Touchy Subjects: Stories [Hardcover]

Emma Donoghue (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2006

In this sparkling collection of nineteen stories, the bestselling author of Slammerkin returns to contemporary affairs, exposing the private dilemmas that result from some of our most public controversies. A man finds God and finally wants to father a child-only his wife is now forty-two years old. A coach's son discovers his sexuality on the football field. A roommate's bizarre secret liberates a repressed young woman. From the unforeseen consequences of a polite social lie to the turmoil caused by the hair on a woman's chin, Donoghue dramatizes the seemingly small acts upon which our lives often turn. Many of these stories involve animals and what they mean to us, or babies and whether to have them; some replay biblical plots in modern contexts. With characters old, young, straight, gay, and simply confused, Donoghue dazzles with her range and her ability to touch lightly but delve deeply into the human condition.

(20060627)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In contrast to previous books focused on feminist retellings of fairy tales (Kissing the Witch) and revisionist imaginings of historical and folkloric female figures (The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits), Irish writer Donoghue's latest, a set of 19 witty tales, remains firmly planted in Ireland's present. Divided into five sections—"Babies," "Domesticity," "Strangers," "Desire," "Death"—the book has one unifying theme: the characters' constant need for revision—of assumptions, perceptions and expectations—in light of new information. In "Expecting," a woman re-evaluates her maternal instincts when a stranger misinterprets her condition. Elsewhere, a heartbroken young woman uses a trip abroad to indulge her fantasies of being Catherine Deneuve or Isadora Duncan, but discovers true healing in a more unlikely incarnation. In "The Sanctuary of Hands," a bitter, washed-up writer finds true genius during his yearlong residency, but not in the way he expected. Throughout, Donoghue offers deadpan asides about the trappings of the recent boom times in Ireland. (June)
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From Booklist

The author of the well-received novel Slammerkin (2001) exhibits adeptness in the short story form in this collection of 19 tales that, without a hint of pretension but with wisdom extending far beyond the placidness of her prose style, isolates aspects of a character or a moment of revelation for a character. Donoghue, who was born Irish, then became a longtime British resident, and now lives in Canada, observes telling differences in certain people's domestic arrangements (you're using your best friend's husband as a sperm donor), carefully pries open individual circumstances within the universal circumstance of experiencing growing pains (you're a good athlete, your father is the coach, and you come to realize you're gay), and shows sensitivity to personal reactions to relatively ordinary circumstances (you're a tourist, and you've gotten "two-thirds of a day behind on [your] itinerary"). Her stories find secure footing where poignancy and humor intersect, and their geniality will prove an asset to librarians encouraging readers exclusively devoted to the novel to--come on--try some short stories. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151013861
• ISBN-13: 978-0151013869
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #926,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose novels include the bestselling "Slammerkin," "The Sealed Letter," "Landing," "Life Mask," "Hood," and "Stirfry." Her story collections are "The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits," "Kissing the Witch," and "Touchy Subjects." She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two small children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars top-notch collection of short stories, July 5, 2006

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Touchy Subjects: Stories (Hardcover)

Bestselling Irish native Emma Donoghue (SLAMMERKIN) delivers a top-notch collection of 19 short stories featuring a variety of everyday characters caught in the middle of the unexpected. On the surface, each offering is grouped according to one of five themes: Babies, Domesticity, Strangers, Desire, and Death. On a deeper level, these broadly defined boundaries intersect throughout many of the stories, as they often do in reality, creating a series of snapshots that are both unique and true to life.

Although there isn't a dud in her bunch, Donoghue shines most brightly when confronting issues of sex and gender. As seen in some of her previous works (HOOD, LIFE MASK), the trajectory of unrequited homosexual love is aptly explored here in moments that are so vulnerable and pure that they virtually explode with unresolved tension. In "Speaking in Tongues," a long-held thirst is finally quenched yet ultimately discarded after 17-year-old-Lee and 34-year-old poetess Sylvia have a one-night stand in the back of Sylvia's van. In "Team Men," two football players have a brief affair and must navigate the consequences when one wants to come out publicly and the other doesn't. Both stories highlight the rawness of desire and the inevitable heartbreak that occurs when separate wants can't (or don't) align.

Along similar lines, "The Cost of Things" and "The Man Who Wrote on Beaches" focus on two very different pairs and their shared inability to see eye to eye. In "The Cost of Things," a seemingly unbreakable relationship implodes after the two involved can't agree on how much their kitten's life (i.e. their relationship) is worth. In "The Man Who Wrote on Beaches," a man feels a sudden, joyous urge to become a father after finding God --- only his wife is now 42 and not in the mood to change diapers. It is the breaking point in a relationship that Donoghue finds so intriguing, and her repeated depictions of this moment are filled with a harsh authenticity that is liable to make many readers cringe in reluctant recognition, despite their varied circumstances.

There are thankfully a few humorous vignettes in this otherwise moody collection. "Pluck" reveals a husband's nagging obsession with a tiny hair growing underneath his wife's unbeknownst chin; the hilariously dry "Do They Know It's Christmas" features an academic couple and their collective indignation over the banning of their precious dogs --- Proust, Gide and Mallarmé --- from an annual family gathering; and the embarrassingly funny "Touchy Subjects" explores awkwardness at its best, when a husband agrees to be a sperm donor for his wife's best friend and must confront head on (pun intended) the trials of getting it up for a woman who isn't his partner. Although all touch upon the serious, these three selections show a different side of Donoghue and illustrate her versatility as a writer.

Donoghue's gift is her ability to grab the reader immediately and not let go until the events being described run their natural course. The stories in TOUCHY SUBJECTS take a crack at everything from pregnancy to marriage to the fleetingly intimate connection between strangers, and they do so beautifully and genuinely. Fans of her longer historical novels will relish in her clear mastery of the shorter form.

--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Perhaps discretion was the better part of motherhood, after all.", May 26, 2006

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Touchy Subjects: Stories (Hardcover)

In typical fashion, Donoghue adds a touch of irony to the title story, "Touchy Subjects", a thirty-eight-year old woman resorting to artificial means to accomplish pregnancy; the complications, while hilarious, are perfectly awful, a testament to the author's penchant for seeing beyond the surface of our encounters with destiny. It is in the nature of these stories to observe the characters through a series of transitions, captured in five stages: Babies, Domesticity, Strangers, Desire and Death. The stories are related in a chronology of relationships: Babies about tentative beginnings, the impulses that alter the course of a life ("Expecting", "The Man Who Wrote on Beaches"); Domesticity unveils more advanced relationships, people caught in the complexities of daily frustrations, decisions and miscommunications, the small irritations that once were endearing now wearing thin, expectations denied, the infinite grinding down of hopes into less than what was anticipated ("Lavender's Blue", "The Cost of Things").

Strangers portends escape into more neutral territory, breaking from habit to find respite in another place, at least temporarily, exposing personal conceits, characters shocked into personal insights ("The Sanctuary of Hands", WritOr"); Desire speaks for itself, of yearning and angst and disappointment ("Speaking in Tongues", The Welcome"); and finally, Death, endings and sometimes beginnings, perceptions turned upside down by reality and the need to adapt to changed circumstances ("The Dormition of the Virgin", "Enchantment'). Unfailing, Donoghue prods the tender underbelly of human frailty, ever complicated and fraught with self-doubt, self-seeking behavior in search of connections, relentlessly dissecting the common denominator of relationships, straight or gay, the steady pulse of yearning that causes people to cling to one another in desperation. This is a world filled with the varieties of human behavior, the sequence of stories carefully structured for maximum effect, interactions that define the various stages of development.

More than a collection, Touchy Subjects has a theme, a progression viewed through the eyes of characters as they muddle through the passages of their lives. There are moments of hilarity, sweetness, insight and revelation, a kaleidoscope of humanity writ large on a canvas as intricate as those who people the pages. Observant, incisive and compassionate, Donoghue masters both form and content; whether mining the past or mapping the edges of the present, this is a writer who never disappoints. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touchy, in a good way!, April 1, 2007

By 

Cipriano "www.bookpuddle.blogspot.com" (Planet Claire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Touchy Subjects: Stories (Hardcover)

Touchy Subjects, is the title, and they are!
As my reading partner put it, "Nothing seems too odd or too off limits for her to write about - AND rope us into. I guess once you have written about a woman who churns out rabbits, you can handle just about any topic."
Emma's former book of short stories, The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits, gets its title from the lead story, which is about a.... [go figure!] woman who feined giving birth to rabbits!
That book was excellent too, but this new one is even better.
Touchy Subjects: Babies, Domesticity, Strangers, Desire, and Death, and the stories found in each of these categories stay very centered around these themes.
These are nineteen deeply rich tales of the joys and struggles [mostly struggles] of love relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual. And familial. And marital. Of friendships platonic and otherwise.
Of people reaching toward self-identity. Sometimes finding it, sometimes not.

I think that Emma Donoghue is "eccentric" in the best sense of the word.
Unconventional, slightly strange, and just off kilter enough to show her readers that they are the same!
That none of our lives are simple, or even normal. Her stories reveal a world full of ambiguities and contradictions, which is exactly the world any truly living person experiences.
She can take the most common of occurences [a woman looking at a clothes rack, a man writing phrases in the sand, someone looking absently and curiously through a woman's cosmetic case, a couple deciding upon the exact shade their house ought to be painted, the love of our pets, a 42-year old woman wanting to bear a child].... she can take these things and show us that they are all touchy [as in sensitive, delicate] subjects.
I realize I have not really said anything specific about the writer's style [per se] or her incomparable command of dialogue. I don't want to.
I want you to READ HER.