Published February 2011 by Five Chapters Press
Say hello to Emma Straub’s debut short story collection Other People We Married, and kiss your preconceived notions about short fiction goodbye.
Let’s be honest: there are short stories that reinforce the idea that the genre can be pretentious, inaccessible, and abstract. I know. I’ve read ‘em. You probably have too. Or maybe you haven’t touched short fiction at all since high school. Or ever. Whatever your experience with short fiction, you’d do yourself a favor by spending an afternoon (and really, that’s all it will take) with Other People We Married.
Straub’s collection, full of the kind of quirky, flawed, believable characters that will remind you of your friends, your colleagues, and yourself, begins with “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” in which a young writer attempts to fight her attraction to a student by dating a real Grown-Up Man (who owns a house and everything) and ends up reflecting on the strange in-between-ness of the stage of life during which one is technically an adult but doesn’t feel like it yet.
Then there’s the young mother in “Rosemary” who hires a pet psychic to find her lost cat in an attempt to convince herself that “everything was going to be perfect, just like in a magazine: glossy and impossible.” And there are the sisters in “A Map of Modern Palm Springs” who carry their sibling rivalry into adulthood, and the adolescent girls who experiment with crossing the boundaries of friendship in “Pearls.”
In “Abraham’s Enchanted Forest,” a teenage girl whose parents have raised her in their amusement park, considers the ways in which her parents’ choices have shaped her life and plots her escape.
It was almost too much to bear, the thousands of choices that led up to Greta’s existence. It just all seemed so unlikely.
And in “Fly-Over State,” about a young couple who have recently moved to Wisconsin from New York, the woman, Sophie, faces the disparity between the life she imagined and the life she has made.
I never imagined we’d actually leave New York…We were settled. There were never any boxes in my daydreams.
Straub’s characters wrestle with identity and struggle to reconcile the reality of who they’ve become with who they imagined they would be, and she explores loss—and the things loss makes us willing to believe in—with subtlety and clever insight. In “Puttanesca,” my favorite piece in the collection, characters who have both lost a spouse are set up by their therapist and face the painful process of moving on together, and they do it with vulnerability, sensitivity, and a lovely sense of humor about themselves and their situation.
In fact, that is true of most of the characters in Other People We Married. The pieces in this collection are filled with Straub’s sly and charming sense of humor—take for example Sophie’s observation in “Fly-Over State” that “Our house was the only rental on the block. Maybe something unseemly had happened there: adultery, Judaism, modern dance”—and this turns her exploration of difficult emotions into an enjoyable and satisfying reading experience. And when, in “Marjorie and the Birds,” an older woman takes up birding with the thought that it “didn’t seem like a hobby at all, but like agreeing to be more observant. She’d always been good at paying attention,” readers will note that Straub, too, is good at paying attention, and it shows.
Other People We Married is keenly observed, deeply felt, and an absolute delight to read. Straub’s characters are authentic, and they live in the real world, with all its weirdness, uncertainty, and “well, this isn’t what I expected it to be”-ness. If you can make it through these pages without wanting to find Emma Straub and put her in your pocket, you’re a stronger person than I. Highly recommended.
Related posts:
Book Review: Mattaponi Queen by Belle BoggsBook Review: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den BergBook Review & Giveaway: Months and Seasons by Christopher MeeksWriting real people into fiction?Tuesday Thingers: Book Awards Filed Under Book Reviews3 Comments -->Comments3 Responses to “”
Alex George onMarch 31st, 2011 8:04 am Great review, Rebecca. I know nobody’s supposed to admit this, but I share your misgivings about much modern short fiction. This sounds like a perfect antidote, though. Thanks for putting it on my radar!
Alex George´s last blog ..Great Writers Coming to Columbia- MO!
bookspersonally onMarch 31st, 2011 8:06 am These sound wonderful- I love a good short story collection. I have heard a lot of buzz about her/the book, but this is the first review I’ve gotten to read- thanks, really look forward to reading them.
bookspersonally´s last blog ..The Ice Princess – Camilla Läckberg
Rebecca Joines Schinsky onMarch 31st, 2011 8:45 am Don’t get me wrong—I love short fiction. But I hate its reputation, and I’m always thrilled to find a book that proves the popular misconceptions wrong. Hope you enjoy it!
Got something to say?Name (required)
Email Address(required)
Website
-->Speak your mind
Notify me of followup comments via e-mailCopyright © 2010 The Book Lady's Blog • Designed by:Simply Amusing Designs
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail
No comments:
Post a Comment