BQ Fiction Shorts

Idiots: Five Fairy Tales and Other Stories
By Jakob Arjouni, translated by Anthea Bell Other Press, 269 pp., $19
Fairy tales, even ones for adults, tend to be pretty standard stuff. By now, we all know that nobody's going to let us wish for more wishes, and we can be sure that whatever we wish for won't turn out the way we want. The five fairy tales that open up Jakob Arjouni's Idiots follow these time-honored rules to the letter — but Arjouni's stories are elevated by the details of everyday life and the ridiculous vanity of the ordinary characters that populate them. His fairies are overworked and unionized; his wishful characters quibble with and willfully misunderstand the terms of their bargains; and we find out that, given the lack of imagination it takes to make a wish within the rules, most folks simply opt to get a dishwasher out of the deal.

Just as impressive are the non-fairy stories that close the book. Freed from the structures of granting wishes, Arjouni delivers a handful of black-comedy setups that expand on his themes of narcissism and blindness. Two are little more than shaggy-dog jokes, where, for instance, a family runs through a variety of ways to profit from their lodger (by receiving honors for sheltering refugees; by informing on him to the police). But even these are elevated by Arjouni's matter-of-fact delivery and central-European wit. The best of them, though, features a protagonist so colorless and timid that his defining moment, his grab for heroism, involves putting his kidnapper to sleep by retelling the plot of his life's work of a novel. His absolute blandness provides him with the key to success.

Throughout all of this, Arjouni presides over his cast of little people doing terrible things to each other with a small, distanced smirk. He's never distasteful; he just knows, and encourages us to agree, that most of these quietly desperate people are idiots.
--Justin Bauer

72 Hour Hold
By Bebe Moore Campbell Knopf, 321 pp., $24.95
Keri Whitmore is a survivor. And yet, even after divorce, a still-achy breakup and the loss of a child, she comes up against it when her daughter Tina is diagnosed as bipolar. Careening between hope and horror as the illness turns her child into someone she hardly recognizes, Keri seeks help from standard and unorthodox sources, an unwieldy institutional system, medication and prescriptions for living, a church-affiliated support group, and an off-the-board organization that removes both mother and daughter from their shared past. There's no family contact or legal support, only good intentions and desperate measures.

Bebe Moore Campbell's prose emulates Keri's up-and-down emotional rhythms, urgent and contemplative, action-oriented and thick with adjectives. At the center of 72 Hour Hold is Keri's commitment to understanding that Trina's occasionally violent, often aggressive symptoms are just that — signs of an illness, not personal and not moral assessments. These symptoms are slow to emerge. "In the beginning," she says, "it was like being suspicious of a husband. Those little pinprick inklings tickled the inside of my skull. I explained everything away until I couldn't." This occurs as Keri's marriage with the politically conservative Clyde is dissolving. He goes into self-saving denial concerning Trina as he cycles through new marriages and blames Keri for his daughter's problems.

At the same time, Keri is facing down her own demons, including a difficult childhood ("My mother was in and out of my life and mostly drunk in both locations") and intermittent fears of failure. As Trina turns 18 (and so can sign herself in and out of the hospital), Keri is also pondering her current on-again, off-again relationship with the self-absorbed actor Orlando, as well as her inclination to nurture lost souls. (A former prostitute works at her used-clothing boutique in Los Angeles.)

Most compellingly, Campbell likens the problems facing Keri and Trina to slavery, with repeated references to the Underground Railroad and implacable institutional will. During one attempted intervention, Keri says, "Angelica had warned me about the slave catchers. What she didn't know, what I should have realized is that that I'd never left the plantation." To find release, she has to look beyond obvious options, learn to compromise and, most importantly, trust in her own support system.
--Cindy Fuchs
Bebe Moore Campbell will read Thu., July 7, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322.

Never Let Me Go
By Kazuo Ishiguro Knopf, 304 pp., $24
With his deliberate, distinctive cadence and his utterly measured and precise prose, Kazuo Ishiguro once again presents a protagonist who filters events through a possibly unreliable memory. As in Remains of the Day, or The Unconsoled (arguably his best novel), the narrative of Never Let Me Go builds its tension teasingly, allowing readers the giddy pleasure of watching the characters slowly and methodically reveal the truths of their fascinating, if mundane, lives.

The heroine here is Kathy H., a "carer" who provides a mosaic of her life by recounting her past experiences. (Significantly and remarkably, this is Ishiguro's first female narrator.) Kathy uses phrases like "But that's not really what I want to talk about just now," or starts sentences with "I should explain" — subtly drawing the reader in to the action. The intentional form and structure of the book — Ishiguro's hallmark — is initially displacing, but it is hypnotic nonetheless, and actually as complex as the plot.

To wit, Kathy is recalling her days at Hailsham, a private school that is preparing her for her future endeavors as a "carer" and "donor." At Hailsham, she meets both Ruth and Tommy, and Never Let Me Go concerns the various episodes that shape their young lives and the preordained fates that await them.

While Ishiguro's book definitely has an allegorical feel, the author is most effective at keeping readers on tenterhooks with the details of Kathy's every memory. If the denouement is a minor letdown, the rest of the book is so strong, so dazzling, that it becomes clear that there is no other possibility for the elaborate setup.

Ultimately, Never Let Me Go is as good and as skillful as any of the brilliant author's other novels.
--Gary M. Kramer

The First Verse
By Barry McCrea Carroll & Graf, 320 pp., $14.95
Reading Barry McCrea's debut novel, The First Verse, is like reading Joseph Conrad as channeled by Stephen King, writing in the style of the spawn of Charles Dickens and Susanna Clarke (not that there's anything wrong with that). Burning with unrequited desire for a straight schoolmate, 19-year-old protagonist Niall Lenihan scores a Beckett Scholarship and lights out for Trinity College and the bright lights (and gay clubs) of Dublin. In short order, he loses his virginity to the first of many men he picks up in gay clubs, makes college friends who don't know he's gay and becomes embroiled in a cultlike circle of would-be prophets obsessed with divining the future by interpreting phrases blindly plucked from random books. (Their all-consuming pastime is modeled on the Sortes Virgilianae, first practiced during the Middle Ages using lines from Virgil's Aeneid.) Cruel taskmasters, the books drive Niall and his companions to the brink of sleep-deprived madness, erasing all interest in classes, work, family, lovers and friends. Green eyes flashing with an otherworldly glint, they make statues dance, reshape the boundaries of time and space and master the arcane art of walking on water.

But Niall, "roused from his long slumber among the literati," awakes from enchantment and sinks beneath the waves before clambering ashore for a much-needed dose of home, hearth and normalcy. Back at Trinity, he struggles unsuccessfully against the pull of the books. Succumbing, he plucks a book at random and, instructed to follow his obsession to Paris, makes quick work of re-embracing depravity. Teetering on the brink of despair, he eventually triumphs. Fantastic in its detail, Niall's tale mirrors the siren call, a warm embrace and degrading submittal to other, more commonplace, addictions. Though guaranteed to put you off the I Ching for life, The First Verse is a good read, well worth the time spent navigating its densely packed prose.
--Trish Boppert

Bitter Milk
By John McManus Picador, 208 pp., $13
Having written two well-regarded collections of stories, Stop Breaking Down and Born on a Train, and winning a Whiting Award along the way, John McManus has now focused his insightful gaze on a longer project. His first novel, Bitter Milk, will sting you like a blast of rock salt packed into a sawed-off 20-gauge.

The narrator, Luther, may or may not actually exist: He appears to be the product of Loren Garland's imagination. Loren is a chubby, bright fourth-grader beset on all sides with enough problems to fill a double LP of Johnny Cash ballads. His mother, Avery, suffers from gender dysphoria and desperately wishes she were a man. When she splits, possibly to an insane asylum, Loren is left in the care of his Tennessee hillbilly relatives. McManus is from Tennessee himself and somehow gets away with drawing caricatures of rednecks. The cantankerous Papaw is a riot even when being especially cruel to Loren: "If you think your mama's so nice and everyone else is so mean, how come she give birth to you here the middle of all this ignartness? It ain't cause I didn't bring her up right, I brought her up same as everybody else, and she was fine till you ate so much."

To make matters worse, Loren's own gender issues begin to cause considerable anxiety — and having Luther's voice in his head doesn't make his life any easier either. When that clever, dual-narrator device fades to the background, Bitter Milk turns into a more conventional novel than it first appears to be. Nevertheless, Loren's eccentricities are rich enough to make him nearly as compelling as Benjy in The Sound and the Fury. You're going to read a number of comparisons to Faulkner over the coming years, maybe to Cormac McCarthy too, and if Bitter Milk has shown anything it's that McManus has the talent and the smarts to live up to them.
--Andrew Ervin

The Almond
Grove, 241 pp., $22
When a memoir is written under a pseudonym and armed with the subtitle "The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman," a person may read it with certain expectations. A person might assume that such a book will have a lasciviously blasphemous tone, perhaps, or that the narrator, as a Muslim woman, may have been sexually repressed, as it were, and that her "awakening" will likely be viewed positively by our Western eyes. On the cover, this salacious subtitle fits snugly around a linen-wrapped, midriff-bared woman's body and face, and the whole thing makes for a beautiful, sensual package that feels slightly forbidden.
--Nancy Armstrong

Anthropology: 101 True Love Stories
By Dan Rhodes Canongate, 208 pp., $11
Dan Rhodes' Anthropology: 101 True Love Stories takes about two hours to read, which is an incentive or a deterrent, depending on the type of reader you are. Either way, it's a hilarious two hours. A cleverly conceived literary gem is no small thing, and Rhodes' 101 stories — each of which is 101 words long (a random sample of the stories revealed no cheating) — do not disappoint, though they very easily could. A conceit like this could be too clever — all style and no substance. But Rhodes manages to tell a full story every time, though the characters may not be folks you'd like to know. The women who populate these tales, known simply as "my girlfriend" or "my ex-girlfriend" when they're not named with increasing ridiculousness ("Nightjar," "Tortoiseshell" and "Foxglove" are favorites), generally fall into one of three categories: beautiful, cruel or both ("My ex-girlfriend and her new husband regularly stand outside my house, kissing and smiling at each other"). The men — the narrator, an ex-boyfriend or a current flame — are likewise one-dimensionally unpleasant ("Today I gave her a life-size cuddly kangaroo. When she squeezes it, she activates a recording of my voice, crying: "Please don't ever leave me.'") But some tales focus not on dysfunctional love, but detail other odd little facets of romance: In "Features," the lovers make up pet names for each other, "Femur" for him and "Girlfriend-features" for her; and in "Kissing," the couple has not stopped kissing since they met, even though their lips are "four broken scabs" and their chins are always bloody. Rhodes has not reinvented the short story, but he has crafted a witty collection of observations on relationships — whether possible or not — that may puzzle or delight, but never bore.
--N. A.

Responsible Men
By Edward Schwarzschild Algonquin, 352 pp., $23.95
Much has changed in the year since Max Wolinsky moved to Florida. His ex-wife's living with the gardener, his 13-year-old is acting out and his stroke-addled uncle is in decline. And as he's warned more than once, the old neighborhood is changing. So when he returns to Philly for Nathan's bar mitzvah, he's not sure how to fix things. Conning old people out of their savings seems like a good place to start.

In Responsible Men, first-time novelist Edward Schwarzschild explores the life he could have led if he'd gone into the family business. Max may be shady, but he means well. He's not as legit a salesman as his father and uncle, but he doesn't use violence — unlike his old accomplice — and he doesn't scam those who can't afford it. Schwarzschild is clearly familiar with his father's world and its aging characters, hardworking Jews who started in the city and moved on up to the Northeast and suburbs along the R3. Well-placed flashbacks illuminate Max's motives and missteps, and the plot twists are fairly believable without being too obvious.

But Schwarzschild stumbles by not heeding his characters' warning. Philly has changed a lot since he left — he teaches writing at SUNY Albany — and he hasn't kept up. His Northeast is more of a relic than the actual Northeast; if not for Max's frequent cell phone calls and a subplot involving outsourcing, it could be 1950 or 1980. Nathan loves stickball and quickly embraces life as a Boy Scout, and his biggest rebellion is giving his mother and her boyfriend the silent treatment. Chatty characters don't fare much better: The stilted dialogue is cringe-worthy as it swings between wholesome and tough.

The dated sensibility strikes some false notes in the romantic department. Despite having an easygoing girlfriend in Florida, Max picks up a woman named Estelle at the bowling alley for G-rated sex, and their parents egg them on. Things haven't changed that much.

And some things never change at all. No matter how long Schwarzschild's been gone, there's no excuse for forgetting: Butterscotch Krimpets don't have light brown icing.
--M.J. Fine