A young mother recovering from a hospital stay discovers the joy of her outdoors neighborhood--wrens and rabbits, pink and lavender skies--causing her husband to consider her mind a bit fragile. An overweight boy and his mother look for food at an arts and crafts fair: "It was really some kind of collection of humanity that is better left undescribed, backwoods mall-people with unhygienic habits, people with barely lawful fetishes, aggressive hats, and overweight children. Still, arts and crafts an be elevating." At the Ritz, Mimosa-sipping Valerie reminisces about her life: "When I lived in Nubia, I had a pet cricket named Owen. He was such a comfort to me, and I miss him to this day. He was still living when I was forced to flee. He always slept on a petal of a cowslip. We had a fresh one flown in weekly. I only hope he died peacefully. I simply couldn't bear it if some ghastly sergeant stomped on him out of boredom or irritation from an imagined insult from some starving servant." In "What It Is," the narrator says: "I was going to cry so I left the room and hid myself. A butterfly had let itself into the house and was breathing all the air fit to breathe. Janis was knitting me a sweater so I wouldn't freeze. Polly had just dismembered her anatomically correct doll. The dog was thinking about last summer, alternately bitter and amused."
Bitterness, amusement, bemusement--you know things will end badly with this beginning: "She had placed the turkey in the garage two days before Thanksgiving, just as she had for years without any untoward consequence." The consequences of decisions made by and about Tate's characters are unexpected, often sad, sometimes sweet, always engaging.--Marilyn Dahl
Shelf Talker: A captivating collection of short short stories by poet James Tate--absurdist, bittersweet, and amusing, written with a poet's gift for the surreal.