January 4, 2015

Book 2: Bewildered

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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