Jane Campbell (6) (1942–)

I don’t think anyone who grew up watching The Golden Girls is going to be surprised that women of retirement age can have an active libido, but it does seem like an under-represented perspective in fiction. Stepping into that niche here are 13 stories from eighty-year-old debut author Jane Campbell (and, bravo). It begins promisingly: “The lust of an old man is disgusting but the lust of an old woman is worse. Everyone knows that. Certainly, Susan knew it.”

That story of an elderly dying woman and her mutual physical attraction to her young nurse in hospital has some effective pathos although for me it didn’t convince. That would turn out to be the case in most of these stories. There’s a sympathy created with the characters, but the chain of events often seemed too haphazard, or not adequately supported by what came before.

The strongest in the collection is the title story, which is mostly interiority. A woman apparently too old to live by herself any longer has moved in with her son, daughter in law, and their cat. She reflects on the losses that come with age and the story sets up a parallel between her status and the cat’s. There’s humor when she considers how the cat now sleeps at night with her:

It is strange to have her there but I believe she used to sleep with my son before he married. I will not complain; anything between my legs is welcome these days.

(Cue laugh-track as Dorothy rolls her eyes at Blanche…)

There’s cutting insight: “And that too is another dispossession: the capacity to please. Once when I arched my back and let out little miaows of pleasure my lovers thrilled with the knowledge of their potency. Now, I offer a few inches of knitting to my son. It is a terrible loss.”

And the ending is a tad bit twisted; don’t think this is a story about sentimentality! Which is generally true of the other stories as well, overall one could say the collection is fairly dark, but here it pays off much more thanks to a great structure.… (mais)

This is a collection of stories about old women, from the perspective of old women, written by an old woman, and in this case read by an old woman. In general, these are pretty grim stories. Most of the stories filled me with sadness and anxiety. As the author says in her epilogue, “There are not many happy endings in these stories and, as I have said, happy endings are not the goal.” But I think they’re honest stories, and if they’re not the stories I wanted to hear, maybe they’re stories that need to be heard nevertheless.

There’s an epilogue by the author, about which I have mixed feelings. The author is a psychologist, so the insight she provides into the stories is enlightening. But I also have my doubts that an author should be the one analyzing her own work.… (mais)