Music Through the Floor
Eric Puchner's debut story collection, Music Through the Floor (Scribner, $24, 0743270460, October), is filled with people seeking identity and connection. In "Legends," a man re-doing his first disastrous honeymoon after several years of marriage, attempts to change his persona of a careful non-risk taker by taking a chance on the guide services of a slick English instructor in Mexico. Made anxious after developing mild arrhythmia, Desmond contemplates the city they are in: "A maze of a city, straight from a fairly tale. All considered, [he] ranked it about a 7 on the untimely-death scale. That was how he tended to judge cities--whether he wouldn't mind dying there unexpectedly."
An ESL instructor struggles to teach a sometimes unruly group of students in "Mission," an account of myriad losses. It opens with a comic scene as they riff on a sentence with a modifier in the wrong place, and closes with a poignant tale of loss of language and then connection through that loss. In between, Nils, the teacher, realizes that he has no idea what his students have left behind. Hoping to bridge the divide between himself and the students, he organizes a potluck, but finds they don't understand the concept of bringing a favorite dish--"You need dishes?" they ask--until one of them gets it and explains: "We should cook homemade food and bring it in Tupperware . . . Everyone shall eat at our teacher's house, to taste the lost nourishment of our countries."
A rootless young man, living off his father's Mobil card, settles in Oregon and takes a job as caretaker and companion for two mentally retarded men in "Children of God.: Puchner's powers of portrayal are dazzling in this piece. One of the men, Dominic, has a voice that "was sleepy and far-fetched. He preferred the middles of words. 'Abyoola!' he liked to say, meaning 'Fabulous!' When he told a story, it was like Rocky Balboa channeling a demon." The other man, Jason, is confined to a wheelchair and takes so many meds they are delivered in a garbage bag. He loves to ride in the van, and the narrator would "roll down the windows and listen to Jason scream words at the top of his lungs, naming the passing creatures of the world like Adam on a roller coaster."
Eric Puchner has a gift for phrase: "My heart was an onion making me cry"--and description: "a boy with extravagant piercings all over his face . . . looked as if he'd been dragged across the bottom of a fishing hole." He also has a gift for narrative, combining tenderness and anguish with wit and slapstick humor. Occasionally he uses words that are a bit esoteric--collocation, peyos, mizzling--but prose this good is worth some effort with Webster. Music Through the Floor is a fine book for short story fans and lovers of language.--Marilyn Dahl
Eric Puchner's debut story collection, Music Through the Floor (Scribner, $24, 0743270460, October), is filled with people seeking identity and connection. In "Legends," a man re-doing his first disastrous honeymoon after several years of marriage, attempts to change his persona of a careful non-risk taker by taking a chance on the guide services of a slick English instructor in Mexico. Made anxious after developing mild arrhythmia, Desmond contemplates the city they are in: "A maze of a city, straight from a fairly tale. All considered, [he] ranked it about a 7 on the untimely-death scale. That was how he tended to judge cities--whether he wouldn't mind dying there unexpectedly."
An ESL instructor struggles to teach a sometimes unruly group of students in "Mission," an account of myriad losses. It opens with a comic scene as they riff on a sentence with a modifier in the wrong place, and closes with a poignant tale of loss of language and then connection through that loss. In between, Nils, the teacher, realizes that he has no idea what his students have left behind. Hoping to bridge the divide between himself and the students, he organizes a potluck, but finds they don't understand the concept of bringing a favorite dish--"You need dishes?" they ask--until one of them gets it and explains: "We should cook homemade food and bring it in Tupperware . . . Everyone shall eat at our teacher's house, to taste the lost nourishment of our countries."
A rootless young man, living off his father's Mobil card, settles in Oregon and takes a job as caretaker and companion for two mentally retarded men in "Children of God.: Puchner's powers of portrayal are dazzling in this piece. One of the men, Dominic, has a voice that "was sleepy and far-fetched. He preferred the middles of words. 'Abyoola!' he liked to say, meaning 'Fabulous!' When he told a story, it was like Rocky Balboa channeling a demon." The other man, Jason, is confined to a wheelchair and takes so many meds they are delivered in a garbage bag. He loves to ride in the van, and the narrator would "roll down the windows and listen to Jason scream words at the top of his lungs, naming the passing creatures of the world like Adam on a roller coaster."
Eric Puchner has a gift for phrase: "My heart was an onion making me cry"--and description: "a boy with extravagant piercings all over his face . . . looked as if he'd been dragged across the bottom of a fishing hole." He also has a gift for narrative, combining tenderness and anguish with wit and slapstick humor. Occasionally he uses words that are a bit esoteric--collocation, peyos, mizzling--but prose this good is worth some effort with Webster. Music Through the Floor is a fine book for short story fans and lovers of language.--Marilyn Dahl