Aspects of human frailty and damaged psyches permeate the stories in Mr. Tall, the latest collection of short works by Tony Earley. Earley's fiction (Jim the Boy) delves into the lives of ordinary people and addresses complex themes in a pared-down style. This time around, Earley's characters include, in "Yard Art," a divorced 28-year-old midwife and a rough-around-the-edges, bluegrass-singing plumber who spend an afternoon searching for what may or may not be a valuable piece of sculpture, while "The Cryptozoologist" centers on a widow who believes she has spied a "skunk ape," a type of Bigfoot creature, near her home. The presence of the wildly elusive beast compels her to reconcile her past and her true feelings for her misunderstood artist husband.
In the suspenseful "Mr. Tall," a young woman living in the 1930s marries a man who whisks her away from her family into a new life filled with uncertainty. Lonely, she is drawn to a mysteriously widowed, reclusive neighbor nicknamed Mr. Tall, who inhabits the only other farmhouse nearby. She is warned to stay away, but can she resist learning more about this man's past?
Earley deftly compresses life histories into just a few pages that successfully blend humor and poignancy, reality and myth. All of the stories feature Southeastern locales and characters who are ripped from the familiarity of their lives--the comfort, however good or bad, they know and depend upon--to be thrust, oftentimes unwillingly, into new realities. Along the way, unearthed secrets and epiphanies lead to revelatory moments infused with regret and grace. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines