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Book Review: Unhappy families the norm in author's string of tales Web Posted: 05/01/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Bulletproof Girl: Stories By Quinn Dalton Washington Square Press, $12 All happy families are alike, observed Tolstoy, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. South Carolina native Quinn Dalton, the author of the 2003 novel "High Strung," and now of this riveting collection of stories, isn't interested in happy families at all. But she wants to explore every variety of misery inflicted upon daughters by mothers, upon mothers by daughters, upon wives by husbands and husbands by wives. You'd think such an exploration into the dark cavities of the family might be grim business, but Dalton's stories are infused with a keen sense of humor. Women are at the center of these 11 stories. In the title story, a daughter, Emery, whose longtime boyfriend has just left her, receives an envelope from her middle-aged mother. Expecting the usual note paper-clipped to a recipe or a newspaper article, the young woman is surprised to find nude photographs of her mother taken in college. How did the well-bred mother find herself in front of the camera and why does she now insist that her daughter see the pictures? These questions are just the first layer in a multilayered story; underneath are the more essential questions: Why do we so often fail those we love the most? How do we go on, once we've been deeply hurt? For Emery, the first step is acknowledging her own vulnerability: "There had been times in her life, she'd admit it, usually when she found herself on a crowded street or in an airport or in a room full of people talking and laughing, when she'd feel as if she were frozen in glass or wrapped in steel. She'd look at people, how they'd sweat and bite their nails with wanting, and then she'd feel clean and hard. Bulletproof. But she thought now it might have been a lie she'd told herself, that she could ever cushion herself from need." Although these stories are linked by the shared theme of disappointment in love — whether love between mother and daughter or between girlfriend and boyfriend — they are full of surprises, not so much in "how the story comes out" but in the rich variety of the characters' situations and in their quirky and often gutsy responses to those situations. Here's a sample of opening lines from just a few of the stories: "Two days after his dog gets hit by a car, my son starts playing dead." "It was Mr. Ontero from across the street who found my father stretched out in the front yard next to his IV Tree as if he'd gotten tired of waiting for someone to let him in." "I killed my husband's boss four years after he fired him, which was right after he talked us into moving across the country for a promotion and a raise that never materialized." "Today my belly popped out like a just-opened jelly lid, and now only my sweatpants fit." Sometimes tragic, often funny, and always well-crafted, Quinn Dalton's stories don't disappoint. San Antonio writer and attorney Lee Robinson's poetry collection "Hearsay" won the 2004 Poets Out Prize. She is also the author of a novel for young adults, "Gateway." |
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