Amazon.com Review
A reader can never know for certain how Barry Lopez constructs his stories. But they read as though their author first came up with some utterly compelling image, and the story fit itself around the image. Fans of the author's nature writing in
Crossing Open Ground and
Arctic Dreams will be pleased to find that often these images express human devotion to the land. In a kind of fantasy piece titled "In the Great Bend of the Souris River," a horseman, adrift in the countryside in North Dakota, encounters two other riders who "could be Cree." The three men ride across the prairie together. "I knew these people no better than two deer I might have stumbled upon, but I was comfortable with them, and the way we fit against the prairie satisfied me. I felt I could ride a very long way like this, absorbed by whatever it was we now shared, a kind of residency." In "Remembering Orchards," a character recalls with regret his orchardist stepfather whom he wishes he'd known better and who died "contorted in his bed like a root mass."
Lopez introduces other, more disturbing images here as well, perhaps most notably in the title story, wherein a woman travels with her boyfriend to a diving resort in the Caribbean. In a weird twist on J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the trip ends in brutal bloodshed, which Lopez describes in chillingly affectless prose. The story contains this stunner of a sentence: "The first bullet tore through his left triceps, the second, third, fourth, and fifth hit nothing, the sixth perforated his spleen, the seventh and eighth hit nothing, the ninth hit the console, sending electrical sparks up, the tenth went through his right palm, the next four went into the air, the fifteenth tore his left ear away, the sixteenth ricocheted off the sixth cervical vertebra and drove down through his heart, exiting through his abdomen and lodging in his foot." There's no escape from Lopez's images; they come after us. --Claire Dederer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Best known for Arctic Dreams and other book-length essays about the natural world, Lopez is also a prolific and eclectic fiction writer (Field Notes; Lessons from the Wolverine). In this new collection of 13 stories, with settings ranging from the Pacific Northwest to the Caribbean and the Arab peninsula, he continues to expand the boundaries of his fiction, and while not all the entries are successful, they demonstrate a writer willing to take risks in his work. In the quietly touching "Remembering Orchards," the narrator, viewing a swath of filbert trees, gains an epiphanic understanding of his gentle stepfather and of the tragic situation that ended his life. "Emory Bear Hands' Birds" is a powerful narrative in which Lopez utilizes a Native American storyteller and magical realism to evoke hope and a sense of community in a prison population, culminating in an emotional liberation. "Stolen Horses" uses the memoirist's skill at re-creating events long past, turning them over for possible meaning and tapping them for their impact on current circumstances. The title story is a brutally realistic tale in which a vacationing yuppie couple courts trouble while diving in the Caribbean. Other entries take a decidedly Borgesian turn. "Rub?n Mendoza Vega" bears the disguise of a history lecture, complete with extensive footnotes and bibliography. "The Letters of Heaven" evokes not only the historical playfulness of the Argentinean master, but also his wistful romanticism. Like Peter Matthiessen, Lopez enriches narratives of human behavior with his deep knowledge of animals and the environment. There is enough variety in characters and situations for the book to move beyond the readership for nature-oriented fiction and to establish Lopez in the realm of those who plumb the human heart. The book's lovely cover, depicting green- and orange-tinted wings cascading along a pale yellow-green background, will draw browsers' attention. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
