Customer Reviews

The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If I had not read Catherine Wald's The Resilient Writer: Tales of Rejection and Triumph by 23 Top Authors, I would not have found this interesting author. This is a collection of short stories that frequently lifts the reader off the page and into flights of imagination. It is not type of the writing I usually seek out. Typically I spend a lot of time with language heavy literary writing and nonfiction works. To my surprise, I was immediately intrigued by Lott's unique style after finishing the first story, "Family."

I liked "Everything Cut Will Come Back," for how accurately it demonstrated the difficulty men have communicating their feelings to each other. Lott's blending of grounded reality and flights of fancy caught me off guard, but as soon as I let go of preconceived expectations, I was able to find much to admire. By the time I read "Appraisal," the story of a woman drowning in financial problems, I found myself missing the author's fanciful flights of unreality. Lott's stories focus on compassion, gratefulness and how important love is in our lives. These stories teach in much the same way traditional fables do. In some, the oversize metaphors required me to read the piece more than once. Tackling the kinds of relational issues that bring people into therapy is a daunting task, so I liked reading a totally original approach. The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories offers refreshing, light and entertaining reading where thought provoking ideas await discovery.

Bret Lott's short fiction seems to be one of the great, accidental secrets of today's literary scene. Borges, Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver--I have to go back to the Dead Greats to find someone to compare him with. Lott's stories are thumbnail sketches of heartbreak and tragicomedy, and each is written straight from the gut. Like Carver, Lott has mastered the craft of narrative minimalism, and his 3 collections put to shame most of the modern novels I read. In this book Lott makes a welcome addition to his bag of tricks, giving us a handful of superb magical realism tales. So I dare you: pick this up, read maybe "The Family" or the very short "A Part of It," and then try--just try!--to tear yourself away from the book.

The title is misleading, as this collection of stories are varied, like his earlier collections, A DREAM OF OLD LEAVES and HOW TO GET HOME. As he sees it, the difference between men and women is that they just don't think the same. Here we have a man and wife who had been married for 27 years and one chance remark in the car caused her to make a drastic change in the living quarters, to his abject uncaring or help. She goes on a rampage of moving furniture around in their bedroom. Me, I always chose the living room for those nights when I couldn't sleep to rearrange. But this wife is rearranging their lives, not just the room, separating his things from her things. In an article in November, 2005, 'Fitness' magazine, we are told how to manage emotions in times of stress as you 'agree to disagree.'

First, as the wife in the short story did, you must establish boundaries and find a creative solution which includes your needs and wants as well. You're not gong to learn much by sticking to what you already know, or do things because they've always been done that way. It's best to prune hour own behavior a little, as you enrich your life by trying things you do imperfectly. Me, I was sometimes driven to throw things which break. There's a reason why men before 1957 were violent and moody' they hadn't seen 'Old Yeller' yet! Everyone cries; today's news has a "tearful congressman who quits over two million dollars he received in bribes." He cried because he got caught. There is little ethics in politics.

This short story concerning how the small wife moved the large, heavy armoire which held her recalcitrant husband's belongings is just one of fifteen short anecdotes. We learn from each other by repeating what the person said, to zero in on their feelings. Other stories were 'Gesture,' 'The Issue of Money,' 'Somebody Else,' 'A Part of It,' and 'Appraisal.' Bret Lott is an English professor at LSU, has written two non-fiction books previously and six novels. I found most of this collection melancholy. Perhaps he is going through mid-life crises. One thing for sure, we all get through it whether man or woman. That's something we share, a difficult process.