The Society of Friends: Stories [Paperback]

Kelly Cherry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

Short Stories from the Society of Friends.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"All any of us can do is the best we can do." Like most of the earnest, overeducated, cappuccino-drinking characters in these 13 stories, set in Madison, Wis., Shelley, a nurse who discovers that her daughter is gay ("Not the Phil Donohue Show"), is steadfastly if wryly determined to make the best of her confusing late-20th-century existence. The collection's central figure and protagonist of six of these stories, writer and professor Nina Bryant, lives with her adopted daughter Tavy and her adorable dog Oscar. Coping with the death of both parents (not to mention her father's return from the grave in "As It Is in Heaven"), and her memories of her abuse as a child, she finally finds a man she can count on in "Love in the Middle Ages." Nina's neighbors include Guy, a struggling bookstore owner who worries that his wife will leave him for her lesbian best friend ("Tell Her"); Conrad, whose wife and son died suddenly and who has retreated into a world of household duties ("Chores"); Larry, who faces a divorce ("How It Goes"); and a performance artist named Jazz who struggles to maintain a relationship with her overbearing mother ("Lunachick"). Cherry experiments with form, with mixed resultsA"Love in the Middle Ages" interlaces courtly scenes told in an awkward modern idiom with straightforward expositionAand her prose is elaborately overworked (one man's pink beard is "like a strawberry milk shake glued to his face"). Dialogue, too, is hit-or-miss and sometimes too arch. Nevertheless, Cherry speaks to the hearts of a particular privileged and yet angst-ridden contemporary subspecies, settled in university towns across the country. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

"This is not the Phil Donahue Show; this is my life. So why is my daughter standing in my doorway telling me she's a lesbian?" This flippant protestation begins the story "Not the Phil Donahue Show." It's more or less representative of a humor shared by various characters in this collection; a humor they use as a sort of distraction, a way of performing for the reader and themselves as they work around to the troubling issue at hand. Sometimes this humor contributes to a distinctive tone in Cherry's stories. The narrator here works in a hospital, and tends to a gay man dying of AIDS, whose lover has already died of that disease. In her next visit to his bedside, she meditates sensitively on his family conditions and probable obfuscations, as a means of discovering how she might deal with her daughter's disclosure. There are other effective moments of discovery and reflection in this collection--for example, in " The Society of Friends" and in "How It Goes" --though they are too rare, and are sometimes overshadowed by the first-person narrators' puns and flippant asides. James O'Laughlin

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826212433
• ISBN-13: 978-0826212436
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #392,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty books of fiction (long and short), poetry, memoir, essay, and criticism. She has also published eight chapbooks and translations of two classical dramas. Her most recent titles are The Woman Who: Stories, The Retreats of Thought: Poems, and Girl in a Library: On Women Writers & The Writing Life. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction awards. Her story collection The Society of Friends (which has nothing to do with the Society of Friends) received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for Short Fiction for the best collection published in 1999. For her poetry she received the Hanes Prize for a body of work. Her new and selected poems, titled Hazard and Prospect, was a finalist for the Poets' Award. Cherry says, "I write because I have ideas that can be realized only by writing. Luckily, I love to write. And I love the thought that somewhere there may be someone who reads my work and responds to the heart of what I write."

Another book of poems is scheduled for 2013. She is completing a new book of stories and working on a book-length poem. After that there will be another book of stories (the third in her trilogy of short story collections set in Madison, Wisconsin), a memoir, and a novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love and Death in the Hinterland, January 6, 2007

By 

George Lawrence Chieffet (River Vale NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Society of Friends: Stories (Paperback)

Kelly Cherry's collection of short stories is an outstanding example of refined English language prose as well as a philosophical exploration into the meaning or meaninglessness of human existence. However, inspite of these grand subjects, Ms. Cherry often choses the most humble of subjects and the smallest events to story the plight of her sometimes hapless, often kind, characters as they forage for love and understanding in the Wisconsin college town neighborhood where these stories take place. There is heartbreaking irony and tenderness in these stories. Ms. Cherry deftly written sentences sweep the reader toward the edge of consciousness itself, and indeed we stare over the edge and into the abyss more than once, and then we are swept back again with great waves of emotion to the everyday existence we cling to. There is great humor in these stories as well as an undertone of darkness in every sentence. Only a poet of Ms. Cherry's brilliance could render such a remarkable display without calling attention to the language itself. These are stories, not merely for the student of literature but for the student of life. Above everything else there is a great reverence for human beings and their spiritual quest in a world that harbors few places of refuge for the vulnerable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just like the end of summer..., March 14, 2006

By 

Akethan (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Society of Friends: Stories (Paperback)

I put this book up and down over several months - and that was mostly an effect of the power of certain segments of the book.

The stories move through overlapping lives - and relationships. Universally overcoming their own obstacles - molestation, racismn, sexuality, living and dying... realizing one is aging. Strong and weak - the characters feed off of each other and show a need for one another even at their stubbornest moments.

Nina is the main character - but I aim to tell you - so that you give him your undivided attention - the real story is her little dog (who seems to have no name).

The book is strongest in the final two chapters - Chapters from A Dog's Life and Block Party. I smiled hard and cried harder through the final movements between Nina and her dog.

We are all witnesses to their ceremony...