A review by an_enthusiastic_reader
Maggie Brown & Others: Stories by Peter Orner
4.0
Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The characters in this story collection oftentimes feel disconnected from the roles they seem to be stuck in. The stories take place from 1950 to the 1990s, with the distinct sensibility of a pre-technology era. Many of the stories are about family who are cast out from their expected roles due to poor luck, addiction, and mental illness. Orner's prose pulls on threads of loneliness and exhaustion, and within the collection's thematic sections, the brief stories connect to one another.
There are two sections of this book that feature one narrator. In short glimpses, this unnamed man, who is a writer, explores the plights of people in his family, aunts and uncles, town criminals. Later, we see him look back at his education, then his life with a wife. These micro-stories, which are not conventionally formed, are vivid and poignant. And the narrator uses language that feels conversational. He says of an aunt, "[she] was in her late forties when she moved back home. The word was that she was "a little off." Nobody by my father went as far to say she was crazy. He'd tell anybody who listened what a loon his sister was." In a sense, the writer's whole childhood and young adulthood come alive on the page. The way he tells his stories confer an understanding of our common humanity, a love, even for the castaways of modern life. This is the collection's most ardent theme.
In addition to affection for the disaffected, religion, commerce, and sexual connections are important, too. These themes come up often in the novella "Walt Kaplan is Broke." Relying on some history from earlier stories, the novella takes place in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1977. Walter Kaplan has bypassed death by cardiac arrest, leaving him to evaluate his whole life, marriage, friendships, and the history of the town itself. Walt has been a business failure, and was depressed before he nearly died. When he wakes up, he has to find his place among the living.
Orner has the ability to give a skeleton of details about a character's life and trust that the reader can fill in the gaps and leap from story to story to understand an overarching message about our pasts. It's a rare talent and these stories are its evidence.
The characters in this story collection oftentimes feel disconnected from the roles they seem to be stuck in. The stories take place from 1950 to the 1990s, with the distinct sensibility of a pre-technology era. Many of the stories are about family who are cast out from their expected roles due to poor luck, addiction, and mental illness. Orner's prose pulls on threads of loneliness and exhaustion, and within the collection's thematic sections, the brief stories connect to one another.
There are two sections of this book that feature one narrator. In short glimpses, this unnamed man, who is a writer, explores the plights of people in his family, aunts and uncles, town criminals. Later, we see him look back at his education, then his life with a wife. These micro-stories, which are not conventionally formed, are vivid and poignant. And the narrator uses language that feels conversational. He says of an aunt, "[she] was in her late forties when she moved back home. The word was that she was "a little off." Nobody by my father went as far to say she was crazy. He'd tell anybody who listened what a loon his sister was." In a sense, the writer's whole childhood and young adulthood come alive on the page. The way he tells his stories confer an understanding of our common humanity, a love, even for the castaways of modern life. This is the collection's most ardent theme.
In addition to affection for the disaffected, religion, commerce, and sexual connections are important, too. These themes come up often in the novella "Walt Kaplan is Broke." Relying on some history from earlier stories, the novella takes place in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1977. Walter Kaplan has bypassed death by cardiac arrest, leaving him to evaluate his whole life, marriage, friendships, and the history of the town itself. Walt has been a business failure, and was depressed before he nearly died. When he wakes up, he has to find his place among the living.
Orner has the ability to give a skeleton of details about a character's life and trust that the reader can fill in the gaps and leap from story to story to understand an overarching message about our pasts. It's a rare talent and these stories are its evidence.