How Strange a Season by Megan Mayhew Bergman

I absolutely loved Megan Mayhew Bergman's stories in “Almost Famous Women” so I've been greatly anticipating this new collection. One of my bookish resolutions for this year was to read a short story at the very beginning of each morning. That's what I did for the past week with these eight tales and it's been one of the highlights of each day losing myself in Bergman's compelling fictional landscape. These stories focus on the lives of different female characters grappling with desire and dealing with fear. Many are caught between the burdens of the past and the uncertainty of the future because of issues to do with the changing environment, economic inequality and strained familial circumstances. It's extremely moving how Bergman shows how these characters struggle to deal with these larger issues while fulfilling their own ambitions. As a way of not feeling overwhelmed one character suggests “The trick was to believe in your choices.” The author has a wonderful ability to quickly immerse the reader in her characters' reality which meant I was immediately gripped by their dilemmas and emotionally invested in their outcomes.

Bergman builds environments in her stories with rich atmospheric descriptions from a glass-walled seafront property in California to the lazy heat and rotting fruit on a South Carolina farm. Some tales focus on quiet intermediary periods where characters contemplate big decisions which will affect the rest of their lives. Others maintain an immediate dramatic tension as in 'Peaches, 1979' where a serial killer “strangler” is in the area and the culprit might be a part of the protagonist's own family. There's biting inbuilt comedy in the story 'Heirloom' where a woman turns her inherited barren desert ranch into a business where wealthy men can work out their emotional blockages by operating heavy machinery. In 'Wife Days' a woman negotiates a degree of autonomy with her husband by declaring she will only play her role as wife on certain days of the week. However, her ritual of rejuvenation through swimming and washing her face becomes like a circular nightmare rather than a path towards physical/spiritual renewal.

The most sustained and ambitious tale in this collection is the novella 'Indigo Run' (which took me more than a morning to complete as I had to read it in between work demands throughout my day.) It's set on a Southern plantation and primarily involves the tempestuous marriage between Helena and Win and their daughter Skip. Here “The past felt uncomfortably close... as if it were being kept at bay but ready to rush in at any moment and take root again.” It's so compelling how the characters feel duty bound by expectations and the burden of history to play certain roles. However, this impedes their growth and potential for personal happiness. It feels like a metaphor for the larger country. As an extension of this novella there is the compelling final fable-like tale in this collection 'The Night Hag' which charts the life of a figure born from a fish egg who takes “the shape of a woman”. After being used and discarded by a man, she physically and mentally deteriorates until she takes on monstrous properties (both in appearance and her actions.) Aside from this intriguing flirtation with the fantastical, Bergman's stories exquisitely capture the realistic dilemmas of different individuals with great wisdom and psychologically insightful detail.

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford

Ada and her father live a self-contained existence and run a highly unusual healing practice. While they may appear human they are not as Ada was born from the Ground and at night her father shifts into a wild carnivorous animal who hunts on all fours. Since she is not biologically a female when Ada takes a local man as a lover she literally must grow genitals in order to consummate their relationship. “Follow Me To Ground” could be described as a book of magical realism or a debut novel which creatively incorporates elements of folklore, but I get uncomfortable categorising new works of fiction in this way. It feels too easy to group together literature which bends reality and writes its own laws of nature. Rather than describe it as part of any particular tradition in writing, I’d rather call it a highly original novel written in a voice which is fiercely its own.

There’s a haunting and unsettling quality to it which lingers in my mind like a dream I can’t quite remember. While the text is no doubt layered with symbolism and contains references to different mythologies or religions, I enjoyed letting the story simply wash over me with all its weirdness and gradually unfolding internal logic. I feel both attracted to and repulsed by Ada who feels desire sharply and also possesses a disturbing lack of sentimentality about the people she treats by opening up their bodies to burrow inside. To heal them she sings in a way which causes their ailments to depart. She loves so fiercely she’s determined to entirely possess the man she wants no matter the cost to him or anyone else. Like all witches, the local villagers respect and fear her. She’s like a divinity not to be trusted, yet she’s also the one people turn to when they are in desperate need. It’s touching how Rainsford conveys a sense of loneliness about her while also showing how she feels no self-pity.

The story is also cleverly constructed. Ada’s narration is interspersed with testimonies from different locals who have either been treated by her or heard vicious rumours about her. Only near the end of the book is it revealed why these statements are being made. The way the domestic harmony of this strange setting unravels has a moving tragedy to it. It’s the kind of book which makes me eager to discuss it with someone else - not only to try to piece together what happened, but to share in the wickedly surprising experience of it. This is a novel I’m going to enjoy puzzling over for some time.

After the Parade by Lori Ostlund

It’s not often I come across a novel where my opinion of that book transforms so much over the course of reading it. By and large, I abide by the fifty page rule. If I’m not getting much out of the book by that point I put it aside. Yet some novels only reveal their logic and reasoning as the story becomes fully formed. I felt this way about Colm Toibin’s novel “Brooklyn” especially. It’s beautifully written, but I didn’t really see the point until towards the end when I was suddenly absolutely gripped and realized what a brilliant book it is. “After the Parade” begins with an arresting and original premise. As the book opens we meet a man in his early forties named Aaron leaving his partner Walter, an older man that he’s been in a relationship with for over twenty years. Aaron embarks from this point on a journey of self discovery into reconciling his own past and finding the strength to fearlessly create a different kind of future for himself.

Lori Ostlund is an engaging writer who creates lively, complex and deeply-sympathetic characters. More than anything, this is a book dedicated to outsiders. It pays tribute and memorializes the struggle of people who feel ostracized from mainstream society because they are different or, as one character perceives them, a “band of misfits.” There are characters who are overweight, queer, Jewish, stricken with long-term illnesses and foreign students learning English as a second language. But the novel doesn’t portray these characters in a way that is only interested in serving the plot. They are written as fully-rounded people who possess their own flaws and make their own mistakes. It also skilfully shows the way projections about people impact an individual’s own psychology about the way they see themselves: “Once people thought they knew you, it was almost impossible to change their minds, which meant that it was almost impossible to change yourself.” One of the most compelling characters and the person that changes the most is Aaron’s mother Dolores who seems at first to be rather meek housewife living under an abusive patriarchal figure, but who develops into a deeply complex, conflicted and compelling individual. I was driven to read more of this book because I found the characters so engaging.  

A vibrant and forceful character called Clarence keeps the spines of all his books turned inward. I tried this with my own shelf. The effect is unsettling.

What I found difficult about the process of reading this novel were the abrupt time shifts which occur so frequently throughout. Scenes move back and forth between the present, past and many points in between. Going back to Aaron’s earliest childhood the reader learns in pieces about traumatic events which divided his family and led him to form a relationship with Walter. It can be somewhat confusing to travel in your imagination over these constantly shifting landscapes in time. It made me long for a linear story about Aaron’s life and wonder why Ostlund didn’t compose the novel this way. It’s only later on in the novel that Aaron’s changing personality shows why these memories of the past are spread throughout the narrative. The past informs the present in some important ways so it can’t be composed in a straight line. The significance around events at the beginning take on a deeper, more nuanced meaning once the reader understands the way he eventually developed into a man who abandons a loving, supportive relationship. The way this novel is composed makes a bigger statement about individual responsibility and survival than if it had been written as a straightforward coming of age story.  

I won’t deny that part of what drew me to this novel was the personal connection I felt with its protagonist. Being a man in my late thirties, it’s easy for me to relate to Aaron. He’s at a point in his life where he feels like a full adult and independent from his experiences growing up, yet he still finds himself haunted by his upbringing and curious about how the repercussions of certain events still influence his current behaviour. However, I don’t think you need to have such personal parallels with Aaron to get just as much as I did out of this novel. It shows how we often like to blame others for the situation we’re in. At one point a character confronts Aaron stating “You wanted Walter to be wrong so you didn’t have to be, but there isn’t always one person who’s right and another who’s wrong. Sometimes – usually – it’s not that easy.” “After the Parade” demonstrates through its powerful story the way individuals grapple with the grey areas of life. Like all the characters in this heartfelt novel, we must negotiate with ourselves on a daily basis about how much we’re willing to compromise and whether we have the strength to fully face an uncertain future without fear.

The State We’re In by Ann Beattie

Some short story collections are made up of disparate pieces of fiction which authors have written over time and gathered together. Such was the case with Rose Tremain’s book “The American Lover” published last year. When I was at a reading Tremain gave I asked the question of how she chose what stories to include and how to order them; I was shocked to be told that this was mostly her editor’s work and she had little to do with it. It felt to me the movement from the beginning to end of the book took the reader on a distinct emotional journey. Clever editor.

Other short story collections are put together with a particular theme in mind or interrelate in ways which directly inform each other. It feels like “The State We’re In” is firmly a part of this later methodology, although I have no insight into how Ann Beattie composed this collection. The stories within form an arc of experience for the character of Jocelyn who appears throughout several (including the opening and closing story.) She’s been sent to stay with an aunt and uncle in Maine while attending summer school where she’s given the task of writing a story/essay using elements of magical realism. Jocelyn dreads writing this assignment, but by the book’s end she’s found a strategy to compose it. Yet, we’re made to wonder what the mechanism of story-telling means and how the telling interacts with living. In between we’re given the stories of distinctive personalities mostly set in Maine which include a collection of voices full of neighbouring gossip and local struggles. Jocelyn feels that “real life – you couldn’t write.” But that’s just what Beattie goes on to do.

There is a sense of being suspended in a physical place, but also in an emotional state. Some characters are established and content like a 77 year old woman who writes poetry, but it’s the accomplishments in her life which provide a counterpoint to poets past. Other characters are extremely anxious like a woman whose been asked to provide her back garden for a friend’s wedding when she despises the groom. Still others are trapped in an insolvable emotional mess like the character Moira in ‘Road Movie’ who is the lover of a married man. The configuration of their arrangement won’t change and the fact they are caught enacting clichés doesn’t make the emotional stress of the situation any less painful. This self-conscious awareness shown throughout the stories demonstrates how people can continuously narrate their lives while being unable to prevent themselves from becoming characters within them.

With my father in front of my childhood home during a typically snowy Maine winter

In some ways I felt a lot of the details in these stories washing over me as if I were listening to a gossipy neighbour I met in supermarket who won’t stop talking. Tales of terminal illness or a boy’s suicide attempt might come surprisingly in the middle of a speculations about what to have for dinner. There are details which surprise and delight, but I frequently wondered why am I being told this? It’s observed at one point that “The whole world’s full of stories. I never doubted that. Every writer will tell you the same thing: it’s next to impossible to find the inevitable story, because so many needles appear in so many haystacks. Most writers spend their entire careers – those who are lucky enough to have them – considering endless piles of hay praying, just praying that needle will prick their finger.” The experience of reading this collection is like doing this sort of sifting. But I did feel like I was startled to attention several times because sometimes a point of view struck me as so disarmingly true it was like being pierced.

I can’t help having a personal connection to this book since it is set in Maine and that is actually the state I grew up in. Many of the characters felt very familiar and it’s a social landscape I really recognized. In many ways, Maine is a very insulated place which lives by its own rules separate from the rest of the country. But at the same time it reflects the country where longstanding poverty uncomfortably rests against a small section of affluence. Beattie excellently captures the flavour of Maine with all its idiosyncrasies from pie making to barn auctions. This is a quietly unsettling and beautiful book of stories which is probably best read in order from start to finish.