Review: American Innovations: Stories

American Innovations, novelist Rivka Galchen's first collection of short stories, defies categorization. These 10 stories vary in tone from coolly surreal to nakedly emotional and play off the work of impressive literary antecedents like Jorge Luis Borges, Nikolai Gogol and James Thurber. And while not every story will appeal to every reader's taste--owing simply to the collection's sheer variety--Galchen (Atmospheric Disturbances) has a knack for delivering consistently interesting work.

The title piece reimagines Gogol's short story "The Nose," in which the protagonist loses his olfactory appendage. Here, the narrator is a graduate student who discovers one day that she has become "sideways pregnant," with a third breast growing out of her lower back. Galchen's protagonist treats her "supernumeraryness" with the sharp wit that's shared by many of her characters. Trish, the narrator of "The Entire Northern Side Was Covered by Fire," is a writer who observes that "the nicest reader letters I've received--also the only reader letters I've received--have come from prisoners." "Once an Empire" is another fantastic tale in which "a pretty normal woman, maybe even an extremely normal one," watches her furniture and other belongings--"a parade of my things"--spontaneously make their way out of her apartment one night.

For those more inclined toward realistic fiction, a highlight may be "Wild Berry Blue." In it, the narrator, the nine-year-old daughter of "secular Israelis living in the wilds of Oklahoma," develops a secret crush on a recovering heroin addict who works at the McDonald's where she and her father spend their Saturday mornings. Galchen best reconciles the tension between her fabulist and realist strains in "Real Estate." That narrator takes up residence in a nearly empty five-story town house owned by her aunt. One day, she encounters her father--who has been dead for more than a decade--and wonders whether she has "slipped through a wormhole of time." Even after he disappears, she resolves to remain in the building because she has the "sense that ghosts like to return to the same place."

Though occasionally perplexing, stories like "The Region of Unlikeness" and "Dean of the Arts," evoking Borges and Roberto Bolaño in turn, are grounded in a keen grasp of detail and crisp, lively prose. The bracing originality of Galchen's work merits favorable comparison to adventurous contemporaries like Aimee Bender, Karen Russell and Kevin Brockmeier and assures she'll continue to be a writer who deserves our attention. --Harvey Freedenberg

Shelf Talker: Novelist Rivka Galchen's first  story collection ranges from the fantastic to the grounded stuff of daily life.

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