Books: Evolution and other stories

Why is it that short stories seem to have to be about dysfunctional people, and can never have a happy ending?
Don’t get me wrong, it is possible to love a poignant tale, a short portrait of suffering. But these… they are too disjointed and yet at the same time too similar to each other in their tone and conclusions.
Some parts are obviously designed to shock, and therefore do not achieve their aim, for instance the mother who collects her menstrual blood in a jar. The paedophile priest is a type, and hence utterly uninteresting, and the benevolent but ungodly priest who loves jazz is similarly familiar, if better-rounded.
The opening tale itself, Evolution, feels the best structured of the stories, but in going backwards through time the reader is confused and not led towards a meaningful conclusion. We do not find out why the man has been gifted with wings when we get to the end (or beginning,) and nor does the beginning (or end) give us any clue as to what he is going to do about it. This is typical of the collection as a whole; they feel like parts of novels, or character sketches, more than stories in their own right. Even the shortest of short stories needs something like a beginning, middle and end, and too often these are missing.
This is not to say that there are no strong points; the style is palatable, short sentences rather than rambling and with some chunky images. There is even a vague theme of child/parent relations running through the collection which could feasibly be developed, and give the whole collection more structure.
Finally however I have to review this work poorly. There is little wrong with the scenes themselves and their construction, but they do not stand alone. There is by no means enough characterisation of main characters to make the collection a portrait-book, and too many relationships or names are only alluded to, never becoming important to the plot. In short – needs breadth and depth.

I went into this collection cold, having no idea of what to expect or what the author might have to offer. Below are my thoughts on individual stories within this collection…

Evolution: I liked the main idea, but I think the pacing of this story is a bit unbalanced…not from the narrative progression (I think the use of going backwards in time is actually employed quite effectively within this piece)…rather, as the details of each day unfold, some days stand out more clearly than others, and this is what most led me to feel that the structure was not quite balanced uniformly…however, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, as it contributed to the surreality associated with going back in time and also with the crazy feelings Rob experiences while undergoing his ‘evolution’…my only other criticism re: this story would be that there’s almost a sense of ‘reduced’ feeling (especially towards the end of the story, when his wings first appear)…the days are few in number, and an enormous amount of things happen, but it feels like we, as readers are watching a story in rewind mode, where we only get a few seconds at a time – this was mildly frustrating to me, b/c I loved the idea behind this story, but felt we were only given brief bits of it, when I wanted the whole thing..

A Kitten Heel, the Sea: This hooked me from the beginning, and I was crushed by its length – too too short! (Especially with the last sentence, that just completely made me like, ooooh! Can’t wait! Wait…where’s the rest of it???) I actually hit refresh a few times, thinking my computer had just not loaded up the story all the way)…So, in a nutshell, loved the idea, found the language and imagery absolutely striking and I wish it could’ve been longer…

Courses: I thought this story was interesting, though a bit short…What I really liked the most about it was the connection at the end that you felt between the narrator, her mother and her daughter, especially when the daughter breaks up the word uterus…It’s a different kind of story, but definitely an interesting one…

Falling: I wasn’t as much a fan of this story…the idea is solid, but I didn’t think it was executed quite as smoothly as it might have been…I think there are hints of a darker humor in it, they just need to be expressed more fully…

Blackberry Jazz: Absolutely wonderful! I loved it…

Noivy God: What happens?!?! Argh, just when I’m getting into it and then BAM! Cut off! (grumbles incoherently)

The Little Red Coat: I liked parts of this story, though I felt the outcome was fairly predictable (especially when the priest waits for her)…Nice use of the Little Red Riding Hood imagery, though….I’d love to see this expanded more fully…

Syrup: I liked the various images that the language of this story evokes, but I felt it couldn’t quite stand on its own as is…It’s like a picture half-completed, it needs more color and definition and development…but I did like the outline so far…

Wintering: There were bits I found very interesting and some of the images I could see so clearly in my head…However, this is another one of those stories that I didn’t quite get all the way into, either because of the intensely self-conscious tone to Senenca’s thoughts, or perhaps it was just me…But I think there’s tremendous potential to develop this story further, and would gladly reread a future version…

Red Dress: Wah! Great story; reminds me of a short Hemingway story I read one time…really really good…

Revelations: Hmmm, interesting…still thinking about this one…

Covet: VERY interesting…I’ll come back and write a better comment on this once I’ve had a chance to think about it more…

The Load: I wanted to like this tale, but something about it just didn’t quite fully engage my attention…but there were parts I appreciated and I would have loved to have seen maybe a slightly different version of events, or perhaps a little more explanation…

Youth: I really really liked this story, especially when it was from the perspective of the older man – really good…

Deliverance:I thought that this story was really really great, though I did have an idea about the direction that the story was heading…I especially loved the close attention paid to particular moments, like the heat emanating from the angel’s physical presence, etc…I also loved the glimpses that you got of Ella’s relationship with her brother…

So, overall, I enjoyed the stories that were in this collection…My biggest frustration was that the stories I really liked felt far too short! (Which is a tribute to the author, that I was so immediately immersed within the stories)…A couple of them I would love to see expanded more fully and I definitely am interested to read more of the author’s works in the future…

This is an interesting collection of stories, varying in length. Some are very short, snippets of a very specific moment in a character’s life. Others are longer and offer something more surreal.

The author is fond of disorientating her reader. In one story, the characters are only known as “the husband” and “the wife” and a couple of the stories are written in the second person. This habit of catching the reader off-guard is Evolution’s strong point. We get the sense that all of Leduc’s characters have rich emotional lives but they are tantalisingly withheld. Instead, the reader is fed tiny pieces of information with which to make up their own mind about a character. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the enchanting – and very short – “Red Dress”.

Personally, I do feel that Leduc is better when dealing with the everyday than with the surreal. Religion, mostly in the form of angels, appears several times throughout the collection. It is, by turns, benign, incomprehensible and secretive. All of this comes across very well in the writing but I’m not entirely sure that, in some cases, the theme is completely connected to the character. This is particularly apparent in the first story, “Evolution”, which didn’t grab me as I think it was supposed to.

However, this is a small niggle with an otherwise very intriguing, original set of short stories. My favourite was a story about a couple who invite a student into their home. Stripped of the kind of histrionics one might expect from this kind of scenario, Leduc focuses fascinatingly on the everyday rituals and insecurities of her characters, revealing just enough to keep the reader interested but never so much that it feels melodramatic.