Things You Should Know
collects 11 short stories from the last ten years by A.M. Homes, author of the
powerful novel Music for Torching.  As with Rick Moody, Homes’ themes
are often the trials and tribulations of professional suburban life in the
Northeast, but Homes is a far more enticing writer.  Her stories draw the
reader in immediately, and he is far less prone that Moody to use words that
have one consulting one’s dictionary or to engage in self-conscious
experimentation with the form.  Yet these pieces are highly distinctive, spiky
and piercing depictions of the strange strained quality of modern experience. 
"The Chinese Lesson" starts with a man using an electronic tracking
device to find his elderly mother-in-law, who is suffering from signs of
dementia.  He and his wife have had a microchip in Mrs. Ha, who has just moved
in with them from her home in California, so that she does not get completely
lost in their unfamiliar neighborhood.  "The Former First Lady and the
Football Hero" provides a fantasy of the life of Nancy Reagan and her
husband Ronald, completely transformed by Alzheimer’s Disease.  He too goes
wandering off, ending up directing traffic, while Nancy and the secret service frantically
search for him.  In "Do Not Disturb," a man’s wife, a doctor herself,
faces cancer and she insists on getting the blunt truth about her prospects
from the professionals who diagnose and treat her.  In those stories, the
illness creates extraordinary tension in the marriage.  Other stories focus on
children or teens, and their awkward and reluctant transition to the adult
world.  All of this work conveys a sense of bewilderment and underlying
despair, but Homes’ ability to slyly convey the many facets of life with such
deft use of words means that her stories are enriching rather than depressing. 
Recommended. 

© 2003 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanties
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction