28 Aug 2013 04:04:41
It's not just that her latest collection, Search Party, features a number of characters in transition themselves (a mother with cancer on her way to Lourdes, a sister attending her sister's memorial service, a former cop working as a security guard in a school … ) It's that her stories are so engrossing, so beautifully written, so complete without being long, that you can pick one up, briefly lose yourself in it and then get back to packing up the summer house, or dealing with the school supply list.The best short story writers are able to master the format the way chefs can make a memorable, textured dish out of two or three ingredients. Trueblood is a master of this kind. Her prose is at once sparse and poetic:My husband, with his inborn, unfailing sense of the thing to say to a person in chemo with tufts of her former self in her hands, says irritably, 'What's so funny all the time?'Trueblood finds a lot of life funny. Her sense of humor is a delicate tool though. She uses it subtly, through the saddest of events. For example, here at the funeral of a firefighter who kept llamas:The eyes of the llamas were glazed and gentle. But the heads were poised atop those haughty necks. A face came vaguely to mind, someone looking around with a sad hauteur. Who? An actor. Somebody gay.The 13 stories are mostly told in the third person, but each from the point of view of the main character. There's variety in these characters but Trueblood is able to get right inside their heads and bring them to life. These are psychologically complex, disturbing or disturbed people. In the story, Who is He That Will Harm You, she writes from the perspective of a young medical student who is assaulted and seriously injured by her boyfriend. This story – like many of the others – takes a life-changing event, describes it in detail and then looks at it from far off into the future. It's a brilliant use of a short format.Search Party is a collection of Stories of Rescue, which means that first there has to be loss. Loss changes its meaning throughout these tales, as does rescue. Loss is often described from a child's vantage point and often the children in this collection are forced to behave preternaturally as adults while the real adults are irresponsible and child-like. In The Blue Grotto, for example, a young babysitter, Capri, named by a mother who longs to travel, has to take care of two children, one of whom becomes dangerously ill.If you need a distraction from your own life as you head into autumn, buy this book. The stories don't take long to read, but they linger long after you've finished them – in the way you hope the summer might.Best memoir: Run, Brother, Run: A Memoir of a Murder in My Family by David BergBest psychological thriller: The Silent Wife by ASA HarrisonBest beach book: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin KwanBest book to share: Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David RakoffBest non-fiction: Difficult Men by Brett MartinBest book for a long flight: Sisterland by Curtis SittenfeldBest book for a staycation: The Good Life Lab by Wendy TremayneBest murder mystery: Crime of Privilege by Walter Walker
