Review by New York Times Review
"how could narrators so prodigal in their empathy originate in the brain of that withholder?" So muses the unnamed woman who speaks to us in Elizabeth Tallent's story "Narrator," which comes near the end of her enchanting new collection, "Mendocino Fire." That "withholder" is a famous writer, sprawled on the steps of the stairwell at a "welcome get-together" for students in the creative writing program at Berkeley, and she has just watched him be flamboyantly rude to two young female admirers. Having thought highly of his novels, the new student has imagined the great man must have a "radiance" and "generosity of spirit" that are clearly not on offer. She feels betrayed. But she has no idea how small and mean this famous writer will get, nor how quickly he will ensnare her in a sexual obsession that will reach its nadir when she steals a snapshot of his ex-girlfriend, a beautiful Chinese woman who rejected him. To keep it handy if she needs to make herself feel bad, she slips it into her copy of "Middlemarch." Since the famous writer isn't a fan of George Eliot, she convinces herself that "the immense sanity of 'Middlemarch' made it a safe haven for the stolen photograph. Whenever I went back to Eliot's novel, I imagined the magnanimous moral acuity with which the narrator would have illumined a theft like mine, bringing it into the embrace of the humanly forgivable while, at the same time - and how did Eliot manage this? - indicting its betrayal of the more honorable self that, in her narrator's eyes, I would possess." This offhand tribute to the genius of Eliot's narrative prowess, delivered by an unnamed character writing in her own defense, is a move of breathtaking boldness, inviting a comparison that risks being invidious. The narrator maintains that if George Eliot were telling her story, it would be a better one! I confess that I immediately took "Middlemarch" down from the shelf to see if I agreed. Then I went skimming back through Tallent's stories with a keener eye for her strategy. Of the 10 stories, eight have third-person narrators, and one, an academic tale entitled "Eros 101," is written in the form of a Q. and A. Although the narrators tend to stay close to one character, the subjects of the stories range widely, one might even say wildly, and they announce their concerns in the first sentence. "Tabriz," which details the breakdown of a marriage after the husband brings home a valuable rug he found in a rubbish heap, begins this way: "David Merson, heartsore in the way of old activists, a stooped, unkempt 48, leafs through his so-called love life for precedent and finds none." "Never Come Back," a hair-raising tale of a father's fixation with his son's girlfriend, opens with a straightforward statement of the case ("This was his life now, his real life, the thing he thought about most: His boy was in and out of trouble and he didn't know what to do") and ends with a tantalizing nonconclusion ("He knew enough not to go after them. He knew enough not to go after them yet"). The final story, "Briar Switch" - in which an estranged daughter, desperate to reach her dying father's bedside, manages to fly into an airport during a blizzard and rent a car - starts with a question and answer that toll like a death knell through the ordeal to come. "Sure you want to go out in that?" the rental agent asks. Frustrated by his slowness and deliberation, she insists, "I'm sure." Such examples demonstrate how immediately engaging these stories are. There's an overseeing, orchestrating voice, outside the characters but close enough to hear their thoughts. Though Northern California is often the locale, there's a lot of variety in socioeconomic status: It seems unlikely that these characters would ever get together in the same room, even by invitation. A fisherman, an eco-activist, a Virginia Woolf scholar, a refugee artist whose father was murdered by a firing squad, a mill worker, a young tree-sitter who has been living in a giant redwood for 143 days - all are presented from a vantage point both intimate and direct, with their courage and foibles and weaknesses intact. The startling perceptions that slip out in the urgency of a moment are dissected on the scene. When the youthful treesitter misses a step in her daily scramble from branch to branch, she realizes that "within the singularity of the fall, time can be observed, it seems, both backward and forward. In life, it's now clear, consciousness is always so pinned down, and time is so much bigger than that pinpoint known as I." Nate Dawe, the fisherman in "The Wrong Son," burdened by an overbearing father and his own collusion in illegal abalone excursions, goes out for some "hard fishing" on his father's boat, the Louise. "He was alone, leaning to toss a bucket of refuse, when a wave lolloped into the bow and the Louise shrugged him into the sea." Battling the deep troughs of water, Nate finds himself "for once wholly aligned with necessity, rejoicing in the clear, clear light of live or die." At a dinner party in "Eros 101," Clio, the Virginia Woolf scholar, recognizing that she's being heartily seduced by a new colleague who will soon be up for tenure, is momentarily blindsided by this aperçu: "Clio is 42 to the other's 20-something: fact. Fearful fact." Later in the story, when Clio fails to notice a diamond on her potential lover's ring finger, the reader is advised that since "she is only a character, much of her own story is lost on her." In "The Narrator," the young writer wonders how George Eliot managed to draw characters who are at once both pardonable and blameworthy. She has hopes that this prowess has something to do with a writer's "radiance" and "generosity of spirit." But the ability to create characters who force us to withhold judgment and leave us gasping at their absolute, solid reality isn't the result of any special kindness or goodness on the part of the author. The "magnanimous moral acuity" Tallent claims for Eliot is a condition of philosophical distance, hopeful yet fearful, the kind that arises in old marriages after many years of deep commitment and, above all, close attention. It's not affection or defensiveness that can blast a character into the reader's life. It's not pity or pity's upscale cousin, compassion. It's not even love. Beware of the writer who says, "I love all my characters." It's beyond love. It's knowledge. That's what George Eliot had and so, I'm pleased to report, does Elizabeth Tallent. It doesn't matter if she's a good person, or even a nice one. (I don't know her. I hope she's nice.) When a writer can tell a story as beautifully, as thoroughly and with as much knowledge as Elizabeth Tallent possesses, no one should care. VALERIE MARTIN'S most recent book is "Sea Lovers: Selected Stories."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 15, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
After decades of silence, Tallent returns with a collection of short stories paying beautiful tribute to love in its many forms and stages. From the lonely professor failing to live up to the expectation of her feminist peers to the newly divorced artist who grapples with disconnectedness until feeling a strong attraction to the wrong person, each story is imbued with deep and complex characters. Intensely explored, the protagonists, like the almost mythological Finn, who grows up around the bonfire and reaches adulthood in a tree, are forces to be reckoned with, but the strongest entities in these stories are the relationships themselves, be they of parent and child, professor and colleague, or a pair of lovers. The closing novella about the patriarch of a small-town family underscores the collection's greatest value with its attention to detail and honest exploration of the human psyche. Rich in description and awash in allegory, with its strong focus on characters and their emotional journeys, Tallent's newest collection will be a rewarding read for any short story lover.--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her fourth collection, Tallent (In Constant Flight) explores the spaces between people through 10 expertly crafted stories. Mostly set in California with forays into Iowa, the book features characters with strong ties to place, whether they're navigating the wilds of academia or of nature. This is perhaps most evident in the title story, whose protagonist seeks to protect California's wildlife by living in a 500-year-old tree. In "Tabriz," a man wonders if a rug he dug out of the trash catalyzed the unraveling of his marriage. "Eros 101," a sharp, affecting look at longing, academia, and office politics, reveals a woman struggling to reconcile intellect and emotion. And "Nobody You Know" subverts expectations of a narrative that seems at first to be about a lover's revenge. Taken as a whole, these stories examine love in its many forms, with the most successful probing the realm of romantic love, where Tallent addresses emotional conflicts with a refreshingly light touch. Tallent's collection offers a smart, thought-provoking study of desire and disappointment. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This collection of stories in the American realist tradition has an adventurous, untethered feeling, with wide-ranging locales and points of view. The first thing you notice about Tallent's first book in more than 20 years (Honey, 1993, etc.) is its breadth of subject matter. Set on university campuses, in the hardscrabble backwoods, or among much-divorced families, these stories feature emotionally wrenching situations and dramatic landscapes. Tallent probes different points of viewa young man struggling with his dad in a working-class California fishing community; an academic having an erotic encounter with her female student; an aging activist dealing with his multiple-ex-wives problem. These stories explore different genders, sexualities, and settings with skill and subtle intelligence. Next you notice Tallent's, er, talent as a prose stylistshe writes in long sentences pulsing with images and insights. In a story about a woman painfully and suddenly divorced, Tallent describes the woman's thoughts when scrutinizing a photograph of her husband's lover: "The mouth is done in a lipstick of a crude, carnal, trashy red, a third-world mouth, a Cuban mouth, and Ximena can't help wondering if the lover feels the need to mitigate her whiteness, if the ethnification of her mouth is owed to competitiveness with Ximena, about whom [her husband] must tell stories...." Or an academic observing her student, for whom she's developed an overwhelming attraction: "Under Clio's hot gaze the knot of passionate hair at the Beloved's nape, screwed so tight in its coil, releases red-gold strands flaring with electricity." Tallent's assured voice is a pleasure to follow through this book. Occasionally, she tries to cover too much ground within one story, and the reader loses the thread, as confusing gaps of time occur and important characters recede. But mostly, Tallent is in control as she navigates her shifting landscapes. An ambitious and wide-ranging set of stories that creates empathy for most of its characters due to Tallent's generous imagination. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
