Antonya Nelson

Antonya Nelson's short stories are at once pointed and universal, each character reminding the reader of someone specific she knows but who also seems to represent the most broad characteristics of the human condition. Nelson creates impressively three-dimensional pictures which feel somehow tragic and hopeful, realist and optimistic. These stories hold up among the very best because these complexities stick in the mind long after the book has been put away.

The stories seem like they come from a quite bitter and jaded place. I really didn't care that Alan slammed his fast food tray with an empty styrofoam cup of chili into the trash can, nor that teen mom Maggie's baby cried in certain ways. Some authors try to court the "incisive and perceptive" crown so intently that their plots get bogged down by exasperatingly uninteresting details. (Not surprisingly, the plaudit on the back cover was written by the master of pointless, bitter details, show more Raymond Carver.) As the first line of the blurb points out, most of these stories are about crumbling or otherwise awkward marriages. show less

Birdy Stone is a 30-year-old Chicago transplant teaching English at Pinetop High School in Pinetop, New Mexico. Her best friend is Jesus, another teacher who is gay, and they do a lot of partying together. Birdy begins an affair with one of her students and then becomes more entangled with the family when his mother asks her to help edit a book she is writing about the family tragedy. Mark's sister Theresa committed suicide when she was 17 by jumping off a cliff, and his father died a few show more days later in a car accident. There are interesting parts to the book, including the mystery about the dual tragedies, but I really came to detest Birdy, who is a whiny, spoiled brat with no redeeming characteristics. The author tries to make her sympathetic in the end, but it is too little too late. Also, the reader never finds out the "answer" to the mystery, which is somewhat disappointing. show less

Antonya Nelson is best known for her short stories, but in this novel she uses the extra space to wonderful effect. This is a thoughtful, elliptical novel and the gentle pace may not grab all readers, which is a pity because this is a beautifully written, deeply insightful novel about the lives of three women in Kansas. Catherine is in her 40s, and married to much-Oliver, a vain and self-indulgent man on his third marriage, although one senses it may not be his last. Misty is Catherine's show more childhood friend, whose life diverged from Catherine's into more turbulent, and messier, waters. The book opens when Misty, with a dog in the back of the car, drives off a road to her death. Her daughter, Cattie is a teenager is 'willed' to Catherine and when she learns of her mother's death, skips out on her Eastern boarding school with $500 in her pocket, a rather dodgy travelling companion and a stray dog.

If you are looking for a page-turning plot, perhaps this isn't your book, because things happen slowly here, and apart from the intial car crash, without much violence, even though the BTK Killer hovers like a malevolent spirit in the background. Nelson's territory is interior and this is the landscape on which she works her considerable magic. Her focus shifts, at one moment bringing Catherine and Oliver's marriage into the spotlight, at another turning it onto Oliver's infidelities, or Cattie's journey . . . All flows together seamlessly, creating a vivid and intriguing portrait of these people's lives. On cannot help but think of Chekhov.

The story begins and ends with the dog from the back of Misty's car, and it is testment to the grace of Nelson's writing that this feels right and good and not a bit maudlin.

Settle in. Get a good cup of tea. Relax. Take your time and enjoy this terrific book. show less