Review: Cities I've Never Lived In

In an arresting first collection, Sara Majka assembles a host of familiar strangers, outsiders drifting around society's edges who remind us that all people have the same basic needs and desires.

Many of the stories here share a common narrator, a young woman rebuilding her life after a recent divorce. While some selections focus on her life, more frequently she relates the anecdotes of acquaintances and past friends than her own direct experiences. In "Reverón's Dolls," she reminisces about the immediate aftermath of her divorce, recalling several moves and observing, "It's hard to talk about love. It's as if it closes when we're not experiencing it and becomes impossible to recall." She probes gently at thoughts of family in "Miniatures," the absence of her parents and the subsequent alcoholism and mental illness of her only brother. More often, though, these musings quickly segue into someone else's experiences, as in "White Heart Bar," which details the last witnessed moments in the life of a girl her husband knew slightly who went missing. One notable deviation from the pattern is "St. Andrew's Hotel," a small piece of magical realism involving a young man from an island who is institutionalized on the mainland. During his absence, the island and the mainland mysteriously lose communication and transit from one to the other. After his release, the young man begins to run into one islander at a time, none of whom have aged or remember him, but the strange ferry they board will not afford him passage home.

Looking for love, home, purpose or escape, Majka's protagonists speak directly to the heart through her wise yet unadorned voice. Her economy with words encourages the reader to relax into the belief that her stories are uncomplicated. Moments later, though, she drops an observation that lands like a stone on the soul, such as this one from a soup kitchen: "I thought that those few people passing out food--with their hands in little plastic gloves, and their cross behind them--should not be our major defense against this kind of poverty; as a defense it felt hopeful, frail, and largely hidden." Abruptly, one realizes Majka has the rare ability to be simultaneously straightforward and complicated, simple and subtle. Whether her characters stay for a few pages or flit across the narrator's thoughts as quickly as a bead of mercury, the fractures in their lives remind us inescapably of the physical and emotional drift endemic to many people now. Finishing the collection produces a feeling akin to leaving a dream state; half-remembered impressions will make you long to slip back into its fragile beauty. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Shelf Talker: Precision, beauty, and reality meld in Majka's captivating stories, which feature characters who live in obscurity on society's fringes.

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