In “Choose Your Own Genetics,” a lesson on blood typing discloses some unsettling news even more unsettling is how the narrator’s respected father, a geneticist, uses his superior knowledge to bully the teacher. When she finally says, “I trust you, Gordon,” he trembles, as if suppressing a scream: “My father’s tone shifted slowly from intimate to false intimate-the voice he used to clinch the bargain with his other customers.” In these stories, trust can create distance as well as closeness, as can the truth. Over several visits, Natalie’s father flirts with an old love, Delia Braithwaite, who’s dying, while ostensibly selling her a headstone. The title story begins with the knockout line: “Nothing sells tombstones like a Girl Scout in uniform”-a mild piece of deception (Natalie, the narrator, is 13 and was never a Girl Scout) that hints at more complicated ones to follow. But his characters, whether a truck driver or a professional folklorist, teenage or elderly, male or female, all tend to come up against a longing for trustworthiness. In this collection of literary fiction, winner of the 2012 Hudson Prize, seven short stories explore secrets, lies and trust.Īppel ( Phoning Home: Essays, 2014, etc.) populates his stories with mostly ordinary people.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |