Winston-Salem Journal Book Reviewer
Sunday, July 29, 2007
By Anne Barnhill
No 'clinkers' in memorable tales of love and marriage
YOU WON’T REMEMBER THIS. By Kate Blackwell. Southern Methodist University Press. 248 pages. $22.50.
You Won’t Remember This, the first book of short stories by Kate Blackwell, a Winston-Salem native, is one of the finest collections I’ve read, and, in my work, I am privileged to read many. Blackwell’s wisdom and subtlety are evident even in the title. By telling us we won’t remember, she ensures that we do.
What a treat to find these dozen stories, each finely crafted, each bearing an equal share of the burden of the book. Usually within a collection, I find what I call “clinkers” — stories that fail to match the quality of the best tales gathered together. No clinkers can be discovered here. Not only are these stories obviously the work of a mature writer at the apex of her abilities, but they also show a range of subject matter and style, indicating that this writer has lived fully and deeply. And we, her readers, are the happy recipients of her discoveries and observations.
One of the themes connecting the stories is how love and marriage change everything, particularly for young women. In “My First Wedding,” we find the narrator remembering her cousin Augusta’s wedding many years earlier. The narrator feels a special kinship with the older girl because Augusta has written sonnets and is famous for reading everything. The narrator harbors hopes of becoming a writer herself. After marrying, neither woman writes, and the reader is left with the narrator’s lingering question, “Who will remember any of us who live so hidden, so far away from nearly everything?”
This story, set in the South, feels as familiar and comfortable as sitting on your grandmother’s front porch and chatting with passing neighbors. Very different is “The Secret Life of Peonies” set in Washington, among very privileged people who, though they have so much, always want more of something. For Alexandra, whose “kitchen could be a photograph in a magazine,” what she wants is Mead Latourette, a married man with children. With compassion for all the characters in the story, even the difficult Alexandra, Blackwell lifts the story to a higher level than most adultery sagas.
Blackwell also has a sense of humor, and her story, “Queen of the May,” had me laughing out loud. Imagine a middle-aged woman inadvertently baring her breasts to the yard man, then being inspired to dance naked in her backyard, later, after he has left.
“Alan!” she yelled out the window.
He looked around, still pacing. (The yard man pacing off his proposed gazebo.)
“Up here, Alan!”
When he saw her at the window, he stopped and stared.
“Alan, I want it! I want the gazebo! Go ahead and start building it.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared.
She yelled louder, “I want the gazebo, Alan!”
He still didn’t say anything, though he flipped his hand in an assenting gesture. She smiled and waved gaily and stepped back from the window, feeling wonderful. Then she looked down at her white naked self and groaned.
As she comes to terms with her “revelation,” she finds the whole event quite freeing. In an unexpected turn, her nude dancing just might solve the problems in her marriage.
Most of these stories have been published in prestigious literary magazines, such as Prairie Schooner, Agni, Sojourners, New Letters and The Greensboro Review. Again, this is an excellent group of stories from a fine writer.
Anne Barnhill is a writer and book reviewer who lives in Dunn.