Stories from Ploughshares, One Story, Harvard review, etc.
- Creature - Carol, a 14 y.o. girl (her 1st-person PoV) who lives in a one-bedroom apartment with her mother (separated from her alcoholic husband) has a live-in job for a fortnight in The Pikes' mansion looking after 2 kids. Kay (29) has a 2 y.o. and a 4 y.o., staying with her parents. They all get into a routine - "while she didn't make continual conversation, she made just enough to keep someone from picking up their novel" - until fun-loving Hugh (Kay's brother) arrives. His year-long marriage to Raven (nick-named Molly Bloom by the old lady) is on the rocks.
Carol's writing a 15 page letter to her friend, saying how she fancies Hugh. She learns from the kids that Hugh's read it. Has he told everybody? Will she be sacked?
The adults talk in her presence as if she's invisible. When she gets out of the pool, she doesn't realise until later how transparent her clothes are. She has moods. Her mother sometime says "You become a creature I can't understand".
She's never had a boyfriend, never pleasured herself. Hugh tries to rape her. She bites him and runs back to the rest of the family in the garden. The 4 y.o. can do tricks in the pool now. She's about to tell Mrs Pike something. Then she sees Hugh on the house roof. She asks for fins because "A wolf shark needs her fins". She hope that wolf sharks exist. - Five Tuesdays in winter - Maine, c.1970. Mitchell runs a bookshop. His daughter Paula's 12 and help out. He employs Kate, in her thirties. His wife left at least 5 years ago, with his college friend. She left him because he was emotionless. Kate starts giving Paula Spanish lessons at his house, on Tuesdays. She falls in love with her. She starts dating a man who picks her up from the shop. The 5th Tuesday lesson is on her birthday. Paula asks her to stay for a meal. Paula begins to get periods. He tells her that her mother had heavy periods. She asks if he misses her. He says he doesn't. She doesn't either. She felt her mother never cared for her the way he did. Kate gives her some practical help. At the meal, Kate puts a hand to his face.
- When in the Dordogne - In 1986, USA, when the first-person narrator was 14, his mother and nervous-breakdown father spent 2 months in the Dordogne. Two sophomores (Ed and Grant) looked after him and the house. They were literary wise-crackers. He didn't want them in his father's study - gunshot marks were still there. They swam nude in the pool. They set him up to meet Becca, his heart-throb. He and Becca blissfully kissed. He wanted his parents to never return.
Years later, married to Becca, he's read Ed's 3 novels, disappointed that the summer wasn't mentioned. He thinks that Ed and Grant must have loved each other. - North Sea - Oda (2 years a widow - her husband died in a traffic accident) and daughter Hanna (12) are on their first holiday alone (from Munich?) on a North Sea island. 2 weeks in a family hotel. One double bed. They don't have much money. Oda wants to have intimate talks with Hanna but she resists. Oda buys her some horse-riding lessons. One morning Hanna babysits 3 kids for the parents upstairs. When they don't return at the right time, Hanna tells the kids that they've died, using the same wording that Oda used when telling Hanna about the accident. Hanna promises the children that she'll raise them. Then the parents arrive.
- Timeline - first-person Lucy (25) is moving in with brother Wes (31) and his partner Mandy. He was booky but Mandy stopped all that. Lucy has a wall-frieze of civilisation. She's trying to escape her ex William, a married cross-dresser who paid for an abortion after getting her pregnant. She's maid of honour for Saskia who she's not seen for 13 years. When she returns from the wedding, Mandy is drunk, William has followed her, and the estranged father of the kids downstairs has called the police because the mother is working nights, leaving the kids alone. Wes tell the police it's his fault the kids are alone. (perhaps not the best, but there's a lot going on. What about the timeline?)
- Hotel Seattle - The narrator shared a college room with dishy Paul. When Paul married Gail (who the narrated thought unworthy of Paul) and had a father, the narrator came out to him by phone. Paul ended their friendship. Years later Paul suggests a meeting. The narrator, who's living with Steve, meets Paul in his hotel - he's a hen-pecked, middle-aged salesman. The narrator's still angry. Paul seems angry that he'd not realised the narrator was gay until the call. They go to Paul's room and have rough sex (Paul said that Gail complained about his roughness). Paul's angry, then cries. When Steve leaves next morning, Steve is in the lobby.
- Waiting for Charlie - A usually grumpy 91 y.o. grandad is visiting his 25 y.o. grand-daughter Charlotte in hospital. She's in a coma after a skiing accident, half her skull removed. "They were both drifting from their bodies". A nurse comes in, explains that the bottles that the family left can be opened to release smells. They affect him. He's used to hospitals, feels safer there than at home. He falls asleep. (a short piece - one of the best)
- Mansard - Frances has 4 kids. Audrey (married to Larry) arrives. Then Sue. Frances's father Ben is there. Frances's parents split in 1939, when she was 3. She hadn't seen much of him - he was a spy. The 4 of them play bridge. Audrey and Ben like each other. Later, Audrey goes looking for him, knowing only the road where he lives and that his house has a mansard roof. She has an affair with him (I don't really get it)
- South - Marie-Claude (French) is driving her 2 kids south in the USA to stay with friends. Her American husband left a year ago. She doesn't like being Americanised. She doesn't like the kids sticking up for their father. They want her to tell them the story about seeing a ghost in Austria. She works out that they could only have known about that from their father. The 2 versions differ.
- The man at the door - a mother of 3 (one a baby) has 2 unfinished novels hidden in the basement and is trying to write a 3rd. A man knocks at the door with a book - the novel she's writing, dated 2 years into the future. He helps himself to drinks that suddenly appear. He changes from old to young. He tells her that a female writer shouldn't write about a female main character. He's crossed out half of the text. She recalls her drunk parents, how her mother died at 50. She thinks her need to write is like their need to drink. He criticises the violence at the end of the book. At the end of the story she buries him in the back tard. "She turned to the last chapter. The red cross-outs had faded, and it was, she could easily see now, a fine ending". (Easily the best)
I like the dialogue. We're usually told the age of the characters.
.Other reviews
- Hannah Beckerman
- thebookplace (All these moments hinge on the interpersonal, on a growing relationship or a severed one, or else on a relationship that a character must now renegotiate on different terms ... they are small moments, but just because they are small does not mean that they register as any less important to the characters who experience them.)
- alifeinbooks (my favourite, the delightful, gently humorous Five Tuesdays in Winter ... King delivers characteristically astute observations on relationships, particularly between adults and adolescents of which there are several instances, from the soured crush of Creature, which takes a very dark turn, to the suppressed grief of a young girl furious with her mother after the death of her father in North Sea. Many of King’s characters wrestle with parenthood exacerbated by break-ups)
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