A collection that you'll want to keep on your bedside table by one of America’s most original short story writers.
Davis, whose prodigious output includes translations, essays, and stories, is back with an overflowing treasure chest of jewel-like stories.
Davis’ stories, some no longer than a sentence, others arranged on the page like poems, eschew the conventions of fiction and instead focus on small, significant moments. “I saw something white moving through the air by the side of the house,” the narrator in “A Matter of Perspective” observes. “I thought it was a large white butterfly fluttering by— / a rare white butterfly! / But it was only a special delivery letter, / Coming past the window in the postman’s hand.” This attention to perspective, to the significance of details as well as the possibility of misperception and miscommunication, animates Davis’ work. In some cases, it’s linguistic, as in “Caramel Drizzle,” a playful piece about the difference between adding “caramel syrup” or “caramel drizzle” to a coffee drink, or “Letter to the Father,” in which a poet whose father is dead wonders, “Do I have a father, or did I have a father?” How much can depend on our perceptions? these stories relentlessly ask. In “Incident on the Train,” a woman asks a young couple to watch her belongings only to begin to worry that they aren’t responsible because “the guy’s eyes are bloodshot, and the girl has a lot of tattoos.” As in many of Davis’ stories, the narrator’s second-guessing leads not to clarity but only more confusion and chaos. Though these stories pose serious questions, their tone is always playful, tender, and irreverent. A series of pieces titled “Claim to Fame” poke gentle fun at the practice of claiming fame by association: “In Detroit, standing in a line, I met a woman who turned out to be the daughter of Samuel Beckett’s publisher Barney Rossett.” And in “Pardon the Intrusion,” Davis creates a community board of things that people are giving away or seeking. Some of the requests are ordinary (“Would anyone like this toddler bed?”) and others slightly wacky (“Pardon the intrusion, but I and the Professor have a surfeit of borage. Any suggestions?”), but together they tell a story about how our idiosyncrasies bring us together.
A collection that you'll want to keep on your bedside table by one of America’s most original short story writers.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9798987717103
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bookshop Editions
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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