Thirteen stories/essays paint a nostalgic portrait of a family
that, despite a certain intimacy, feels very far away. "I fear, as
much as a I desire, this inheritance," our narrator says near the
close of Brown's slight fifth collection (What Keeps Me Here, 1996,
etc.). "I want to keep what they have given me, I want to rid
myself of it." You can't tell whether the intent here is essay or
fiction-a good deal is left out of the tales that a label of truth
might fill in quite nicely. In "Learning to See," for example, a
youthful deformed eye, aimed directly back into the narrator's
head, comes to stand for introspection, nostalgia, and regret. "The
Fish" is made up of a distant father's memories, having to do with
fishing, but will he be man enough to set free the one that didn't
get away? A nearly standardized friendship at summer camp ("Nancy
Booth, Wherever You Are") leads to the self-helpy moral: "I want to
tell her I survived and I am happy now. I want to tell her I am
grateful," while sexual emergence is chronicled in the lust our
narrator feels for a teacher in "A Vision," an infatuation that
takes on a dreamy, mystical dimension. "The Smokers" aspires to
little more than a family history given in narrow focus on the act
of smoking, and "An Element" takes a similar tack around water as a
concept, while "My Mother's Body" a matter-of-fact account of the
rituals of attending to a corpse. Brown takes a step backward here
with what feels like storytelling indecisiveness. As fiction, these
pieces are missing something critical that's nevertheless hard to
pinpoint-like puzzle dioramas whose solution is to find what's
wrong or missing in the picture. Still, the emotion here is real,
if obscured and muted by a cloud of emotion. (Kirkus Reviews)
"The End of Youth "is a collection of 13 linked stories, essays
and rants, about carrying on after youth's hope is gone. In "Afraid
of the Dark," a child learns that there is good reason to be
afraid. The adolescent narrator of "Description of a Struggle"
finds that love can be brutal. "The Smokers" -examines an adult's
realization that longevity means seeing loved ones die. Written
with the same spare and vivid beauty as her earlier award-winning
works, "The End of Youth "is certain to win even wider acclaim.
Rebecca Brown is the author of "The Terrible Girls, Annie
Oakley's Girl, The Gifts of the Body "and "The Dogs." She lives in
Seattle.
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