The MFA Student Community at Whidbey Writers’ Workshop

History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe by Rodney Bolt

Bloomsbury Publishing, New York & London. Hardback: $24.95

Review by Ann Beman

I confess. I found History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe by Rodney Bolt on a checkout stand magazine’s summer booklist. In the article, bestselling historical fiction writer Philippa Gregory gushed:

“this takes you to the fictional heart of Shakespeare’s England, suggests a wonderfully imaginative explanation of the genius of the bard’s plays, makes your head spin with possibilities––and makes you wonder who did write all those wonderful plays.”

I was immediately hooked.

And eventually confused. Why did three different branches of my local library shelve this book in their nonfiction sections? Had Philippa Gregory been yanking my chain while I stood in that checkout line determined to finish the summer books article before I had to actually pay for the magazine? Was History Play fiction, or was it nonfiction? As it turns out, having these questions in mind as I read Bolt’s brilliantly written “biography” of Christopher Marlowe made the book’s premise that much more salient.

On the surface, the book’s title refers to Shakespeare’s historical dramas. Of course, the title also winks at the author’s playing with history in this narrative, which assumes that playwright Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, rather than dying at 29 in a tavern brawl, staged his own death, fled to Europe, and went on to write the work attributed to Shakespeare. Footnoting his invented sources, in addition to extensive historical ones, the author effectively stages this alternative life of Kit Marlowe, raising the curtain on the life of the Bard as well.

Chapter by chapter, the narrative unfolds, seamlessly blending speculative scenes of Elizabethan espionage and intrigue with real historical episodes. Woven into this tapestry of supposition are wildly inventive yet plausible explanations for the Bard’s literary inspirations. For example, Bolt places Marlowe in Antwerp immediately after fleeing his staged death in England. Bolt explains that, if Marlowe had been living as a Fleming, possibly as an itinerant entertainer, “A jester’s motley would not have settled easily on proud Kit, and … it perhaps explains the acid streak that runs through many of his stage fools. Touchstone, Feste, the Fool in King Lear and Lavatch in All’s Well That Ends Well, all have the bitterness of the scholar reduced to earning his bread by clowning.”

History Play opens with an adapted foreword by Mark Twain, which outlines what few facts exist about Shakespeare’s life. Birth, marriage, death, taxes, debts owed, and property accumulated. That’s all that any Shakespeare historian has had to work with. Bolt merely fills in the ledger between Shakespeare’s birth and death with Kit Marlowe-colored ink. And he does so with full disclosure. I’m sure Philippa Gregory would agree with me that any prose writer, whether entrenched in the fiction genre, or hop-scotching along the nonfiction track, can learn from Bolt’s approach, effectively blending extensive nonfiction research with an elaborate fictional character sketch.

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

Random House, New York, Hardcover: $26.00

Review by Joe Ponepinto

Perhaps no one blends history and imagination into captivating fiction better than Salman Rushdie. In his past works he has set stories in relatively recent settings such as the partition of India and political turmoil in Pakistan, and he has often attempted to illustrate the underlying ties between eastern and western cultures. In The Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie goes back further in history, to the turn of the 16th century, to present a tale that binds those two worlds into a single narrative and reveals just how connected those civilizations were—perhaps something of a surprise for many in the 21st century.

Historical characters abound. From Asia, we have the emperor Akbar the Great of India, Shah Ismail of Persia, and connections to the line emanating from Genghis Kahn. Italy provides the story with Niccolo Machiavelli, Ago Vespucci (cousin of the more famous Amerigo), and allusions to everyone from Boticelli to Savonarola to Vlad the Impaler. He creates a life for each of these people, and many others, within a fantastical framework of events and intrigues, yet the novel has an overriding sense of realism that urges one to think, yes, it could have all happened that way.

Such is Rushdie. He is well known to have an encyclopedic knowledge of history (in fact, there is a five-page bibliography following the story that reports only part of his research for the book). With all he has learned, Rushdie then connects the dots of history, turning what may seem to be unrelated occurrences thousands of miles apart into a single universe in which forces and outcomes are thoroughly interrelated. This allows him to represent the past with such clarity that even the most mystical events seem perfectly logical. Without Rushdie’s knowledge, however, it is impossible to know what’s really real and what isn’t. In an interview with National Public Radio, Rushdie admitted that much of what readers might assume is fabricated magic realism is actual history, and some of what might seem real he imagined.

Ultimately, whatever parts of The Enchantress of Florence are historical or not, it’s the writing that makes this book sing. Rushdie’s prose is still inventive, challenging, inspiring, and often humorous. An early passage describes emperor Akbar, whose name seems to be a redundancy. “The emperor Abdul-Fath Jaluddin Muhammad, king of kings, known since his childhood as Akbar, meaning ‘the great,’ and latterly, in spite of the tautology of it, as Akbar the Great, the great great one, great in his greatness, doubly great, so great that the repetition in his title was not only appropriate but necessary in order to express the gloriousness of his glory . . .”

The story itself is, at times, also challenging. It alternates between the cities of Sikri and Florence, with stops throughout the vastness separating them, as well as the New World, and investigates the lives of royals, nobles, advisers, servants and prostitutes, some of whom lived, some who were merely imagined by those who lived, and, in the case of the enchantress herself, who managed to do both. Rushdie keeps every aspect in its proper place and masterfully weaves the many storylines, tying them together with the thin and silky thread of the princess Qara Köz, whose matchless beauty enthralls the men and women of every culture she visits, but subordinating it all to considerations of the roles of individuals and religions, represented through Akbar’s deep struggles with his own life and values. The novel culminates in an ending that is nearly irresistible—defying readers to stop during the last fifty pages or so.

For those who crave a commanding, challenging text that transports the reader to not only other places and times, but also to alternate philosophies, The Enchantress of Florence is an awesome and delightful excursion. Rushdie, readers will be happy to discover, is still at his best.

The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland
The Dial Press, a division of Random House, 2007
Hardcover, $23.00

Review by Joe Ponepinto

Cracking the barrier of the first novel – having that first book published – is perhaps a more difficult goal than ever for writers. Because publishing has become more business-oriented and less willing to take risks on new writers, agents and publishers tend to look for manuscripts that exhibit certain characteristics that appeal to readers. Travis Holland’s The Archivist’s Story is an excellent example of those writing traits, and it’s a darn good read too.

The story centers on Pavel Vasilievich, a former teacher of literature, living in Moscow in 1939, just prior to the start of World War II. He’s lost his position at the university and is now working at the Lubyanka, a secret arm of the Communist government. His position, ironically, is to archive and catalog manuscripts that have been confiscated from poets, novelists and other writers for being deemed critical of the administration, before they are ultimately destroyed.

Pavel sees the writer Isaac Babel incarcerated, and watches as torture and intimidation take their toll on the once proud man. He stands by helplessly as friends are hounded and arrested by government goons. He battles against a wall of red tape in his effort to discover the truth about his wife’s death. Finally, Pavel decides to fight back – in perhaps the only way he can. He takes a story of Babel’s from the archives and hides it under his clothes before he leaves the building one night. Later he takes another. If he can keep from being discovered, these stories may survive the purge and be delivered into more understanding hands in the future.

Holland has written a book that was a perfect piece for a first-time novelist, according to his agent, Amy Williams. The story contains fewer than 100,000 words and is divided into thirty-seven brief chapters, enticing readers to keep moving forward. The language is accessible. Details and description are beautifully done. It’s clear Holland did a tremendous job of research for this book, which makes this historical fiction quite believable.

The author provides the reader with three interwoven sub-plots, each of which is developed quickly and which moves rapidly to its climax: the first, of course, is Pavel’s dilemma over the Babel stories; second is his attempt to find out the truth about his wife’s death aboard a train that was mysteriously derailed in an isolated part of the country; third is the deterioration of his mother, who has contracted Alzheimer’s Disease and can no longer be left alone. These all come together seamlessly at the novel’s climax, yielding an ending that is ultimately satisfying.

Holland is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s Creative Writing MFA program who has received Hopwood Awards for the novel and for short fiction. His short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Five Points and The Quarterly .

In the Woods by Tana French
Penguin, New York. ISBN: 978-0-670-03860-2.
Hardcover: $24.95

It is the summer of 1984. Three children living in the small Dublin suburb of Knocknaree disappear into the woods. Two days later, only one is found, clinging to a tree, unable to remember what transpired, dried blood pooled in the bottom of his shoes. Twenty years later, the sole survivor, Adam Ryan, is working as a detective in the Murder squad and is assigned the case of a murdered twelve year old girl, found in the woods in the rural suburb of Knocknaree. Could the two cases be linked? Will the investigation spur the repressed memories of that terrible day years earlier? Who could possibly perpetrate such a heinous act and why?

Tana French’s debut novel, In the Woods, is a goosebump-raising thriller that will keep the reader turning pages and sneaking reading time while waiting in line at the grocery store. Her characters, Adam Ryan, the boy who survived, and Cassie Maddox, his partner and best friend, are complex, flawed and realistic. The story is told by Adam Ryan via a retrospective, sometimes chronologically stepping through police procedures, some flashbacks to his own experience with personal commentary interspersed. This foreshadowing heightened the tension in parts but became intrusive toward the last third of the book. How many times are you going to say that you should have picked up on the clues earlier? If you did that, the book would be done already.

The actual murderer and motive provides a shocker of an ending, one that gave me that wonderful ‘Aha!’ moment that mystery fans so enjoy. I found the book a fast and enjoyable read. Ms. French writes beautifully and I would gladly shell out cold hard cash to purchase her next novel. One of the blurbs on the back cover of the book compares her storytelling to that of DuMaurier and Hitchcock, and I agree wholeheartedly. If you enjoy a creepy thriller with vivid characters and lots of suspense, this book will not disappoint.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
Anchor Books, Random House Paperback, $13.95

Review by Jo Meador

A master observer of the human comedy, Alexander McCall Smith delivers a jaunty stroll among the denizens of Edinburgh in 44 Scotland Street — to be exact, the Bohemian edge of Edinburgh “where lawyers and accountants were outnumbered — just — by others”. It is the “others” who interest us here. The author’s sharp eye and keen wit cut deeply into the quirks and bumps of several lives — the flat dwellers of the title’s address — to reveal a tender and optimistic slice of Edinburgh life.

Written as a daily serial for an Edinburgh newspaper, 44 Scotland Street introduces a memorable cast of characters. There is the rational and questioning Pat who sublets a flat from the narcissistic Bruce, to whom she is reluctantly attracted. The neighbor across the hall, Domenica — a middle-aged woman with some means — takes Pat under her wing to guide her interests away from the womanizing Bruce. Then there’s Bertie, a precocious five-year-old who plays the tenor sax like a pro, speaks fluent Italian, and yearns for the train sets and soccer so abhorrent to his mother Irene.

Pat selects Bruce’s flat to rent because of its proximity to her new job at the Something Special Gallery, a shop filled with obscure paintings by unknown or anonymous artists. Mathew, a wealthy dilettante, owns the shop. As Pat is attracted to Bruce, so Mathew develops an interest in Pat, although he spends most of his time at Big Lou’s coffee bar across the street trying to mingle with the regulars. Pat’s story leads into a mystery of sorts where she must recover a valuable gallery painting which has been stolen from her flat. Domenica introduces her to a portraitist, takes them on a journey through the Edinburgh underworld before they the mystery is solved.

Bruce’s life centers on his career — moving up or out of surveying — and finding female companions, which leads him to an uncomfortable dance with the boss’s daughter in full dress kilt. When Pat learns Bruce will go after any willing game, she also discovers that he is key to tracking down the lost painting.

Nearly a fourth of the episodes in the collection feature the adventures of the rebellious Bertie and his mother’s efforts to have the world recognize his genius. Irene’s ideas on child rearing come from her loose interpretation of the work of Melanie Klein, a noted British psychologist. When Bertie is suspended from school for writing graffiti in Italian on the bathroom wall, Irene seeks a sympathetic therapist who agrees with her opinions on Klein, all the while using Klein’s real theory to coerce her into allowing Bertie to be a five-year-old.

In spite of the disjointed subplot, this episodic novel moves. The characters engage even though they are lacking in the darker tones of human nature. Wacky and all too human, they never fail to surprise and entertain, which kept this reader turning pages far into the night.

Two elements of craft delighted the writer in me: first, the lucid and coherent style of a trained journalist with a sharp eye and keen wit. There was truth beneath every quirk and a lesson in every foible. The incidental reporting kept the story fresh and with the rhythm of an early morning trot on the racecourse.

The second admirable element of craft was the writer’s deft hand at shifting point of view. The reader flits from character to character like the journalist’s fly, only this creature sits on the character’s forehead instead of the wall. A shift in character can occur at the spur of the moment during a single action or dialogue. The shifts are not only easy to follow; they provide some of the upbeat pacing noted above. Thus even as one character might villainize another, there is the second character popping up with his own view, hero of his own story.

In his preface the author likens his work to Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, which he deliberately mimicked. The tone and pacing are as light as Oscar Wilde and as penetrating to human nature. And like Wilde, this author entertains and instructs in a single stroke of the pen.

Understanding the Short Form
An interview with Bruce Holland Rogers

WS: You are teaching a class devoted entirely to the short form this semester. What is about these very short pieces that you find engaging?

BHR: Brevity.

WS: You also publish frequently in this form. What are the special challenges in writing the shortshortshort?

BHR: In a shorter work, every word choice is more salient. Because the piece may consist of only 200 words, each word has a lot to accomplish. Each word had better be the right word. Also, longer works tend to be forgiving—or what I should really say is that the reader is more forgiving of flaws in a longer work. In very short prose, readers reasonably expect the writer to strive for perfection, and any shortcomings mar the experience in a way that one boring or sloppy chapter won’t necessarily ruin a novel.

WS: In class we are reading works that fit the word count and yet may be fiction, nonfiction, or prose poetry. The line between the genres seems even more blurred when there are so few words. Do you think that assessment is accurate? If so, why do you think it is the case?

BHR: My friend Robert Hill Long asserts that these very short prose pieces are subversive by definition, that writing a very short prose piece is a small rebellion against the broader literary tradition. If he’s right, then one aspect of this subversion could be a deliberate muddling of genre distinctions. I don’t agree with Robert entirely—I think that there are many motivations for writing such short works. Not every writer of short prose works is rebelling against genre distinctions or prescriptive notions of what a story or poem or memoir is supposed to be. However, very short pieces do lend themselves to rebellions and protest and anarchy. If a writer wants to violate the reader’s expectation about what a “story” is allowed to do, then writing short is a good strategy. The writer delivers the story fast, before the reader has a chance to object. “Wait a minute! This isn’t what’s supposed to happen in a story!” Too late! You’ve already read and enjoyed it on its own mysterious terms!

WS: Last year in workshop we started asking ourselves and each other, “Is this a story?” We came up with a number of “rules” about what constitutes story. In these pieces, even if you exclude prose poetry, there is a blatant flaunting of the rules. And yet, most of them seem satisfying. Do different criteria apply to shorter works or is there something else at play here?

BHR: I think that what students are experiencing is an example of creative destruction as it applies to education. In one year, the faculty helps you to establish the “rules” for how narrative seems to work. The next year, we show you texts that clearly work—that is, we read them with pleasure —but that violate those rules. Are the rules wrong? It’s really up to the writer to resolve this for herself, but I do think that a lot of artists do themselves harm when they find or invent rules and resolve to stick to them.

If a story is broken, if you know it isn’t working and don’t know how to make it work, rules can be a handy aid for revision. Is there a character with a problem at the outset of the story? Is the problem one that can be stated as a yes-or-no question? Those questions reflect the rules of a certain kind of storytelling.

However, rules can also become a crutch. Work can be written so prescriptively, so slavishly to rule, that it becomes boring to the writer and to the reader. I think that whether they do it consciously or not, a lot of artists work to alternately identify and undermine the rules of their own art.

WS: One of the students recently asked, “How do I know if what I’ve written is a prose poem, essay, or fiction?” Well, how do I?

BHR: This may sound like a flip answer, but it’s true. I sometimes don’t know whether what I’ve written is a poem or a story, a horror story or a literary one, until I see where it’s published. One of the lasting controversies in science fiction has always been, “What is science fiction?” Damon Knight had his tongue in his cheek when he offered the following definition, but there was a serious point behind his joke: “Science fiction is that literature to which I am pointing when I say ’science fiction.’”

We can discuss the differences. A prose poem is probably at least as concerned with the manner of the telling as what is told. In poetry, there is a focus on the language itself. A story has to narrate events. A non-fiction piece must be true. But a poem can also be narrative and true, so that a short narrative autobiographical incident that the writer has rendered in poetically compressed language might be called a prose poem, a flash fiction, or a brief memoir.

Years ago, I was talking to a member of the editorial board at Prism International. When I said that I wrote very short prose pieces, he suggested that I send them to the poetry editor. Why? Because Prism pays twice as much per published page for poetry as for fiction. I thought that “Border Crossings” was a story when I wrote it, but it was published in Prism as a poem. So the difference between a poem and a story is sixty dollars (Canadian).

WS: It has been interesting in class to see that different interpretations about the “true” meaning of these pieces. Do you think author intent is more oblique in shorter works?

BHR: I’m leery of talking about the author’s intent when all that we have to go by is the marks that the author left on the page. It’s much easier to speak of achieved effects. I do think that short forms often leave the reader with mysteries of significance to resolve, and that the writer of a short form may perhaps rely on readers to go back and read the piece more than once.

WS: Who, besides yourself, do you think is especially noteworthy for the quality of their short shorts?

BHR: Am I especially noteworthy for the quality of my short-shorts? I’m certainly noteworthy for persisting in thrusting them under the noses of readers!

Five writers whose short-shorts I especially like, for different reasons, are Richard Brautigan, Yasunari Kawabata, Jessica Treat, Joyce Carol Oates, and Barry Yourgrau.

WS: There are currently a lot of names floating around for short forms—flash, micro, etc. Is there any standard agreement about the difference between the different categories?

BHR: You can look at the first use of various terms. A “short-short story” was originally a story that would fit on one normally typeset page of Collier’s Magazine. A “sudden fiction” was, I think, no longer than 2,000 words, and usually no more than about 1,500. A “flash fiction” was a story that would face on no more than two facing pages of the typical literary magazine, or 750 words. A “micro-fiction” was no more than 250 words.

However, the terms are now used by different editors to indicate a wide variety of different lengths. There is no real agreement.

WS: What does your crystal ball tell you about the future of this form in English-language publishing?

If I had a reliable crystal ball, I’d be at Ladbroke’s right now putting a thousand pounds on the outcome of this weekend’s Premier League football matches. I do think, though, that short-short forms are well suited to reading on a computer screen or listening on a podcast. Time is short. I think these small bites of fiction will continue to find an audience. But I also think that most readers prefer their fiction to be a totally immersive experience. Novels will continue to dominate publishing.

 

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover, $26.95

Review by Joseph Ponepinto

One of the more ironic aspects of love is that the more one experiences it, the more difficult it can be to understand. We see that perfect person across the room and suddenly find ourselves unable to function. But sometimes we find the courage, and then we date, we marry, we share lives, we just begin to relax – and then it falls apart, who knows why, and we are left to examine the evidence of its undoing, alter our strategy, work on our appearance, and try again. Or not. Somewhere in all that activity, in that constant anxiety, are the answers, we are sure. But every time we think we’ve got one pinned down it’s revealed to be nonsense, because the answer for me isn’t the answer for you, at least not today.

Where does one begin to parse love? For Richard Russo it’s back to upstate New York, this time to the small, failing town of Thomaston, just three quarters of an hour down the thruway from Mohawk, the setting for his first novel some twenty years ago. His writing has stayed largely in the New York-New England area. In an essay he wrote a few years ago, Russo explained that to him, the setting of a book was very much like a character, and when portrayed properly added to the development of the human characters. His first novel, Mohawk, was originally placed in Arizona, and under another title. It simply didn’t work there, he said, because the descriptions and feel of the place were too much those of a tourist, rather than a native. It’s interesting that in Bridge of Sighs several chapters take place in Venice, Italy, but except for dropping the names of a few restaurants, one might not know it. Of course the character who lives there is something of a tourist, having been transplanted from upstate.

Somehow we never tire of Russo’s places, the characters’ lives so intertwined with the fortunes of their hometown that they can never be separated, and he builds on these relationships to create spectacular depth. In Thomaston young Lou C. Lynch (Lucy, thanks to a teacher who said it too fast when taking attendance), is a child seeking to avoid the local bullies. He’s kidnapped by them and dumped into a trunk at an abandoned mill. Lucy is too scared and too slow to realize he could have walked away at any time. Too scared also, to admit that one of the bullies is the boy he idolizes as his best friend, Bobby Marconi. The bullies try to scare him by pretending to saw the trunk in half, but it works too well – after that he’s never quite right again. Lucy is plagued by spells, reliving the incident at he most inconvenient times.

Much of the book is written first-person, from Lucy’s view. Russo, who can make anything work, paints Lucy in an as unfavorable light as an author dare make a central character. He is big and dopey, sentimental and all-too trusting, all aspects of character his mother, Tessa, tries throughout his adolescence to talk him out of. But her real-world logic didn’t work on his father either, and the two of them remain loveable doofuses for many years.

Big Lou (Lucy’s dad) is the cushy rock that holds the Lynch clan together, despite the fact he’s oblivious to the snubs of neighbor Marconi (Bobby’s dad), and the tension between Tessa and his brother, Dec, with whom Tessa had a torrid affair before she decided to get serious about life and marry Big Lou instead. And now they all work together in the family convenience store, struggling to make ends meet, rubbing elbows, rubbing each other the wrong way, but working it out like a 1960s version of the Waltons. It’s a tough go at first, but eventually the store holds its own against the corporate-owned A&P, and provides a warmth that pulls in customers, as well as teens looking for a refuge from the cold of their broken home lives.

Lucy, stumbling his way through high school, still lacks friends. Bobby returns from military school and Lou (the grown-up Lucy) reattaches himself to his boyhood idol. Bobby thinks the big kid is a bit of an embarrassment to hang out with, but he’s not as bad as he used to be. After all, Lou has somehow managed to get himself a girlfriend. She’s just a shy, sweet artist, and from the day they got together they both realized it would be a lifelong affair. But although she’s not really Bobby’s type (he’s dating Nan, the Barbie doll cutie whom all the boys want), there’s something about Sarah he can’t shake out of his system. She feels the same way about him. Their private talks have a depth that neither shares with their significant others. So here’s where Russo gives us the showdown: which kind of love will win out? The long, slow, comfortable love of two people who have made their commitment and maintain it like a pot of soup over a low flame, or the passionate, full burn of a love that is just waiting for something to provide the spark? Is she too good of a girl to abandon Lou? For Bobby, does he love Sarah only because she’s Lou’s? With the constraints placed upon them, Sarah and Bobby may never know from where their love is born, and that’s exactly why it will never go away, even after Sarah and Lou are married, with child, and take over the store from Big Lou and Tessa.

The questions never stop coming for us, and for Bobby, who leaves Thomaston after an explosive scene. He changes his name from dad’s Marconi to mom’s Noonan and directs his passions towards art. Following in Sarah’s example he becomes a painter. Not just a painter like her, but a world-renowned artist. He leaves the states and wanders Europe, settling for the last decade in Venice, home of the infamous bridge (which both of them wind up painting at various points in their careers). He paints bestsellers, while Lou and Sarah mind the store. Love’s not done with any of them, though. Even at sixty, Sarah and Bobby harbor unresolved feelings for each other, and the couple’s planned trip to Italy encourages Sarah to put her thoughts in a letter to Bobby, which Lou discovers. For once, Lou angers. He hasn’t had a spell for years, but now he zones out and the trip is cancelled. Sarah questions her life with him and leaves – for how long even she doesn’t know. She heads to New York. Bobby’s on his way to the city to show his latest work. Perhaps, if they meet, they could still be friends, or maybe more. But then there’s Lou – big, sweet Lou – who loves them both, standing there like the big galoot he is, in between them. How could they do it to him?

It takes an author like the Pulitzer Prize winning Russo (who earned the prize for Empire Falls) to artfully track the lives of these characters and about half a dozen more over a period of more than fifty years. It’s a seamless web of fiction that, like the best literary works, is more real than real life. There may be no other author today who so fully captures the feelings and motivations of people, and who does it without gimmick or melodrama, in easy, accessible language that mirrors the way his characters live. That his subjects think and react the way his readers do is Russo’s genius – like many works of genius it seems so simple when it is presented on the page, but in analysis the scope and effort become awesome.

Does Bridge of Sighs hold any answers for us? Think about your loves – the love you have for your spouse, for your children and parents, for your friends when you were growing up, the friends you have now, for the people you dated before you made that big commitment and became who you are. In all that lovin’ have you ever come up with any of the answers? Have you ever figured out why it happens like this? Or is it just as fulfilling to keep playing the game, to keep trying and winning, trying and losing, and to hold on to the memories? That, after all, may be all we can take out of it. For Russo, it is enough.

Keyhole Opera

by Bruce Holland Rogers

Paperback: 256 pages 

Publisher: Wheatland Press (November 30, 2005) 
ISBN: 0975590375

Anyone who’s run across Bruce Holland Rogers in the pages of The Sun or Good Housekeeping already knows this book is bound to be a See’s Candy box full of chocolates; some of the stories are sweet, some a little nutty or chewy, but all are delicious and just the right size for a quick treat. Even when Rogers’ sentiments turn dark, there is a hopeful, fairy-tale quality to his work. These short-short stories cover the gamut from parable to stories anchored in the everyday world around us, but always with a slant or twist that makes us see that world from a slightly skewed angle.

Perhaps more than most short fiction, the form of the short-short forces readers to become participants in the story world, supplying one’s own experience to fill in the blanks necessary with such a brief word count. And—in the words of author Kate Wilhelm, stories “offer a glimpse through a keyhole, where even a brief description can be overwhelming, any digression the imposition of an intruder.”

Though stories-in-miniature, each selection in Keyhole Opera leaves the reader with a feeling of story satisfaction, eliciting a sigh of appreciation or delight at the last word. Keep this book handy, and when you feel you deserve a little reward, dip into it instead of that candy box. Your heart, brain, and backside will thank you.