“This is a novel that pushes back against the clichés of Southern California to reveal the complex human territory underneath.” mecca
MECCA
Straight, Susan Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $28.00 | March 15, 2022 978-0-3746-0451-6 Is Susan Straight the bard of Southern California literature? In her eighth novel—she has also written a memoir and a collection of linked stories as well as a book for young readers—the author stakes her claim. A sweeping and kaleidoscopic work, it begins (how could it not?) on the freeway, “a Thursday in October,” a highway patrol officer named Johnny Frias tells us. “Santa Ana winds, ninety-four degrees. Fire weather. People were three layers of pissed off. Everyone hated Thursday. Wednesday was hump day, but Thursday was when people drove like they wanted to kill each other.” Johnny is one of several protagonists in Straight’s novel, which flows from first to third person and life to life as if to embody the instability of the region it evokes. The notion of Southern California as elusive, beset by wind and traffic, is hardly a new one; it infuses the work of writers such as Joan Didion and Carolyn See. Straight, however, is operating in a different register, one attuned less to Los Angeles than to the sprawl that surrounds it, extending into the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley. Her focus, as it has long been, is on people to whom the stereotypes of sun and speed and reinvention do not apply. Here, that means not only Johnny, but also Ximena, an undocumented domestic worker, and Matelasse, whose husband leaves her with two young sons not long before the Covid-19 pandemic begins. “Black acres of sandy field,” Straight describes the landscape, “the corral where his grandfather’s horses and the bull named Coalmine used to live. Then the arroyo, and the foothills.” This is a novel that pushes back against the clichés of Southern California to reveal the complex human territory underneath.
SMALL ODYSSEYS Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Stories
Ed. by Tinti, Hannah Algonquin (336 pp.) $19.95 paper | March 15, 2022 978-1-64375-199-3
A wide-ranging anthology of original stories from some of today’s top authors. If you’re a public radio stan and lover of fiction, you’ve likely heard of “Selected Shorts,” the program that features actors performing readings of a variety of short stories. Among the fans of the show is novelist Tinti, who edits this anthology sponsored by the program. The 35 original stories here are divided into three sections— “Departures,” “Journeys,” and “New Worlds”—and each has its 46
|
15 march 2022
|
fiction
|
kirkus.com
|
share of delights. The first section starts off with Luis Alberto Urrea’s wonderful “The King of Bread,” about a fourth grade boy coping with the loss of his mother, who’s been forced by immigration authorities to leave the U.S. He navigates his relationship with his father, whose demeanor is “jolly rage,” with trepidation and care; both miss their family member but react to her leaving very differently. It’s a lovely, understated story and an excellent introduction to the anthology. The highlight of the second section is Omar El Akkad’s “A Survey of Recent American Happenings Told Through Six Commercials for the Tennyson ClearJet Premium Touchless Bidet,” a hilarious take on capitalism in the age of constant disaster. (“Tennyson Bidets: Life is but a grotesque carnival of unbearable pain,” ends one such commercial.) Addressing the Covid-19 pandemic directly is Victor LaValle in “Bedtime Story,” which sees a father and son in New York adjusting to life under quarantine. “The city that never sleeps,” the father reflects ruefully. “Well, that’s officially bullshit now.” The 8-year-old boy is suffering from depression and misses his mom, who’s left temporarily to take care of her own sick mother. The child insists his dad take him “camping”—in the hallway of their apartment building. The story ends on a hopeful note; like all of LaValle’s work, it’s beautiful and surprising. Anthologies like this are hard to pull off; not every story is going to land with every reader. But Tinti does a good job curating this one—thematically, it makes sense; the lineup is diverse; and it serves as a good introduction for readers looking for their next favorite fiction writer. Well-curated, eclectic, and thoughtful.
THE GOOD LEFT UNDONE
Trigiani, Adriana Dutton (448 pp.) $28.00 | April 26, 2022 978-0-593-18332-8
In the Italian coastal town of Viareggio, Matelda Cabrelli Roffo is at the last stage of her life, but the matriarch still has decades’ worth of family stories to share. On the eve of her 81st birthday, Matelda offers her 25-year-old granddaughter Anina the contents of her jewelry case, a family tradition for brides-to-be. Of course, Anina selects the one item Matelda isn’t ready to part with: a jewel-encrusted watch with a curiously upside-down facade. Matelda’s attachment to the treasure—a rare sentiment in the Cabrelli family of jewelers—leads to questions about its origins and the unfolding of a family timeline Anina’s never heard. In chapters alternating between the present and the nine decades leading up to Matelda’s demurring, the Cabrelli family history is deftly illustrated through a long chain of strong women. At just 11 years old, Matelda’s mother, Domenica Cabrelli, witnesses her best friend, Silvio, banished from Viareggio for being a fatherless troublemaker. Years later, Domenica, now a nurse, is exiled herself when the Catholic Church learns she’s offered family planning advice to a young mother in distress. She lands in a convent in Scotland, where she continues nursing and plans
