Decently done but unremarkable debut collection, the recipient of
this year's Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Most of the
characters here - many of them Mormons, almost all living in the
American Southwest - are either sick or connected intimately with
sickness or tragedy. How they face the distress at hand becomes a
measure of their character. Cecil, the nose surgeon of "Howard
Johnson's House," has to carry on with his daily routine of facial
reconstructions even as his mother Edna lies dying, beyond his
assistance. Anna and Nicole, the two teenaged cancer patients of
"Krista Had a Treble Clef Rose," carry on with all the normal
occupations of adolescence - crushes on boys, preparations for
dances, fantasies about their futures - from the oncology ward of
the hospital where they've met. "A Good Paved Road" describes a
religious dilemma: a high school girl tries to convert her
boyfriend to the Mormon Church she grew up in, then loses her faith
when she fails. And in "Victor's Funeral Urn," a recently divorced
wife who's contemplating a reunion with her ex-husband happens upon
an urn containing what appear to be human ashes on the side of a
road - and then tries to locate the owner. "Jumping" finds a woman
still haunted by a skiing accident 33 years after the fact. The
best of the lot is the title story, describing the dual traumas of
a husband being treated for thyroid cancer and of the wife whose
exhaustion over his disease prompts her to leave him. Clyde knows
her world well and manages to offer a fair representation of it,
but there's a lack of depth to her sketches that make them seen
like just that - quick studies. (Kirkus Reviews)
Mary Clyde s stories explore not so much what has happened already
but what happens next. Illness bristles through the book,
magnifying emotional undercurrents: two teenage girls survive
surgery and the prospect of never eating popcorn again; the
stoicism of a husband with cancer infuriates his wife. Set in the
desert Southwest, these stories show the influence of a landscape
populated with cat-eating coyotes and car-crushing boulders. The
characters are relative newcomers, some sharing the author s Mormon
heritage. But they are survivors, relying on the ironies and
blessings of ongoing life.
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