From Publishers Weekly
It's easy to see why judge Rick De Marinis awarded this breathtaking collection of 11 stories the Katherine Anne Porter prize. The prose is confiding, the dialogue familiar, which gives Blanchard's stories an intimate everyday-ness that makes her family narratives disturbing and affecting. In "Claybottom Lake," a new stepfather struggles to win the acceptance of his wife's tomboy daughter. It's a poignant portrayal of one of life's most difficult adjustments and a showcase for the author's skill: "Nola is a tomboy, a hell-raiser, a maverick, and she's captured my heart like no other. She's got the broad choppy legs of an athletic boy and the scowl of an old maid.... She stands in the sunlight, an amber specimen in a glass jar, still as an Indian or a stone." Leona, the 13-year-old daughter of a stuntman in the title story, is a prisoner of her mother's neglect and her stepfather's sexual abuse as she wages a daily battle for survival in a small camper trailer. "I lie in Mama's bed awhile, inhaling her sweet scent, but Ty is also here-his spicy smell, curly-rooted black hairs clinging to the white sheets." Among the situations beautifully explored by Blanchard: a tale of lesbian violence; the last days of a proud father; the anguish of parents reconciling themselves to the future of their daughter with Down's Syndrome; and young sisters ruining their mother's chances for romance. Spinning webs of fragile domestic intricacies, Blanchard uses humor, but it's always tempered by the harsh dank air in which family ties unravel.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Here is a collection of short fiction that can renew a jaded reader's faith in the future of the genre. Blanchard has created 11 tiny, jewel-like universes in her stories. In the title story, the daughter of a dead stuntman and his movie-extra wife tries unsuccessfully to deal with her stepfather's sexual advances and eventually runs away from home. More accurately, she runs away with home: she steals the family's mobile home to make her escape. In "The Accident Radio," a volunteer fireman who has suffered a serious heart attack fighting a house fire cannot wean himself from attending disasters; the surprise twist in this story is particularly shattering. In "The Boarder," two young girls plot to break up their widowed mother's romance with their boarder because they don't believe their father is really dead. Blanchard avoids both unremitting ennui and O. Henry^-style trick endings, instead capturing the essence of her characters through tiny nuances and small, precise, sympathetic strokes. George Needham
