SHELLEY CIVKIN: Stories you hope won't end
Email
Print
Letter to Editor
Share
Updated: July 02, 2009 8:34 AM
Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories by Lauren Groff is a powerful collection of nine short stories that could easily stand alone as novellas.
With the exception of two of the stories which I found very confusing (“The Wife of the Dictator” and “Fugue”), the collection is brilliant. Groff is a young writer whose evocative prose is uncluttered, deliberate and thoughtful; a true study in the economy and sophistication of words. This is a haunting collection that you won’t soon forget.
Full of innuendo and wicked suggestion, these rich stories focus on the lives of American women and the life-changing events that happen to them. The variety of stories is remarkable, but there is always, for these women, a triumph over personal obstacles.
Water seems to be a recurring theme in most of Groff’s stories, but the finest example of this is in the story “L. DeBard and Aliette,” which is about a rich 16-year-old girl with polio, who falls in love with her poor Italian swimming coach. The finely woven details of their relationship are handled deftly and cleverly by Groff, and this is definitely the best story in the book.
Scandalous behaviour and illicit sex feature often in the stories, and usually symbolize rebellion and a need to exert personal independence in the face of stifling conformity.
Acts of defiance and violence are also not uncommon in these stories. But beyond everything else, love, lust and belonging are at the core of each female character’s being. Personal freedom and choice are what drives each of the women in these stories, and the cost is often very high.
There’s no question that women are the source of power and influence in Delicate Edible Birds; their courage, their ambivalence, their undoing, and their resilience coalescing into brilliant stories. From Bern, the feisty woman war correspondent that must do the unthinkable to escape the Nazis in the French countryside, to the unnamed baton-twirling majorette whose accident leads her to a wonderful young man who appreciates and accepts her, each of these confident stories is brimming with insight. These are the kind of stories that you don’t want to end. They’re filled with intensity and conflict and more than that, with life-affirming hope.
Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton. If you’re looking for a book that’s out of the ordinary, don’t pass this one up.
Shelley Civkin is communications officer with Richmond Public Library. Her column appears every Thursday in The Richmond Review. For other popular reading suggestions check out Richmond Public Library’s Web site at www.yourlibrary.ca/goodbooks.
v2
