First published in 1989. Stories from The New Yorker, GQ, Ploughshares, etc. The back cover says that "Elegant and poignant, these stories are seamless evocations of self-discovery".
In stories the protagonist is supposed to undergo a change. In the first story, "Why China?", the main character (a father on holiday with his family who meets someone who swindled him years before) undergoes a different change in relation to each of several of the other characters - he befriends his elder daughter, confesses to his wife, etc.
In "Sacred Heart" the working's more visible. Sarah, a ninth-grader at a girls-only religious school, is a "great admirer of Jesus Christ" and has a crush on a new girl, Amanda. She sees Amanda self-harming in the toilet and is invited to help her cut. She does. Sarah doesn't like her step-father, though he's a nice enough guy. She can't bring herself to call him "Dad" or "Julius". Sarah "would gaze at our thin Jesus perched above the altar and think of what violence he had suffered ... And I found, to my confusion, that I was jealous of him". Amanda runs away from school with her drop-out brother. Sarah, at home, self-harms more than she meant to (it's her first time) and has to call for help. Only her step-father's at home. To attract his attention she has to call out "Dad" and "Julius"! Months later she goes to buy shoes for a date with a boy. Amanda's working in the shop. When Sarah leaves, she thinks "I breathed deeply, inhaling the last of her smell, but it lingered, and after several more blocks I realised that what I smelled was not Amanda. It was myself, and this day of early summer".
"Passing the hat" follows the thoughts of a woman who's about to leave the neighbourhood where she brought up a family and belonged to a group of friends who partied, skied, re-married and earned good money. But one of them killed herself. "When it comes to memory, I suppose, we're all passing the hat" ... "I watched her face arrange itself around the cigarette, as if every crease had been formed by this act. Strangely, I had an urge to smoke one myself, which I hadn't done since college" ... "I've become a smaller version of myself, distilled from an earlier abundance I was not even aware of".
Recurrent themes are - blood; affairs that the innocent spouse discovers years later; attempts to recall the details of a significant event that happened years before; meeting acquaintances in unexpected places (China, Spain, Santa Barbara, an out-of-town bar); expectations of fame; ending the first section/paragraph with a story-setting statement ("And of course, I disliked her instantly", p.100; "The truth is, I'll take anything I'm given", p.128).
There's defeatism too - "As I plod back, I am filled with a dismal triumph. I feel relief, the relief of being one step closer to something inevitable. The pleasure of ceasing to resist, of giving up", p.131; "She ... wishes she were daring, risqué, all the things she has never been and will never be", p.150.
As when reading other well-written stories, I got into the habit of noting the "Chekhov's guns". Sometimes I would have preferred surprise to the satisfaction of closure. I liked how the main character's profession in "The Stylist" becomes a metaphor for a way of life. I liked the ending of "The watch trick", the leap in time putting the events into perspective. It made me like the piece more than I did while reading it. I liked "Sisters of the Moon". And the others weren't at all bad.
Other reviews
- Good reads
- Chris East
- Kirkus review (11 somewhat strained stories that seem suited to the glossy venues in which they first appeared (e.g., GQ and Mademoiselle): They're slick if utterly predictable lifestyle studies that entertain very conventional notions of conformity and wildness. Most often, Egan's financially successful protagonists yearn for the simplicity or adventure of their previous lives ... Egan's stronger pieces are told from a young girl's point of view and usually involve some sort of small, if intense, revelation ... The lure of adventure and the lust for wealth in Egan's schematic little fictions are just yuppie fantasies; she seldom gets beyond the cliches of money and personal crisis.)
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