Most of the seven stories in this first volume rest on the tired
stuff of good intentions, but near the end there is a sharpening of
judgment that results in some fine moments, indeed. The
next-to-last story, "Notes Toward an Understanding of My Father's
Novel," is a poised and moving achievement. The earlier pieces have
more about them of the writing-seminars than of life. "This Heat"
works conscientiously toward its culminating symbols in a story of
grief among mill hands, but it remains more literary and rhetorical
than moving. "World of Women" is the story of a boy's awakening to
sex, done capably but not freshly. "In Darkness;" which looks at a
marital crisis through the eyes of a ten-year-old daughter,
declines at crucial moments into the greeting-card sentiment of
words that merely blather on ("You had to be brave. . .a special
kind of bravery and love that kept you standing in the dark, in the
silence, looking for the light inside you, believing it was
there"). The final two stories, however, for the most part leave
the dross behind and give a hard clear light by themselves. The
title story, about a girl growing up, comes to life thanks in part
to a grandmother who at 60 leaves Georgia for a mission in the
Belgian Congo. But the big difference is that Durban's eye has
sharpened and become her own. "Notes Toward an Understanding. . ."
may be one of the best stories we have of WW II - confident, alert,
and unfalsified. A father has been marked for life by the war he
fought in as little more than a boy. "The wind was blowing toward
us," says his daughter, 40 years later, in the back yard, "blowing
his pant legs flat against him, and I noticed that one leg was
thinner than the other and my heart hammered. I might as well have
come across him naked, and I looked away." A book two-thirds
undistinguished, but that rises in the end to that genuine,
wonderful thing, real fiction. Previous publication in magazines
including Tri-Quarterly, The Georgia Review, and Ohio Review.
(Kirkus Reviews)
The seven stories in Pam Durban's widely praised debut collection
are tales of family, of love and loss, of survival and affirmation.
Durban's resonant prose subtly obliges her readers to experience
the rush of icy water in a stream, the taste of greens freshly
snatched from an overgrown garden, the dread weight of confusion
and uncertainty.
In "This Heat," the opening story, a mill worker faces the
long-expected loss of her teenage son when his weak heart finally
gives out. In the title story, which concludes the collection, a
formidably eccentric woman abruptly leaves her daughter and
granddaughter to answer a "calling" to do missionary work in
Africa.
Framed between these two stories is a gathering of characters
made real and consequential by Durban's touch: a country singer
more than a few big breaks short of stardom, a preadolescent boy
lovestruck over his private swimming instructor, a father cut off
from his children by haunting war memories, and others.
General
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