The State We're In by Ann Beattie

Published by Scribner on August 11, 2015

The stories in The State We're In are snapshots of women at different stages of life. Nearly all of the action takes place in New England (mostly in Maine) although some memories and peripheral events occur in California and New York. Several of the stories are linked by characters or events. Each can be read without reference to any other story, but reading them together gives them additional weight.

Some stories are about young girls who are unraveling the mysteries of life. The first entry delves into the mind of Jocelyn, a high school student who can't quite wrap her mind around the future, isn't terribly engaged with the present, and doesn't know what to make of magical realism. "What Magical Realism Would Be" is one of my favorites in the collection. Jocelyn is still wondering about magical realism in "Endless Rain into a Paper Cup" but the perspective shifts to third person and the story -- more eventful than the first -- broadens to include her ill mother, the kindly uncle and batty aunt who are taking care of her, and a friend who tried who commit suicide. Jocelyn also narrates the last story, "The Repurposed Barn." She still can't pull a "B" on her English essays (punctuation puzzles her) and her aunt is upset that Jocelyn's mother, freshly out of the hospital, is dating a recovering addict, but Jocelyn has an epiphany that helps her make a connection between life and literature while she watches Elvis lamps being sold at an auction.

Other portraits of youth involve a girl who ponders what to do about a baby bird that fell from its nest ("The Fledgling") and a girl who learns that life is "a rocky road to death" from an aunt who attends Gatsby-like parties and wears the wire baskets that hold champagne corks in place under her bra to enhance her nipples ("Aunt Sophie Renaldo Brown").

Two of my favorites deal with older women. In "Yancey," a 77-year-old poet discusses poetry, her annoying family, and her aging dog with an IRS agent. The 74-year-old writer in "Missed Calls" has a gossipy lunch with a young writer who interviews her about her brief encounters with Truman Capote, but the woman's glimpse of the young man's anguish over his goddaughter's odd behavior provides the story's drama, showcasing the difference between a woman starting adulthood and a woman nearing the end of hers.

The narrator of "Duff's Done Enough" is an author who explains the pinprick of inspiration after her landlady, a woman of 74, introduces her to a story-filled neighbor of 82 who just changed his name from Chip to Duff. The narrator of "Elvis Ahead of Us" ponders the life of the neighbor who moved away after putting his house on the market, leaving behind his collection of ... you guessed it ... Elvis lamps.

Some stories are about the power of memories. A woman reflects upon the summer she turned 21, finding symbolism in a pair of deliberately overturned Adirondack chairs ("Adirondack Chairs"). Another woman looks back at a summer in her younger life and the casual friendship she had with her male roommate ("Major Maybe").

"Silent Prayer," a sweet story told in the third person, is largely a coded conversation between a husband and wife -- the kind married couples have that only make sense to them. Another strong story, consisting almost entirely of dialog, is a bedroom conversation by aging parents who are glad that their children do not visit too often ("The Stroke").

Rounding out the collection are two stories that felt less substantial. In "Road Movie," a woman who checks into a motel with a man who is cheating on his girlfriend can't get the man to talk about their relationship and, on the telephone, can't get her mother to stop talking about it. "The Little Hutchinsons" introduces a woman who feels guilt when her refusal to do an odd favor for a friend has unintended consequences.

None of these stories are duds and the best of them are masterful. Exquisite prose and startling observations make the entire collection worth reading.

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Barefoot Dogs by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

Published by Scribner on March 10, 2015

The linked stories in Barefoot Dogs provide a different perspective on immigration. Many of the characters left Mexico to escape the country's problems, but they are not the impoverished workers sneaking over the border who dominate the news. Rather, the characters were doing well in Mexico -- some family members brought their servants with them when they came to the United States -- and they miss the relatives and friends and culture they left behind.

Having emigrated, the characters are generally not doing well. "Deer" is about two Mexican women who work at a McDonald's in Austin -- or they would be working, but for the bear that wandered in at breakfast time and began eating all the McMuffins. The woman narrating the story fears losing her job (and her ability to send money home to support her children) more than she fears the bear.

Two stories in the collection are excellent. "Origami Prunes" tells of two displaced Mexicans who begin an affair in an Austin laundromat. It is a story about the desire to escape, the pain of escaping, and the impossibility of escaping the past or the forward movement of time. Confrontation (or not) of fear and anxiety, by both children and adults, is the theme of "Okie." Bernardo feels isolated and out-of-place in his new home in California, but leaving Mexico was the only choice his parents could make.

The title story provides the connecting thread. It tells of Mexicans, now living in crowded quarters in Madrid, who moved after body parts of a kidnapping victim kept arriving in the mail. The narrator is challenged by caring for a baby and a vomiting dog in a strange land. Other stories also involve or touch upon the kidnapping, including one in which a woman needs to explain (or avoids explaining) to her son why her father has been absent for weeks. Another, "It Will Be Awesome Before Spring," is sort of a crime story, or a potential crime story, or a fear of crime story, told by a young woman who anticipates a visit to Italy without realizing that Mexico is no longer a place she can live. Much of the story is told with a curious detachment that causes it to lose its punch when it finally works its way around to a dramatic moment.

Some stories experiment with form, but not in a way that makes them inaccessible. One story, told entirely in dialog between a brother and sister staying in a shabby New York apartment, didn't work for me at all. Another story is a large block of text with no paragraphs. One is interrupted by single lines with phrases like WOW and WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME. One that I didn't particularly like is written from the perspective of a ghost. A key sequence in the title story might be a dream, but that isn't clear.

While the stories in Barefoot Dogs are uneven, they join together to form a larger story that exceeds the sum of its parts. The collection is worth reading for that reason, and for the unusual perspective it provides on expatriate Mexican life.

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Justice Done by Jan Burke

Published digitally by Pocket Star on September 15, 2014

Justice Done is the fifth of six short collections of Jan Burke's crime stories. Although the collection is uneven, the stories are representative of Burke's unusual and engaging approach to crime fiction.

Boniface "Bunny" Slye, a shell-shocked veteran of the First World War, stars in "The Quarry," a murder mystery narrated by his friend Dr. Max Tyndale. They are sort of a Holmes/Watson duo who are featured in other stories by Burke. The story is reasonably entertaining although it goes on a bit too long.

A party on the Queen Mary provides the setting for "Miscalculation." A nerdy girl named Sarah confronts the mystery of a death that occurred two generations earlier, when the Queen Mary was used as a troop carrier during World War II. The story is unconvincing and its ending is disappointingly uneventful.

"Two Bits" is a quiet story of a boy who was kidnapped while his brother roamed through a store in a strange town with the shiny new quarter the kidnappers gave him. Not a conventional crime story, "Two Bits" is an affecting examination of the crime's impact on the brother who was duped.

Written from the perspective of a man living in horse-and-carriage days, "An Unsuspected Condition of the Heart" tells of a man who married for money, whose in-laws openly plot each other's murders, and whose new wife finds herself in an unhappy situation. The story fits within the book's title and reveals the charm with which Burke often writes.

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Mystery, Inc. by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by MysteriousPress.com on April 7, 2015

"Mystery, Inc." is Joyce Carol Oates' contribution to the Bibliomysteries series from Mysterious Press. Each short story is the creation of a crime writer. The stories are blurbed as "short tales about deadly books" but they more broadly address deadly authors, deadly bookstores, deadly libraries, and other deadly aspects of the literary world.

The owner of several mystery bookstores would love to acquire Mystery, Inc. in Seabrook, New Hampshire, the finest example of a mystery bookstore he has ever seen. To obtain the store at a good price, however, the current owner will have to die. How unfortunate.

"Mystery Inc." is as much an homage to mystery bookstores and mystery booksellers as it is a mystery story. Atmosphere is everything in a narrative that takes us for a loving stroll past cabinets filled with first editions of Poe and Doyle, pulp magazines filled with Hammett and Chandler, and a variety of art and memorabilia relating to death and crime.

Oates also delves into the philosophy of the mystery story and its relationship to the mystery of life. Mystery books, a character opines, allow us to see the many mysteries of life more clearly, from perspectives that are not our own.

Of course, a reader expects to encounter murderous perspectives in a murder mystery. Oates does not disappoint; the bookstore has a dark history. And of course, good mysteries deliver plot twists. Oates does that, and if the twist is not unexpected, it is nevertheless satisfying. "Mystery Inc." lacks the depth of Oates' best work but her stories never fail to entertain.

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Get in Trouble by Kelly Link

Published by Random House on February 3, 2015

There's something a little out of whack about the worlds in which Kelly Link's characters live. Babies are born without shadows or with an extra shadow. Superheroes have useless powers like the ability to know the correct time without looking at a clock. Strangeness is the background but never the focus of Link's stories. Well, almost never. Instead, Link's characters are strange in perfectly normal ways. They are motivated by the same jealousies and insecurities and resentments as people who live in more familiar environments.

The genre-bending stories collected in Get in Trouble are wildly inventive. They are invariably witty. Link's economical language has deeper meaning than is apparent on the surface although some observations, like telling us there is there is "a fine line between being cuddled and squeezed like a juice box," are just funny.

"When he wasn't getting right with God, Fran's daddy got up to all kinds of trouble." Fran has her own trouble as she carries on the family tradition of serving "The Summer People," my favorite story in the collection.

Lame superheroes lurk in the background of two stories. In "Secret Identity," the author of a letter to someone she met in an online game tries to explain why she is not the person she appears to be. The story's moral is that you can learn a lot about yourself by pretending to be someone else, but you can learn even more by being yourself. "Origin Story" is apparently set in the same universe as "Secret Identity," but I found "Origin Story to be less appealing.

Ghosts provide the theme for two stories. "Two Houses" is a ghost story about astronauts on a spaceship who tell ghost stories. "I Can See Right Through You" is about the lives of two actors who once kissed in a popular vampire movie. The kiss, portending a real-life relationship, is the male actor's defining moment -- unless you count the sex tape or a version of Ghost Hunters that searches for a lost nudist colony. This is my second favorite, thanks to a neat twist at the end that forces the reader to reinterpret much of what has gone before.

Is it better to have something that is perfect but fake or imperfect but real? A girl in "The New Boyfriend" gets a fake boyfriend for her birthday -- a ghost vampire boyfriend that has been recalled by the manufacturer. But what happens when her friend falls in love with her fake boyfriend? Just like having a fake identity can help you learn about yourself, it seems that having a fake boyfriend can help you learn about real relationships.

Mummies, pyramids, pool parties, Raves on the moon, and Faces programmed to replace children so parents can avoid public embarrassment all appear in "Valley of the Girls," a tragic love story that might be a futuristic version of Romeo & Juliet if Shakespeare had been dropping acid. Even stranger is the background of "Light" -- pocket universes, warehouses full of sleeping people -- a domestic drama about a woman, her missing husband, and her gay brother. "Light" is my least favorite in the collection, primarily because I don't know what to make of it, but none of the entries in this odd collection of light-but-serious fantasy stories are bad.

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