Customer Reviews

Family Terrorists

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In "Family Terrorists," her third collection of short fiction, Antonya Nelson proves that her title, though apt, is by no means an oxymoron. The eponymous terrorists wreak mundane, unsensationalistic havoc (except in the eerily timely "The Written Word" where a little brother's prank diverts a jet and thwarts a longed-for escape.) These provocative acts include invitations to family occasions, ("Family Terrorists") giving birth, ("Dirty Words") uninvited help, ("Crybaby") or simply imparting unwanted knowledge, ("Loaded Gun"). Nelson seeds her prose with trenchant observation: "Her mother refused to understand tone, as if she were reading conversations instead of having them." "Bette's problem was that she merely missed drinking, like a hilarious friend who had moved away..." The stories unsettle by exposing the ironies inherent in our complacency. In "Naked Ladies" a painter divines his wife's infidelity from an array of ineptly rendered nudes. A woman sees how truly precarious her happiness is ("The Ocean"). A wife finally freed from her husband's obsessive ex-girlfriend misses being stalked ("Her Secret Life"). Antonya Nelson's gifts--deft characterization, gentle humor, supple language--entice us to marvel at the permutations of intimate sabotage.

I thought these stories would have more of an edge. They don't really have a universal voice, the experiences set forth seem individually oriented and isolated, not particularly intuitive or wise. Her writing skill is good enough, the stories just did not strike me as anything remarkable, though.
Julie Blattenbauer Seattle

Desparate people hiding behind normal lives populate Nelson's seven stories and a novella. Although her eye for details makes the stories vivid, false notes too often ruin her work. In "The Ocean", a terrified housewife hides in the bathroom with her baby while a robber, real or imagined, prowls the house. A terrific premise, but we never believe the central conceit---that a robber sees someone inside a house, but still breaks in during broad daylight? And why doesn't the thought of calling '911' even cross the woman's mind? Similary, in "The Written Word", a brother decides to kidnap his half-sister and use the ransom to get back to his real father. An engaging idea, but how the brother came up with this twisted scheme is never satisfactorily explored. Other bizzare relationships will rouse reader's interests: a woman has an affair with her stepson; a man dates his brother's ex. But the stories never get beyond the purely sensationalistic.

The Written Word, one of the stories in this collection, is one of my favorite short stories ever. I'd say it's about being a young kid in a family with real if ill-defined problems, and coming up with the sort of solution only a young imaginative kid would. His reaction to some pictures his mother hid feels so right and yet is very funny. These stories have heart. Dirty Words was another story that jumped out at me; I loved the Marxist coffeehouse line. But don't worry, I won't give any of the best moments away.