The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund
My rating: 4/5 cats
it’s worth keeping in mind that this book by the author of After the Parade is actually a reissue of her debut short story collection originally published in 2009, whose stories appeared individually in publications as early as 2006. not that this collection is weak compared to a.t.p. – in fact it’s damn good. but you can see all the bits and pieces that make After the Parade SO GOOD being germinated here: like a.t.p., its locations include new mexico, minnesota, and san francisco, and the recurring themes are teaching (esp els), same-sex relationships (although in this collection they are usually between women), characters who are at specific crossroads in their lives, and childhood experiences re-evaluated through adult eyes. these are all splendid and complete standalone stories, but you can see how the ideas and observations driving these stories “grew up” into the longer and beautifully polished full novel.
the stories are beautiful, lonely, sad – stories about couples growing apart, about characters who are emotionally reserved but harbor deep unexpressed feelings, academics more comfortable with intelligence than emotions, people removed from their familiar surroundings on vacations or working abroad whose relationships are tested in exotic locales.
it’s a really strong collection full of (mostly) likably pompous characters with linguistic tics and scrupulous manners who suffer transgressions of personal space deeply and are more likely to be left than to be the leaver. i liked nearly every story, and as much as i hate reviewing short story collections, i’m going to try, because i really enjoyed this collection, and maybe that enthusiasm will come through and encourage someone else to check it out.
The Bigness of the World
We were not used to adults who cried freely or openly, for this was Minnesota, where people guarded their emotions, a tradition in which Martin and I had been well-schooled.
this is all beautiful clean prose with perfect character development revealed through small side stories like that of the bread mold and the mother’s weight watchers story <—— oh my god. and ilsa, a character i would ordinarily dislike for her stilted grammatical precision is totally redeemed through her bizarre perception of math. it’s a very unexpected story that veers way off-course from anything i could have predicted. in a good way.
Bed Death
“with love…there is the snake who devours, and there is the one who cooperates by placing his head inside the snake’s mouth.”
this is the only story i wasn’t crazy about. it’s a theme that appears in other stories in the collection more successfully than it does here, methinks, but her writing is so good, it’s never a bad story; just one i liked less than others.
Talking Fowl with My Father
Of course, he has numerous reasons for not liking turkey, first among them being that he likes beef. And while this might not seem like a reason, it is what my father tells me whenever I ask him why he doesn’t like turkey.
“Because I like beef,” he says.
“It’s not an either/or question,” I say. “It’s like salt and pepper. You can like both of them. Now, if turkey and beef are sitting in a room alone and someone says that you can pick only one thing from the room, okay. Then, it’s true – you can have turkey or you can have beef. But this isn’t like that. ” Geraldine and I just spent our tenth anniversary in Greece, two blissful weeks walking where Plato and Socrates once walked, both of us nearly in tears at the thought of it, and here I am, one month later, having this conversation.
ugh, family. this is such a quietly sad, true, tender story with so much bubbling underneath it. love it. fantastic descriptions and you really feel the combination of love and frustration that runs through every family everywhere. it’s a hug and a shinkick.
The Day You Were Born
another sharp, painful story of childhood innocence and experience with a perfect closing line that’ll make your heart itch. all love and manners and silent suffering because of love and manners – it’s one of those stories that makes you remember, “oh yeah, that’s what it was like to be a little kid. it was horrible”
Nobody Walks to the Mennonites
i don’t think this is the most successful story in the collection, in terms of a clear idea developed through the short story format, but it contains so many fine details about shame and embarrassment and the kind of social awkwardness that makes you freeze up like a bunny to avoid further embarrassment for yourself or others and an overeliance on presentation and manners that are culturally-specific and don’t translate over into a vacation-setting and only cause further discomfort. i didn’t really “get” this story as a whole, but i’m probably just missing something and i definitely enjoyed each discrete episode on the journey.
Upon Completion of Baldness
I will admit that her use of whom left me undone, even with that preposition dangling unattractively at the end, but then I’m afraid that I’ve always been attracted to such things, the ability to differentiate between subject and object forms, a refusal to use if when the situation requires whether
gotta love a relationship that blossoms because of grammatical usage and a passionate argument in which stanley fish is invoked. not a narrator to fall in love with, but she’s utterly human – quick to defuse a bigoted student prank, but slow to fix or even address the problems in her personal life.
And Down We Went
He bent down and picked up a cognac, which he handed to me. “To the asshole birds that shit on us,” he said cheerfully, waving his glass in the air as the others joined in.
a story told in three bird poops. ’nuff said.
Idyllic Little Bali
this is like a perfect little short story. it’s funny and sad and ominous with an ensemble cast of slice-of-life characters whose misperceptions and secret lives are buried under lively holiday cheer as they are thrown together in proximity-friendships and experience their separate motivations, judgments, and fears as well as a collective shock.
Dr. Daneau’s Punishment
a sinister-ish and unpleasantly pedantic narrator lends this story a tense “eek, what’s going to happen next??” feeling of tension, but it’s still very very funny. horrible/funny, but funny nonetheless.
The Children Beneath the Seat
this story reinforced my commitment to never travel anywhere ever. i have read plenty of disgusting imagery in my day, but this story was a triumph of repulsion. and i LOVED it. i spoilered it for those of you who are sensitive to descriptions of what happens to motion-sick people on a bus.
View Spoiler »All Boy
this story brings the collection full-circle. in the first story, a babysitter is fired for using the father’s toothbrush. in this story one is fired for wearing the father’s socks. there’s plenty of germ-squeamishness in other stories – a waitress drinking from a customer’s glass before serving, the disgust over bits of leftover food being repurposed in the next day’s meal, etc., but this story has the same general shape as the first one – a child (or children) being exposed to the secret lives of their parents, the idiosyncrasies of their minders and the sudden irreversible changes in the bigness of the world.
it’s a fantastic collection. read it, read After the Parade, and wait impatiently for whatever she writes next.
