In The Gloaming: Stories

Of all the stories in In the Gloaming only two were not tinged with sadness and general dissatisfaction. Every story is comprised of three components: characters with dilemmas or decisions to make, human interactions that depend on the outcome of the dilemma or decision, and a sparse plot serving as a thin backdrop to the character conflict.
Case in point: Mother and son get to know each other in the title story. Son is dying of AIDS while father slips out of the picture. Mother's dilemma is whether to acknowledge her son's inevitable demise or pretend his life has hope. Another example, in "The Jungle Lodge" two sisters are on vacation in the Amazon. One sister has the dilemma of whether or not to tell the other she had been raped while show more discovering her sister's improper relationship. One last dilemma. In "Close" a man's dilemma is which woman to continue a relationship with, his pretty mistress or his pregnant wife while learning his childhood home is up for sale.Each dilemma or decision has an impact on the supporting characters. show less

Is there a law that short stories have to be depressing? The last book of them I read (Hateship…) was not so bad in this regard, but still most of the stories were downers. In this book, all the stories are downers. The “gloaming” refers to dusk or dawn, a sense of transition—does no one ever transition to something happy? The title story is about a woman watching her son die of AIDS—they share the evening hour together, but it is also the gloaming of his life. In “Home,” a woman with Alzheimer’s disease tries to handle her husband’s decision to move them into a nursing home, as he has made all their decisions, when she cannot remember the details of it from one day to the next. The final story, “Watch the show more Animals,” does end on the book’s most uplifting note; as a woman dies of cancer, she finally makes an impact on the closed-minded super-traditional upper crust world into which she was born. The story is narrated in an amorphous “we” reacting to what they perceive as this woman’s peculiarities, peculiarities which they seem finally to value. show less

A fine collection of short stories about the core and mystery of relationships, but the one that makes the book is the first one, "In the Gloaming", about a mother's final weeks with her son as he slowly succumbs to AIDS. It is a beautiful, spare, sad story, was made into a heartbreaking TV-movie with Glenn Close, and was selected by John Updike for "The Best American Short Stories of the Century". I would tend to agree with the choice.

If I wanted to know more about boring rich people I could have just taken Metro North back to Ardsley. The stories in this book go from totally awesome (In The Gloaming) to less awesome to less awesome to less awesome until the last story is like "Oh god, might as well."

Dark is a great author, but I think I prefer her novels. The title was good though and a few others, but some I just wasn't crazy about.

Beautiful, beautiful short stories!