Customer Reviews

Heavier Than Air (Awp Award Series in Short Fiction)

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Reading Nona Caspers is more than simply exploring the world of one writer's view of the world from the vantage of raw countryside of Minnesota. Reading Nona Caspers is a discovery of a writer with particularly well-honed gifts of creating unforgettable characters who become etched on our minds in the same way the great American writers of the past (and present) have entered our perception of what this country is all about. Caspers writes with a fluid style that wastes no words but describes nature and those animals that fly, crawl and walk this strange territory of rural Minnesota - and the rest of this country - in both harmony and dissonance. She manages to enter realms of thought and situations other writers avoid, and from these peculiar places she creates characters both strange and sad, some who border on decisions edging on ostracism and some who have already entered a plane misunderstood by friends and family.

The lead story, 'Country Girls', is one of the more realistic examinations of a young girl's discovery of same sex love with all the peripheral highs and lows that confrontation presents. In 'Wide Like An Eagle's Wings' we meet a young girl obsessed with the JFK campaign for presidency while coping with the a deeply moving, succinct account of a personal tragedy of death. Characters such as the sad Mr. Hellerman who is hospitalized as one unable to cope with the dwindling losses of his family land inheritance and hopeless future of his farm mix with other children and stunted adults who face changes in their lives that seem to force them into precarious places.

Not a book of sad or dreary tales, this, but one that is unafraid to make us think about the weightier subjects of life while entertaining us with some equally finely tuned comedy. Nona Caspers is a brilliant writer who has found the fabric of American fiction that she drapes and sculpts and molds as well as any of her fine colleagues whose names are household words. Reading HEAVIER THAN AIR is a tasty prelude to what is most assuredly going to be a fine career for a gifted writer. Very Highly Recommended! Grady Harp, June 08

Read this collection! These stories rich and deeply satisfying and moving--I read straight through and then read some of the stories again (Country Girls, The Fifth Season, Wide Like an Eagle's Wings). This book is for everyone who loves stories and great characters!

We rarely experience rural people with such complexity and compassion--a farmer, Mr. Lawrence Hellerman--you'll LOVE him and the way he looks at the world as he's trying to recover from a breakdown in a hospital. And the girl who collects cow bones and falls in love with a farm girl, and the woman who invites her mother to visit her in San Francisco after a break up with her girlfriend and then loses the mother in the park. You will love these people and you will witness the generosity of great writing. The San Francisco Chronicle said the stories rev up Willa Cather's lesbian undertones with Denis Jonson's (Jesus Son) deadpan plains rowdiness" -- and that the artistry rewards rereading: "simplicity this precise takes time, talent and considerable cultivation." And it was on the Editor's Choice list (underneath the Bestsellers Feb. 25 2007) in the New York Times Book Review! BUY THE BOOK OR GO TO THE LIBRARY-- BUT READ IT.

Nona Caspers' writing is full and lush and ethereal. The characters come alive and yet simultaneously exist in some sort of magical world. Each story is so full of feeling and emotion and beauty. I only put this book down to make it last longer. Loved it.

I loved this book. Caspers captures the essence of growing up in a rural setting where the spaciousness warps time and the boredom becomes mind expanding; riding the border between neglect and freeedom. Her prose is witty and intelligent, but yet humble and downright home cooked. A triumph of mind and spirit...Cheers!

This book reminds me of Dorothy Parker. She wrote of New York. Caspers writes of the Midwest. This is real classic writing. As a lover of all things classic like Sinclare Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald and their stories of the part of the country they knew, Nona Caspers is a writer of the Midwest and its unique culture and people. They are real and funny and warm. Caspers goes deep and looks at things as they really are.

Put this wonderful book on your night stand. Read it and enjoy it. You'll treasure it.

Highly recommended.

-Susanna K. Hutcheson

Nona Caspers writes wonderfully, lulling you into an almost dream state when reading her short stories. Her characters, the atmospheres, and the situations draw you in immediately, and don't let go until you have read the last word. In reading these stories I felt immediately transported into the world's of these stories, feeling the anguish, and the longing many of these characters felt. Amazing reading, this will be a book that is difficult to put down, you will want to drink in every word of this book in one sitting.

(Note: Nearly a hundred of my fiction reviews by great literary artists and others not so well known are now available in my book, "Novels and other Fictions." Get it at Amazon.)

What a pleasure it is to read an artist's prose after all the politicos and journalists and scientists I have been reading lately. Not to denigrate them, but Nona Caspers is an artist with words, a person of exacting craft who composes bittersweet tales of life and love filled with yearnings and disappointments and triumphs and little parcels of hope. Caspers writes about the people of Wisconsin and Minnesota, farm people, people who milk cows and harvest alfalfa: country girls and mangy dogs. And she writes about people who have escaped from the farm. She writes about an unspeakable desire burning in the heart and an angst like something unclear, like something lost or not yet found, and love like joy and something exquisitely indefinable that stays and stays. And then is lost.

She writes of girls and vulnerable men, taciturn fathers or ineloquent husbands; deeply introspective and emotionally fragile girls and strong farm women with sturdy bones and a susceptibility to society's inexorable ways. She loves the girls, and the girls typically love other girls they cannot quite reach or keep. And they marry young and wonder if they did the right thing.

Her prose is infused with the lay of the land and the smell of the soil and the cows and the dogs and the trees and the breath of someone close, so close your heart bleeds. She manages a natural tension that moves the stories to a climax and leaves the reader with a lingering aftermath.

In the first story, "Country Girls," 14-year-old Nora "was so forwardly in love, so passionately in love, so unabashedly in love, so presumptuously in love, so selfishly in love, so innocently in love" with Cynthia that the very weight of her love offended the rural community and in consequence killed her love. In the second story, "Wide Like an Eagle's Wings," Manny is the secretary of the JFK campaign at Saint Theresa" Elementary School. It's 1960. She lives and breathes everything John F. Kennedy; and through him she finds oneness and a sense of social responsibility even though a child. And then comes a tragedy that we know will change her forever. In the title story, it is the devil who weights us down and makes us "heavier than air" so that we can't float up to heaven, or so one of her characters in part believes.

One of my favorites is "The EE Cry" formerly called "Fat" which I think is a better title. It is about a man whose wife Jan leaves him, not because he is fat (although he is) but because she has found that she is who she is, and that she has fallen in love with another person, and that person is a woman. She returns to get a rug she left. She tells him, "...I'm short on money. I thought it can't hurt to ask." "Does," he says. And then adds, "Does hurt, Jan. Hurts all the damn time." And with this simplicity of expression we can feel his pain.

The triumph of Caspers' art comes from her mastery of craft in which every word is carefully selected and everything extraneous to the desired effect deleted. She has the kind of narrative control that allows her to shift from the present to the past and back again with ease. She has such a keen sense of the reader's needs that the hard detail that leads to atmosphere and character development is never neglected, but never overdone, so that the reader is always informed and immersed. She has developed narrative devices that are invisible to the reader but startlingly beautiful to the writer. For example in "The Fifth Season" lesbian Lorrie is visiting gay Marc who is dying of complications from AIDS. His sister enters the room. They are on "death duty." Caspers describes the sister and then writes:

"'I wish he would just let go.' Lines delivered to me two weeks earlier--and only now do I forgive her.
"I pictured Marc on a rope in midair. He had swung on a gymnastic rope through the gymnasium in the middle of a school lecture. About a month before his father was indicted. Mr. Ricklick pulled him down, dragged him up the aisles by his hair.
"He's a twenty-nine-year-old man, I thought. Why should he let go?"

Notice how Caspers is able to shift between three different times, now, two weeks ago, the distant past, and now again, with consummate ease. This is not easily done. It looks easy, but it is not easy.

She writes in the first person or the third with such naturalness that one does not recall which person she used in any particular story. Perhaps her greatest strength though is in how immediate she makes the experiences of her characters. Everything is as close as the scent of the beloved's skin, as sharp as thistle pricks or the smell of fresh poop, as intense as first love--or first betrayal. Caspers writes from a crafty heart and a mind sharp with the need for something close to mathematically precision. What she achieves is a kind of non-linearity that is the mark of great poetry and great fiction.

Don't miss this collection, winner of the Grace Paley Prize in short fiction. I only wish I could write half as well.

Heavier than Air, by Nona Caspers is a beautiful book. I read most of the book in one night. Although it's a book of fiction the characters have an authenticity and a humanity that brings them to life on the page. It's the beauty and emotion in the language and the landscape that lends texture and truth to the narratives. The vivid images of life and longing are compelling they uncover unusual aspects of the hearts terrain.
"I don't want you near me," she said. "Go home."
"In the hottest part of summer the corn takes on sharp edges, and thistles grow between the stalks though they can be avoided if you stay in the rows. I ran barefoot in my shorts straight at the corn stalks, smashing against the cobs, scraping the thistles against my skin. A sharp pain shot up my side and rose to my heart and I honestly believed I was having a heart attack, that my heart was cracking like and egg that falls out of a tree."

While reading "heavier than air" your heart opens up to life and passion and longing. A must read a beautiful book!

Rose Offner

Nona Caspers "Heavier than Air" short stories take you into the lives of people that are growing up in rural Minnesota. Each story drew me in. I found myself feeling for the characters as they were going through whatever angst that was happening in their lives. Ms. Caspers writes in such a way, that if she describes a feeling, you feel it; or if she describes a setting, you see it. It takes true talent to be able to do this. Her characters are truly believable because she takes you right into their minds and hearts. Life is not easy for any of them. They are dealing with some very real issues such as first love, and death.
Another reason that I found her stories seeming so realistic is that she incorporates some very unusual ideas into her plots. It takes someone that either has a vivid imagination or had seen a lot in their lives to be able to do this. I really enjoyed the quirks that were in some of the characters. Ms. Caspers did such an awesome job of sucking me into her stories that I would forget that they were actually short stories. I found myself feeling bereft when some of them ended, because I was not done with the characters yet. Because they are fictional, they really only get brief moments of fame, and then they have to wait inside the book for someone else to read their stories so that they can come alive again.
If you are looking for a light read, this is not the book for you. However, if you are looking for a collection of stories with depth, this is the one. I highly recommend this novel and think that you will really appreciate the stories.