If Richard Bausch had never written another short story after the publication of his collected stories in 2003, his status as one of our most accomplished contemporary authors of domestic fiction would have been secured. But in his latest group of 11 new stories, this anthropologist of the human heart ably demonstrates he has more of this often dark and troubling territory to explore.
If there's an identifiable theme to these stories, most set in Memphis (where Bausch teaches creative writing) or Virginia, it's the fraught relations between men and women, a subject he's adept at exploring from both sides of what he consistently portrays as a gaping divide. Stories like "The Harp Department in Love," where a husband falsely suspects his much younger wife of an affair, threatening their marriage in the process, or "Immigration," which documents a young couple's contentious interaction on their way to a meeting with an immigration official to secure the husband's permanent residence status, spotlight the failure to communicate that poisons many relationships. In "One Hour in the History of Love," an especially striking story, Bausch demonstrates both his keen grasp of sexual dynamics and his literary craftsmanship as he adroitly shifts points of view among several characters in a Toronto street scene.
But not all of Bausch's stories focus on the Mars/Venus battlefield. "Trophy" is the poignant account of a bizarre incident on a golf course that reveals the depth of a friendship. And in "Sixty-five Million Years" he offers the equally moving portrait of a burned-out priest whose encounters with a teenage penitent both trouble and inspire him.
Several of the tales are suffused with a genuine air of menace. In the title story, a woman returns from the hospital where the husband she's about to abandon lies recovering from a gunshot wound, to await the arrival of her son in a raging snowstorm. "Son and Heir" reveals a college president's son who is stunned by a violent incident into confronting his own debauched behavior. In the aptly titled "Blood," a young man is powerfully attracted to his older brother's wife and then acts out in a shocking fashion when he faces evidence she's betrayed both of them.
"Oh, how did people do it?" asks the troubled protagonist of one of these stories. "How did they go from one place to another, and find some way to be happy?" With the cool detachment of a scientist and the compassion of a poet, Richard Bausch wrestles with that question and others of equal consequence in this consistently absorbing collection.--Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: Focusing on the relations between men and women, short story master Richard Bausch offers a collection of 11 quietly impressive tales.