Bewildered:
Stories
Carla
Panciera
I
have long been a fan of the short fiction format, though it is more
by accident than anything else that my first two books of 2015 have
been story compilations. Whereas the stories in Redeployment
benefit from the book's clear collective mission and vision, readers
must dig a bit deeper to find the coherence in Carla Panciera's
Bewildered. Panciera
has a decidedly literary outlook, tending to be light on plot, and
her stories sometime suffer for it; on more than one occasion, I was
left wanting more. As an engaged reader, I don't mind being asked to
do some of the heavy philosophical lifting, but I do wish that some
of the book's offerings had a bit more meat on their bones. There's a
disenfranchised housewife here, a moody, insufficient husband there,
and too little to make them- or their plights- resonate after a final
sentence, suspended as if in midair. If there is a theme to
Bewildered's contents,
it is the various discontents that lie below the surface of
(seemingly) comfortable suburban lives.
The
trials that Panciera's characters face tend toward the banal- marital
affairs, the various challenges of parenthood, coming to terms with
recent or imminent loss (the last, perhaps, more inherently
meaningful than the others)- but it is to her credit that her
characters are drawn sympathetically enough to elicit the reader's
compassion, even when they may not deserve it. The collection has a
certain lyricism about it that rarely gets in the way of
storytelling, and one only wishes that Panciera had more of an eye
for the absurd, the astounding, and the memorable, rather than
sticking to well-worn scenes and scenarios. In a collection defined
by the author's seeming unwillingness to draw conclusions, the most
powerful stories are those that effectively evoke the effects of
regret and grief, emotions that leave their sufferers as unresolved
as Panciera's stories often are. The collection's opener ("All
of a Sudden") powerfully gives voice to the ever-changing nature
and maturation of childhood friendships, and "Weight" is a
moving exploration of lingering grief, though one wishes that it had
done more to define its protagonist early on- it is a fundamentally
different story depending on the character's gender and age. "End
of Story" is a suitably melancholy reflective piece that has a
surprising- but welcome- take on its point-of-view character; not
quite damning but not wholly sympathetic, either, it seems to be more
or less what he deserves.
"Bewildered"
seems, at first, to be a standard story of a husband's discontent but
slyly incorporates elements of the psychological thriller; one only
wishes that the author had embraced this turn, stoking a sense of
uncomfortable doubt rather than laying the whole thing bare and
presenting it as straightforward. In light of this missed
opportunity, it is Panciera's final offering, "On Being Lonely
and Other Theories", that is probably her strongest. The
characters and setting are fully realized and its events, though
somewhat exaggerated, come with a set of appropriate- and sometimes
unexpected- consequences. One development is more or less
telegraphed, but the story ends with an unsettling air of ambiguity
that, for once, suits it; things are up in the air, unresolved, and
one gets the feeling that they should be. This collection is very
much in the vein of modern literary fiction, somewhat reluctant to
rely on plot but still somehow conveying something meaningful about
modern life. I may have wanted a bit more from these stories, but
Carla Panciera excels at atmospherics and some of the stories- or at
least the feelings of regret and sympathy they elicited in me- may
stick with me for a while. Bewildered
isn't comprised of life-changing or particularly notable short
fiction, but its stories do offer interesting peeks behind the
curtain of self-satisfied suburbia.
Grade:
B
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