Customer Reviews

Survival Rates

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Mary Clyde's first book of stories won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction from the University of Georgia. These nine stories, some of which are more successful than others, focus upon instances of everyday life, both tragic and comic. Clyde's stories are populated by mothers and husbands, sons and daughters, girlfriends and boyfriends. There is nothing extraordinary about any of her characters, except perhaps their ability to comment upon their own lives and the lives of those around them. What is it, then, that makes the book worth seeking out and certainly worth reading?

In her best stories, Mary Clyde's strength as a writer who explores the hidden depths within a character's seemingly mundane existence is on prominent display. Her tools are often simply objects that fall into her characters' lives. In the best story here, "Victor's Funeral Urn," a young divorced mother finds, by the side of the road, an urn containing a baby's ashes, which she takes home intending to somehow return it to its rightful owner. Through the unlikely presence of the urn in her home, she reaches a new understanding of her son's, and her own, loneliness and despair. In another story, the powerful "Jumping," Clyde explores how the survivors of a tragic accident are just as much victims as those who lost their lives.

Though a couple of these stories seem formulaic or contrived, the majority of the writing here is distinguished by a lightness of touch and a willingness to let her characters speak for themselves that is refreshing at a time when many writers seem to be preaching at their readers. I applaud Mary Clyde's understated achievement in this book and will certainly be looking forward to her next.

The short stories in this book are each days out of what could be anyone's life, that's what makes it so touching. If anyone who likes this book and has feminist tendencies, I would also recommmend "the furies" by Janet Hobhouse.

Clyde achieved something wonderful with survival rates. Her stories are of the strangers we exchange smiles with on the street. Through Clyde's stories we see in the inner turmoil that could afflict anyone. The hidden pain and struggles that we are forced by society to supress.

I picked up Survival Rates to read on business trips. I now carry an extra copy with me to give to whoever is sitting next to me on the plane. It is wonderful book with stories that can be read and shared again and again.