Patricia Russo
Autor(a) de Shiny Thing
Obras de Patricia Russo
The Oracle Opens One Eye 2 cópias
Sitting Round The Stewpot 2 cópias
People Unnoticed 1 exemplar(es)
The Mean Burned All the Boats [short fiction] 1 exemplar(es)
Stranger 1 exemplar(es)
Wishes and Feathers [short fiction] 1 exemplar(es)
Sally (in Read by Dawn Volume 2 - HARTLEY) 1 exemplar(es)
Fugly (in Nemonymous 7 - LEWIS) 1 exemplar(es)
The Wild and Hungry Times 1 exemplar(es)
The Landholders No Longer Carry Swords [short story] 1 exemplar(es)
Earth Dogs 1 exemplar(es)
Associated Works
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Sexo
- female
Membros
Resenhas
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 14
- Also by
- 12
- Membros
- 20
- Popularidade
- #589,235
- Avaliação
- 3.6
- Resenhas
- 3
- ISBNs
- 1
I feel evangelical about Patricia Russo’s Shiny Thing, which would probably cause some folks to look askance south of Blue Street, the rundown city neighborhood where a number of the collection’s stories are set. Folks living south of Blue Street have life hard enough as it is; the last thing they need is some evangelist coming along and testifying to them.
Patricia Russo herself would never evangelize. She just lays her wares out, like Ribbie the peddler in “Grandpa Lost His Toothbrush”:
Russo’s stories are filled with just this sort of odds and ends. There are boarded-up stores and burnt-out houses, starving dogs and ancient cats. When she brings you a fountain of youth, it’s not a fountain; it’s a patch of dirt between two dumpsters; when a man can resurrect the dead, it’s via a nasty conjoined mini-being who lives on his forearm, tormenting him (or is that his schizophrenia speaking? Doesn’t really matter—it comes to the same thing.)
But don’t go! Don’t turn away! To crib from Leonard Cohen, Russo shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers. There really are heroes in the seaweed, but they’re not the heroes you’re used to. They’re weaker, frailer, older. They’re grumpy old men and iron-haired women, pizza delivery guys and retirees. Confronted with suffering and need, they could just walk away, but they don’t. This is in spite of the fact that Russo’s characters are all basically loners. If they’re living with others, it’s not an entirely (or even mostly) comfortable association. So this means that when they offer love, they’re doing it from a place of emotional poverty, rather than plenty.
They answer a call (literally and metaphorically) to help . . . and then lots of different things happen. Nothing’s certain. Russo’s not writing transactional stories here. Her characters aren’t in it for a reward. They’re simply moved by compassion.
And the objects of their compassion are the creatures or people that, in other stories, would be the monsters. In “Fugly,” a creature crashes through Lenore and Pete’s bathroom window:
Lenore can see it’s frightened. Lenore worries it may even be dying. “I’ll help if I can,” she tells it, and it crawls into her lap:
In “Shiny Thing,” it’s a dying man who’s in need of help. He rings Franklin and Lelia’s doorbell. Franklin wants to ignore him, but Lelia buzzes him in:
The man has a paper bag full of leaves that must be delivered to Allern Avenue. (Leaves? Yes, green leaves, which are “soft, like old paper, and so green and new [Lelia] feared they’d stain her fingers.”) Lelia is willing to help; Franklin isn’t. In this case, the tale does hew to fairytale tradition, and Franklin ends up regretting his decision.
Lest you get the sense that it’s only women who are compassionate in Russo’s stories, let me introduce you to Austin. In “Redemption,” Austin delivers three pizzas to an unpromising address, where he meets three women suffering from a macabre curse. He’s moved to try to lift the curse. To say it doesn’t go well would be an understatement. He loses everything, is on the street, is beaten up—but he’s as happy in his decision as Lelia was.
Even though Russo’s characters are loners, they do sometimes find their tribe. The narrator in “Hidden” never wanted to have children; she didn’t trust herself to be a successful parent. But when her husband—who buried his own desire for children for her sake—asks her to use her skills to find a missing child, she does, for his sake, and a family is born. In “Turning, or Turning,” Alberico yearns to turn into a “wet” person, like so many of the people around him. That change is denied him, but a different kind of turning opens the door to a different tribe. And, in “Frank, Stephanie, and Jimmy Popcorn,” the titular characters, who have come to the Endless Land to search for hope, recognize in one another’s unsmiling faces a kinship:
But over time, travel-kin can become family-kin:
The last line of “Frank, Stephanie, and Jimmy Popcorn”—which happens also to be the last line of the collection—describes the collection perfectly:
A postscript, because somehow I’ve managed to come to the end of the review without mentioning my favorite story. Do read “The Jaculi.” It reminds you to be thankful for grandmothers of any age or sex.… (mais)