BJD: So the collection I’m reviewing, John Goldbach's
Selected Blackouts (***, Insomniac Press, 172 pages, $15.95), comes on firing everything at once in the second story, “Easter Weekend”: suicide, strippers, booze, visions of Christ, London Ontario. It’s crisply written, but should one short story be that loaded with “dude-fiction” tropes? I’m a fan of the single idea taken as far as it can go. Like the story that precedes it. It’s about a vicious, mean turkey named Ninja. That’s more like it. Funny, grim and perfect. Way better than using variations on “And then he drank a beer” as a deus ex machina.
ES: In contrast, the book I’m reviewing,
Vanishing by Deborah Willis (
****, Penguin, 232 pages, $24), has a decidedly female point of view. Starting in the late 1960s and working through to the present day, the title story deals with a father who walks out one day, taking with him a thick wool coat, scarf and hat, and his umbrella. The daughter, Tabitha, is the eyes and ears of the story. Willis’ work is matter-of-fact on the surface, but beneath this veneer, it is absolutely propelled through to its captivating conclusion. The reader knows what will be discovered about the father (his closeted sexuality) yet cannot stop reading or look away.
From the very first sentence of the “Vanishing” story, Willis has got it: “Weeks pass and the police give up their investigations. The newspapermen who wrote ‘Local Writer Vanishes’ find other stories. Months go by, then a year.” Lost stories, and things that are not recovered: these are her themes for the entire collection. Not only that but Willis has some real zingers, like the ceramic bust of Elvis that seems to watch the search proceedings, or the description of a grown-up Tabitha’s downward spiral: “There is nothing like Betty Ford sex, and the first time they make love, he cries.”
BJD: Okay, but is that sustained throughout? Here’s the problem with short fiction collections: inconsistency. Every writer should do some merciless culling. Goldbach, for example, is a talented writer and his shorter works like “Wedding” and “Conversation at 4AM” are little masterpieces but something like “How Much Do They Know?” is just so first draft and ranty. Even the title gives the story away as an exercise. As every waitress knows, a table of drunk people in their twenties are obnoxious and narcissistic but when a narrator is as well, then what’s the point?
ES: I think that the level is here in
Vanishing, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it shortlisted for an award or two next year. With that said, it is a debut collection and I did have some problems with it: Willis often takes a few pages to define the sex of the protagonists, and she occasionally verges into “telling” territory.
BJD: Oh come on. That’s nitpicking!
ES: You’re right. I guess I did that mysterious guess-the-gender thing in my first collection too.