Love Like That by Emma Duffy-Comparone

EXCELLENT STORIES, NOT POP

a book review by New Pop Lit

If she got the job, Ruth would have to sign a waiver agreeing to be quarantined if something serious broke out in the ward . . . “You could be quarantined for several months.”

“Sure,” she said. “Fine.”

DIRTY REALISM was a term used to describe a style of American short story writing of the mid-1980s, popularized by Raymond Carver and Joy Williams, among others. Hemingway-and-Chekhov inspired, the style is characterized by deadpan prose and a matter-of-fact attitude. Realistic? To the max. The characters are working class, resigned to their fate, with not even the possibility of change. There’s emotion– sometimes a lot of it– but it’s invariably off-stage or between the lines.

This is the writing style Emma Duffy-Comparone follows in her new collection of stories, Love Like That. Nine Stories of people working jobs or looking for jobs; children, teens or adults seeking refuge or answers. The stories contain drama but it’s understated drama, even when the occurrences are anything but. They’re not without humor– a kind of self-mocking dry humor. The tales ostensibly aren’t about the pandemic and American life over the past year, but they may as well be. They convey a beaten-down pandemic mood.

As with any short story collection, not every story is a masterwork, but a few of them are. Duffy-Comparone is like an opera singer attempting to hit a high note in an aria. With at least three of the stories, she nails it.

“Marvel Sands” is about a fifteen year-old girl who gets a job at a state park.

At six that night, I hosed down the showers, changing rooms, and foyer, steering the sand into the steel traps in the middle of the floor and out the doors. The work was surprisingly physical. At one point I looked at myself in a mirror. My neck and throat were red. My hair was frizzed. I bent over and soaked my head with the hose. Within minutes my scalp felt hot again.

Lurking in the story are two mature males of ominous presence, one her mother’s boyfriend, the other her boss.

With this story as in all the stories there’s no editorializing. Just laying out the reality– the facts– and sometimes not all the facts. Enough vibrates nearby for the reader to know what’s happened.

“Sure, Fine,” is the most powerful story of the nine, yet at the same time the most positive– if anything about these bleak tales can remotely be considered positive. An accident occurs during a shift at a very crummy job– by the end, as brutal as life is– as it’s shown to be– there’s a quiet, unspoken triumph simply at having survived it.

The best story, maybe because it’s more complex, runs deeper, is “Exuma.” In its way, a contorted love story. Nothing is resolved plotwise, yet at the same time by the end maybe something is resolved– a step toward resolution and healing for a damaged human being. What am I talking about? To know, you’ll have to read the story.

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This collection and its author face a dilemma. Like the original tales of dirty realism, these stories will not be immediately accessible to the ordinary reader. Even Raymond Carver was more popular with writers than with the general reading public. Unlike Ernest Hemingway, he didn’t opt for glamorous people and exotic locations. All glamor was stripped away. For many readers, it was their shitty lives staring back at them.

Beyond this, Emma Duffy-Comparone is in a situation analogous to that of a current-day rock guitarist, who might be able to play better than Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen ever could, but few people care, because guitar stars are already in their pantheon and unless someone completely reinvents the form there’s no room for more.

Duffy-Comparone is every bit the story writer Raymond Carver was, but isn’t a familiar name even among writers.

Maybe this will change.

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LOVE LIKE THAT is available from Henry Holt.

Photo of Emma Duffy-Comparone by Dave Brainard.

The Promised End by Ron Singer

A Review by New Pop Lit

I had trailed him for two blocks now, long enough to decide that theft was the better option. Why? He looked like a guy who wanted his old, good jacket more than money he didn’t need.

There are two kinds of short stories.

One is the kind of story written to impress a creative writing instructor, full of wordy flourishes of what I call sentence fetish, with the story itself a secondary consideration. As often as not there is no story, only the flourishes.

The other kind is a story– a tale to be told– related in the simplest but most interesting way possible. These stories are written not for professors or critics but for readers.

THE PROMISED END by Ron Singer is the second kind. A collection of twenty tales, perfect for picking up at the end of a stressful day (there’ve been many stressful days), after dinner, after you’ve fed the cat and want to relax. When you’re ready to escape into intelligent stimulation. To lose yourself in the comfortable pleasures of well-constructed narrative.

A few of the locations in the collection are exotic. All of the stories carry the personality of the narrator, a genial New Yorker. Like a good television series, not every one of the entries is classic– but several are, with the others never less than absorbing.

Two of the stories are masterful.

“A Nose for a Jacket” is about a man considering stealing a rare jacket. Is he out-thinking himself? Tension mounts as he considers precisely how to make the grab, the challenges and possible consequences. It’s an examination into the mind of every one of us. By the end the character– and ourselves– are wiser. What happens next? This is always the essence of fiction writing.

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In addition to the two addresses, the box bore the frightening official stamp of the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, which is the principal arm of the country’s elaborate security apparatus, sometimes referred to as “the deep state”. The box had been opened and re-taped shut. This stamped and re-sealed box spelled potential disaster.

“The Key” is the longest and best story in the volume– on the surface a simple story with a simple complication involving a couple returning from vacation in Turkey and realizing they didn’t return their hotel key. They soon discover that in another country– and in their own– nothing is ever simple.

Entertainment and wisdom? For the avid reader, The Promised End provides exactly that.

(The book also has a striking cover containing an artwork by Elizabeth Yamin.)

Purchase The Promised End here.

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(Photo of Ron Singer)