Books in Brief
“Trespass”
by Valerie Martin
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 304 pp., $25
Valerie Martin is the author of two collections of short fiction and seven novels, including “Property,” winner of the 2003 Orange Prize, one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prizes. The Orange is awarded annually for the best original full-length novel by a female author writing in English.
A recurring theme in “Property” and Martin’s new book, “Trespass,” is control: who has it, who wants it, who loses it and what is the cost. In “Property,” a dissatisfied young woman must put up with Sarah, a black slave given to her when she married, and who becomes her husband’s concubine. The ramifications of that “gift” reverberate throughout the marriage and beyond, and control does not always rest where one might expect. Martin does not hesitate to advance her liberal political and social philosophy in “Property” or in “Trespass.” For the most part, her pointed remarks are not intrusive, but serve to buttress the narrative. Occasionally, she strays into a gratuitous rant; in “Trespass” she vigorously bemoans the U.S. government’s aggressive foreign policy.
Chloe Dale is a middle-age wife, mother, sometime activist against the Iraq war and artist, working on a series of illustrations for a new publication of “Wuthering Heights.” Her husband, Brendan, is on sabbatical, writing a book about the Crusades. Their only child, Toby, is a 21-year-old in his junior year at NYU.
Into this quiet, academically inclined family comes Salome, Toby’s Croatian girlfriend. She is forward, rather rude, frankly sexual and full of self-confidence, all of which combine to make Chloe dislike her instantly. She believes that Salome has trapped the innocent Toby. Chloe sees her as an opportunist, one who sees Toby and his family as the security that she has never known, having escaped Yugoslavia during the Serb-Croat war.
Another incursion on Chloe’s peace of mind is the poacher who continually shoots rabbits on their property, a country redoubt near the Catskills. Chloe, alone in her studio, is frightened by the gunshots but, more to the point, her boundaries are being crossed; the man is trespassing. Salome is violating the bounds of her family, influencing her son and finally, according to Chloe, inveigling him into marriage by becoming pregnant. Where is the control now?
The poacher is a bit too obvious, as is a sudden trip to Croatia to find Salome’s “dead” mother. A tragic event befalls that alters the course of events and makes the ending too pat. Despite these drawbacks, Martin has taken an unblinkered look at the changing relationships between parents and adult children, the realities of a new world of diversity and the conundrum of ownership.
Reviewed by Valerie Ryan
“Adulteries, Hot Tubs and Such Like Matters”
by William McCauley
Permanent Press, 152 pp., $16
Short stories are becoming an increasingly lost art - not as arcane as poetry, but close. Practitioners are fewer and fewer as young writers turn to screenplays, television and, for the old-fashioned romantics, novels.
William McCauley, who has published both a respectable novel and a previous short-story collection, is sticking with short stories. His previous collection, “Need,” was set in Sierra Leone on the brink of civil war and was rife with misery, misunderstandings and poverty. The stories in this collection are rife with misery, misunderstandings and affluence.
McCauley’s focus is summed up pretty accurately in the title. Spouses either cheat or suspect their mate of cheating, correctly or incorrectly, and act out in various ways. Hot tubs, for some reason, figure prominently. Are they a symbol of infidelity?
In the first story, “The Ardent Admirer,” an academic buys flowers for his wife, who is also an academic, and she is disappointed to discover the flowers are from him, rather than from a more glamorous admirer. “Adultery,” the second story, is about, unironically enough, adultery. McCauley’s characters are mostly damaged in one way or another, and McCauley understands well their flaws and insecurities.
“Tradition,” the third story, concerns a couple who grow marijuana, and here McCauley stumbles. An unnamed police force in an unnamed state has apparently unlimited resources, and the intense desire, to pursue small-time marijuana growers. This scenario is entirely inconsistent with the realism of the other stories.
But for the most part, McCauley avoids exaggeration and melodrama. He is a solid writer, and his dialogue is lean and true. His spare style calls to mind Raymond Carver but with comic touches.
One of McCauley’s strongest stories is the closer, where a woman cheats on her husband after she feels he cheated on her. This reciprocal infidelity makes her feel like she’s the “winner” of their dysfunctional combat.
Though hot tubs in suburban backyards lack the gravitas of civil war in Africa, these stories are further proof that a portrait of spiritual poverty can be as compelling as one of economic poverty.
Reviewed by Mark Lindquist