3★

“He fell back on his futon, his head throbbing. Eyes closed, he pushed on them and saw paisley patterns inside his lids, dark and light globules flowing over onto each other. He opened his eyes, blinking and saw the ghosts of his fingertips, blue and red, dancing before him.”

My overall impression of these stories is of misfits and their pain. Most aren’t actually misfits but seem to feel marginalised for whatever reason. Women feel a private pain after miscarriages, parents feel private pain after the death of a child but have to suffer with well-meaning attention from friends, others cut themselves, purge, or fantasise about assuming someone else’s life.

Teachers and parents are always caught between a rock and a hard place in handling students and children. Too harsh, too lenient – damned if you do, damned if you don’t. They’re ready to explode.

Young people feel ostracised.

“Candace’s mother, Leigh, is losing weight but Candace is getting fatter, so the kids at school call her Kansas.”

The title of the collection is explained in the story of the same name.

“When Nate left the house, his legs felt rubbery as if he’d been skating on high ramps at skateboarding parks—the U-shaped ramps that rose ten feet on each side. You skated up one side, then down, then up, back and forth, in a figure eight, a little like surfing. Lately, he felt as if he’d been skating on the vertical—up and down, his stomach rising to his throat before sinking. Sometimes, it was like flying, like having control over the air, but he also knew he might wipe out at any moment, knees and chin to concrete, a total crash.”

Nate’s dad has lost his job and is parked in front of the TV, apparently not looking for work. Big brother is away at college, and Nate wonders what will happen to that when the money dries up. He hangs out with friends who want him to join them in destroying the few possessions of a local homeless man Nate has been friendly to. No wonder he’s afraid of crashing,

There is some nice writing throughout. Too many seem unfinished, and I didn’t feel I knew enough about the characters to drum up any enthusiasm for their situations.

Thanks to NetGalley and Fomite for the review copy from which I’ve quoted.

'Funny how the comet looks both still and in motion- held in its orbit but fighting to break away. Brian thinks it’s beautiful, freeflying. I only see it’s falling apart. I am Brian’s tail, clinging for dear life, feeling bits of myself break away and turn into mist. He’s on the move and I can’t hang on for much longer.'

Short and intimate, this collection is women at their worst and best. In Eskimo Pie, Margaret is a teacher reluctant to be the awkward students champion. It’s my favorite in this collection, because I felt so wounded by her honesty and refreshed. We hate mirrors, don’t we? Reflecting all those things about ourselves we shed long ago or, the horror, seeing everything we don’t want to be, but are. Jessica, that poor, clueless outcast is set to have a far worse day, poking Margaret’s meanness. When she gets her period, the hardness is dislodged and suddenly the commonality is suffering, something all women share, our bodies betray us all.

Eunuchs is depressing and hopeful, Pak Jeong (Korean student) isn’t meant to succeed and it seems the system in place has it in for him. In trying to teach those students lacking the English language skills necessary to be ‘up to snuff’ for Dreighton Hall, she resents the successful elite and sees longs to save, Pak. Natalie wants to fight for him, as much as she wishes he could just try to blend in his defiance is gathering momentum and when he blows, Natalie has admiration for his courage.

Skin Art is about more than someone who used to ‘cut’, the way Madeline is treated by her husband, that dismissive annoyance and impatience he expresses towards her, the sense she has to explain herself speaks volumes. Why is it she is pushing herself so much, as if trying to keep up with his needs, when so often women are meant to push full steam ahead when they really just need a lie down, a moment to recharge? I adore the moment she gets Mendhi, has the Alok added to the design and that her perceptive husband, quick to point out her faults, is left with nothing but confusion.

In Skating The Vertical, Nate struggles with his father’s descent into depression after losing his job and feels shame in the cruelty he and his friends do to a homeless man. There is, for boys, a different sort of struggle, an expectation of ‘toughness’ and violence, boys can’t be weak, while girls fight within their bodies, boys have to act ‘out’.

Rocky Road touched me, it reminded me of something my own mother has said several times when other female family members have had cancer. A chummy sort of ‘well it takes cancer to lose weight’, that branded my brain. Think about that, I may be sick but at least I am not fat. That’s haunted me, in this story mother Leigh has just finished a round of chemo and her friend Vena, is a self-appointed healer, setting up the best possible diet for her. Daughter Candace feels shut out, their bond has been junk food, and their curvaceous “Morgan hips”. This clean life is a cold place. It’s funny how stories can mean different things to each reader.

There are sixteen stories within, dealing with unwanted pregnancy, infertility ,desperate love, self-harm, healing, body image, and of course forbidden relationships. All the terrible things we women do to ourselves, the hidden pain, the lonely choices… it takes crocodile skin!

Available Now

Fomite

I have only over the last couple of years started to read and enjoy short fiction and I still feel that the stories I enjoy the most are those collections where the stories are connected in some way, and especially if characters reappear. In this case there were no stories with the same characters but there were some similarities in themes. Two stories are about pregnant teenagers , each making a different decision. One of those stories seems to be more about the mother than the daughter who has to decide whether to have an abortion or not . Three other stories are about teachers, two of whom seem to connect with a troubled student but yet have issues of their own that they can't resolve and the third teacher, who is not sure what it's about when a artist asks her to pose . I wasn't either . A foreign student in an American boarding school unable to find belonging finds a way out while the teacher only imagines leaving. This was a mixed bag for me. There were a few of the sixteen stories that left me thinking - wait , that's it? In particular some were less than a couple of pages and needed a story. A problem I have had in the past - just too short for a connection or an understanding of the characters and wanting to know more about what happens to them . However, Jan English Leary has given us some realistic characters that may very well be like people we have known and that is what kept me reading .

I received an advanced copy of this book from Fomite through NetGalley.

(3.5 stars) Sixteen stories about women’s bodies, coping with loss, and the connections that can arise between unlikely allies. Often there are two seemingly disparate elements that come to resemble two halves of the same theme. In “Eskimo Pie,” for instance, a middle school teacher with an eating disorder takes compassion on an annoying student when she gets her first period on a school trip. Their body issues make them gawky outcasts together. In “Skin Art,” a woman gets a mehndi tattoo over her cutting scars, making art out of a history of pain. My few favorites were “Eunuchs,” the opening story, about a struggling Korean boarding school student and the teacher who tries to help him; “Alewives,” about a Chicago housewife who finds an unusual outlet for her artistic skills; and “Rabbit’s Foot,” about a dead rabbit and the way life sometimes comes and kicks you when you’re down.

Some of these stories have been around since 1998, and in a couple cases they seem to repeat each other: there are two about pregnant fifteen-year-olds (one, “LaTendra,” is full of cringeworthy black names), and two about young women who fall for older, married men. I thought in these cases one could have been dropped from each pair, along with the super-short ones. Also, surprisingly, only two stories are in the first person; all the rest are third person. So, while all in all I might have preferred a shorter and more diverse collection, I enjoyed this and would read more work by Leary.