Funny Once

March 17, 2014
Nelson’s stories are frequently anthologized, and for good reason: they feature memorable, albeit often desperately unhappy, characters; evocative Southwestern settings; and a refreshing frankness about the emptiness of modern life. She starts her fifth collection (after Female Trouble) at the peak of her game, with the haunting “Literally,” in which a widower struggles to protect his children (and their maid) from life’s harsh realities. The final story is another strong selection, “Chapter Two,” about an alcoholic named Hil who diverts her AA group with tales—and lies—about an eccentric neighbor even worse off than she is. Lies also figure into the title story, in which a bored young wife’s “terminal unhappiness” manifests as a need to play havoc with the lives of her friends, and in “Iff,” a single mother covets her son’s attention and sabotages his love life. But there’s a downside to collecting such unrelentingly stark material in one volume. Readers may confuse characters, finding little distinction between the two middle-aged frenemies of “Winter In Yalta” and the remarried divorcee of “First Husband.” What begins as pathos looks more like self-pity by the end of the collection. Despite the collection’s individual gems, these unhappy families are too much alike.

May 15, 2014
In her immersive new collection of nine stories and a novella, Nelson (Bound, 2010, etc.), a much lauded novelist and short story writer, introduces not-always-happy or well-behaved protagonists who make questionable choices.Ex-boyfriends and -girlfriends, stepchildren from dead marriages and former in-laws crop up in the present, affecting the status quo. In "Soldier's Joy," a woman who married her college professor goes home years later to help her injured father and rediscovers the attraction of an old boyfriend, whose rejection of her in the past is about to haunt her anew. A rich example of Nelson's ability to conjure a fully peopled scenario in only 20 pages, "iff" reveals the poignantly interdependent relationship between a divorced woman and her ex-mother-in-law. Lovey in "First Husband" comes to the aid of her needy former stepdaughter-tending her children, accepting her manipulation-while considering different kinds of married love. These stories are set in scattered cities-Albuquerque, Houston, Telluride, Chicago-and focus on everyday families dealing with long-resonant emotions. While irony pervades many of them, a streak of despair runs through several, and suicide is touched on softly but repeatedly: in "iff"; in "The Village," whose central character, Darcy, finds herself paying tribute to her father's mistress, who rescued her once; and in "Winter in Yalta," where a 30-year friendship unravels during a reunion weekend in New York. Nelson's central characters can sometimes seem interchangeable: Mostly they are not-so-young women bruised by love, by leaving or being left, whether through death, divorce or dementia. But others-like Phoebe, the badly behaved woman of the title story, whose hair catches fire-are uniquely memorable.Distinctive, quirky stories that deftly capture some of life's messiness.

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Starred review from April 15, 2014
Graced with credible characters whose friendships, marriages, progeny, and divorces feel familiar and lived in, Nelson's supple stories have appeared in prestigious magazines and prize anthologies for two decades. This seventh short story collection (her tenth book of fiction) will delight longtime fans while likely propelling new readers to explore her earlier work. Even readers who have already encountered some of these newer stories in the pages of "The New Yorker" will find themselves fully engaged once again from the tumbling out of the first sentence on the first page. The narratives are driven by characters whose crises and moments of insight take the reader by surprise, but Nelson herself is completely in control of her complex tales, in which infidelities are exposed or never quite happen and old friends surprise one another with new revelations that take 20 pages to unfold. Even the peripheral characters, such as the acerbic, misplaced writing instructor for an adult education class in Kansas in the novella-length closing story, "Three Wishes," are presented as questions that might be answered in stories still to come. VERDICT Nelson is one of the leading practitioners of the contemporary short story, and her new collection will be welcomed.--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA

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Starred review from April 1, 2014
Nelson's run as one of the finest contemporary short story writers takes an exhilarating leap forward with her outrageously superb seventh collection. Her particular wizardry in the short form (Nelson is also the author of four novels) is found in her exceptional melding of pristine prose with a rampaging imagination and a comic's perfect timing. Nelson is scandalously funny, her characters are royally screwed up and wildly inept, and their dire predicaments bust down the doors on the most painful of life's cruel jokes, from betrayal to divorce, addiction, and old age. Nelson excels at multigenerational chaos, portraying with equal verve surprising children and ornery adults as well as neurotic dogs and places rife with hidden angst, namely Wichita, Telluride, and Houston. She traces the odd geometry of divorce that leads to one woman living with and caring for her ex-husband's stepmother. Forced to bring their enraged, dementia-addled father, lashed with duct tape to his recliner, to a nursing home, the dysfunctional motherless siblings in Three Wishes continue to grieve over their older brother's death long ago. Each of Nelson's magnetizing stories generates atomic vibrancy and achieves the psychic mass of a novel. And who can resist lines like this Life is a series of lessons you don't want to learn ?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)