Mid-air Two novellas

Victoria Shorr

Book - 2022

"Fate explored in the fall and rise of two twentieth-century American families. Victoria Shorr's remarkable gift for depicting the inner lives of complex characters shines in two powerful explorations of family, ambition, class, and status. In "Great Uncle Edward," a family gathers for dinner. At 93, Great Uncle Edward commands the table in his three-piece suit; Cousin Russell attended both Harvard and Yale but is now reduced to selling off the family books; sisters Betty and Molly are caught between ghosts of a storied past and creeping destitution. These lives are signposts along the downward spiral of an old aristocracy. "Cleveland Auto Wrecking" introduces Sam White, an immigrant from somewhere in eastern E...urope. He cannot read, but has a gift for math and an instinct for the value of junk. We follow his clan through the Depression to the postwar boom in the West, where their fortunes soar, creating new tests of loyalty"--

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Subjects
Genres
novellas
Novellas
Published
New York : W.W. Norton & Company [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Victoria Shorr (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
1 volume ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780393882100
  • Great Uncle Edward
  • Cleveland auto wrecking.
Review by Booklist Review

Two families reflect the yin and yang of the American dream, their ascendancy and decline writ large in minute details in paired tales. In "Great Uncle Edward," the company of a patrician, old-school gentleman delights a young bride recently married into the family. Dinner parties at once fashionable, still respectable restaurants give the extended clan reason to gather, their reduced circumstances glossed over as they ponder glory days spent swanning along Fifth Avenue. The White family of "Cleveland Auto Wrecking" has no such renown to protect or defend. Sam White is a master of math and commerce, seeing riches in others' trash. He first builds an empire out of the plentiful scrap metal discards in working-class Youngstown, Ohio, then relocates to the undeveloped desert east of Los Angeles, where rocks and rubble conjure condos and golf courses. In style and substance, Shorr summons the works of Anne Tyler as she rejoices in her characters' day-to-day experiences, dropping pearls of insight into crystalline vignettes. Her characters are more recognizable than remote, their struggles more mundane than mighty, evoking sympathy while challenging assumptions. The novella format can be a thorny one to embrace, either too short or too long. In Shorr's hands, it is just right.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Shorr proves herself a literary mimic of the first order with these two pitch-perfect stories. The first, "Great Uncle Edward" is an Auchincloss-like examination of old money New York in the late 1970s. The unnamed narrator holds a dinner party for her husband's 93-year-old great-uncle, Edward. Dinner conversation ranges over the family's history, and names of family acquaintances are dropped, from George Washington and Toussaint Louverture to Edith "Pussy" Wharton and Ved Mehta. Along the way, there are hints that their WASPy way of life will soon be obsolete. In the second, "Cleveland Auto Wrecking," Sam White is an Eastern European immigrant who arrives at 13 at Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century and ends up living in Youngstown, Ohio, where he marries, fathers three sons, and, after years of struggle, does well in the scrap metal business. Sam begins parlaying his scrap metal success into Southern California real estate ventures, which ultimately make the Whites' fortune. But when one son dates a woman above his class, it causes friction inside the family. The author cleverly juxtaposes how one aspect of American society falls as another rises, and both novellas have a novellike density of detail and depth of characterization. Together, they offer rich rewards. (May)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

One family finds its fortunes on the rise just as another sees its own begin to fall. The two novellas that make up Shorr's lovely new book describe the falling, in one, and, in the other, the rising fortunes of two American families. In the first piece, a young couple hosts a dinner party for a few remaining members of the husband's WASPy family: Uncle Edward, now in his 90s, who still wears a three-piece suit every day; Cousin Betty, who once read all of Proust while pursuing a divorce; Russell, whose father staked the family's security on a biography he was writing--a definitive one--of Benjamin Franklin only to lose, at the last minute, the only manuscript; etc. In the second piece, Sam White arrives at Ellis Island from what might have been Poland, or Ukraine--somewhere in Eastern Europe, anyway--to a newly anglicized name as well as a new life. Eventually, he acquires a wife, three sons, and an auto wrecking yard in Ohio, and the family's mobility is rapidly ascendant. In both pieces, Shorr takes the long view, describing years--decades, sometimes--within a single paragraph. In the first piece, this strategy works well. The dinner party provides the perfect framing device for the narrator to shift her gaze from guest to guest. Shorr's prose is fluid and supple, and the story has a lively movement. The second piece, however, about the White family, becomes bogged down in places. This story is longer and includes more characters and a longer span of time, and though Shorr uses the same quickly moving narrative strategy, it doesn't work quite as well as it did the first time. Still, her insights are so keen, and her storytelling so elegant and natural, it would be easy to follow her down just about any train of thought. With its neat corners and tidily resolved patterns, this book is a quiet accomplishment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.