toni Jensen
University of Nebraska Press

After I read this collection of a dozen stunning stories, I sadly realized that I could count on one hand the number of Native American authors with whom I am familiar. I might pride myself on my awareness that Native Americans live diverse ways of life, just as other ethnic groups, and that the indigenous peoples of the Americas are incredibly diverse in their traditions. However, I have realized a desire to deepen my familiarity with the creative output of contemporary Native Americans.

From the Hilltop is the first volume from "Métis" author Toni Jensen. This book is easily in my top five all-time for short story collections. My favorite story, “Still,” conveys the ache beyond words experienced by a woman who has had a miscarriage. She tries to speak to her family “in English and in Michif,” but neither of her tongues are useful.

Family names reoccur from one chapter to the next. An uncle who is mentioned in the first story appears as a character in the second. This trait gives an element of continuity to the collection, while the stories remain independent from one another. Aspects of American Indian tradition and history appear in these stories of ordinary struggle, misunderstandings, and family tragedy, brightened by moments of surprising beauty.

The choice of words, whether for descriptions, dialogue, or inner reflection, is impeccable. Jensen is a powerful, gifted writer who has crafted characters for whom this reader felt deeply.

As the film Smoke Signals made many aware of the brilliance of Sherman Alexie, I hope this collection will reach a wide readership and call attention as well to other deserving Native American writers. From the Hilltop is part of the Native Storiers series of the University of Nebraska Press.

Review by Lisa Rand