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Women Up On Blocks

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We could all use a little work. Even the most "normal" of us could use a good dose of psycho therapeutic reflection or cognitive behavioral manipulation. Especially the moms. Whether it's the hormones or the sudden overwhelming sense of responsibility and neurosis, I know I've had more than my fair share of nervous breakdowns since I saw that first blue plus sign on a stick.


WOMEN UP ON BLOCKS The title itself conjures a powerful image. Set aside the immediate mental flash of stirrups and invasive annual examination. Look at the cover art (good shoes) because in this case you can judge a book yada yada yada. Like meandering by the tv in lingerie during playoffs, red shoes and good legs propped along a dirty bumper ought to get you noticed. Women in these stories go to extremes to get noticed, allow themselves and others to go to extremes to fix themselves, and extreme things occur to teach them a lesson. The content of the stories are as strong as the imagery. The plots are at once relatable and repellent. After I finished, I felt better about myself as a mother, wife, member of my community in general. Mary Aker's clear, honest voice carries the content. Her insightful, creative images pull the characters and the reader to the other side.

The first story, "Medusa Song," is horrifyingly honest. The story is a warning for those women who allow an emotionally absent, philandering husband and subservient, oppressive life to go too far. The protagonist is at risk to become the villain unless she takes control of her life. Her repression and complacency threaten her children in an almost too creepy Susan Smith kind of way. The conclusion is an allegorical baptism by fire. You're left wondering if you should call social services.

Sometimes the world can miss the point in a good intention, as in Jenny the stripper's crusade for animal rights in "Animo, Anima, Animus." Sometimes the good intentions are warped from the beginning, as in cancer stricken Ima, who martyrs herself for the benefit of the travelling show "Bodyworks" in "Pygmalion, (Recast)." The archetypal good girl gets it all wrong and pins all her dreams on the bad boy in "Wild, Wild Horses." The one character who seems to have the best sense of self in the entire collection is the archetypal bad girl in "Evangeline."

WOMEN UP ON BLOCKS is a collection of contradictions and duelling themes. Just like you never know what a woman is really thinking one moment to the next, you never know what these women are up to one story to the next.


Read more of my reviews of Press 53 titles at [...]

I never like to read a whole short story collection in one go, but in this case, during a bout of insomnia, I simply couldn't stop. Each of Mary Akers' stories has a unique voice, a different tone and style, and they are quirky and poignant, thoughtful and thought-provoking. They do not tie up neatly, they linger on long after this slim book has been put down. I don't recommend reading it straight through, only because of the sense of disappointment when you read your last story, that there is no more. Of course, short stories lend themselves most beautifully to being read again, and again, revealing new layers each time, and I am already looking forward to exploring Women Up on Blocks many more times. For a longer review, read what our reviewer on The Short Review had to say: [...]

The title is a grabber, the photo more so. I didn't know what to expect. You CAN judge this book by it's cover though. This book of short short stories of women and their lives captured me from the first page and I didn't put it down. I KNOW so many of these women! They are friends and familly members, acquantances and people I hear about. These stories touch me and I'm sure they will anyone who knows women and wish for more in their lives. Great writer. I will look for more of Mary Akers books.

I finished this book about a week and a half ago and have been meaning to write about it. But I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is that I wanted to say. I can't come up with any other word except "undone." I mean, I know that kind of sounds pretentious or too literary, but it really fits the way this book made me feel. It was beautifully brutal. I loved loved loved it, and highly recommend it.

Shapely bare legs and red spike heels, rust and grease on the back of a Jerr-Dan tow truck. "Women Up on Blocks" delivers on the promise of its cover: These precisely rendered stories show women in struggle. Mary Akers uses language that is rich and clear to show us lovers and mothers, daughters and wives, struggle with lives that threaten to overwhelm them.

I sat, one particular afternoon, in the middle of downtown Phoenix, reading Women Up On Blocks. It was lunch hour, so there was plenty of pedestrian traffic, including the expected share of vehicular traffic. Yet there I sat, reading the story "No Reason Not To," all the while almost entirely oblivious to everything around me. Such was Mary Akers' ability to fully draw me into her story.

Her characters have beautiful depth, flesh, and soul. Poignancy and unfiltered honesty are concepts not merely touched upon but treated with broad, colorful strokes of her brush. There's no two-dimensionality to her stories, they all breathe life and emotion one word to the next. She'll break your heart, make you smile, and even nod knowingly. The earthiness that permeates these stories is nothing less than a sometimes poetic extrapolation of little bits of life.

If you care for a genuinely entertaining, thoroughly good read, then you'd do well to add Women Up On Blocks to your list. Wonderfully written, and worth every moment I spent reading it.

Mary Akers' book, "Women Up On Blocks", is full of well written, thought-provoking tales of women facing so many of life's challenges and decisions. Although each story is unique from the others, I felt they all molded perfectly together between the covers of this powerful book. The demands of being a good mother, wife, daughter, girlfriend, and neighbor are explored brilliantly in this wonderful collection. I experienced an enormous range of emotions reading these stories. My heart ached while reading `Mooncalf'. I rejoiced at the end of `The Rashomon Tree'. I cried for Steven, in `Pygmalion (Recast)', while feeling very proud of his reaction to seeing his love `recast'. I wanted to run to Kelly in `Model Home' and help her smash all those mirrors. I could feel the turmoil and struggle in each of the character's story because of the delicate details described by Ms. Akers. It's hard to pick a favorite story, because I see a little of myself in each of these women. All struggling to find their place in such a chaotic, stressful, exhilarating, uncertain world.

Mary Akers has crafted a baker's dozen of tales that create, in a very short space of time, a look into the entire life of each of her characters. Caught between misunderstanding, assumptions and projections based on a limited set of information, these protagonists make us want to reach in and set things straight and, at the same time, watch in horror. It is difficult to find a favorite in this insightful collection of stories about the interior lives of women, although a few stand out for the way in which Akers' puts a larger issue into a very personal context. In 'Mooncalf' for instance, a woman with Cerebral Palsy gives birth to a child she can barely take care of, and we are thrown both into the ordinary desires of all women as well as those of a woman with such a debilitating disability. In 'Still Life With Shoes,' a beautiful story about a youngest daughter coping with the death of a severely flawed father, we are left with the woman putting on her father's old shoes and literally "walking a mile," in them. This is a collection of stories that can be carried around in your head long after the book is put down.

The Author's use of the metaphor "Up On Blocks" is as amusing as it is profound and thought provoking. It aptly describes her short story collection about women and their fears, prejudices, rights, wrongs and perceived shortcomings.

The term "Up On Blocks" comes from the vehicles we see in rural communities that have been put out of commission in plain sight and are being preserved for some future purpose. Anything that has been put "Up On Blocks" has the potential to be redeemed and sent back into service but, having spent time in this forced suspension, will they ever again perform?

Ms. Akers captures this brow wrinkling question in the lives (and deaths) of an array of women in an array of circumstances. The anger and resentment of a young mother who, by marrying young, got more than she bargained for versus the resigned and childless solitude of a Love Canal survivor. The display of an animal rights activist, naked, in a cage versus the cigarette leather face of the women who witnesses her protest. The flippant redemption a stripper feels for a tough decision versus the inability to forgive one's self for the sins of her parents.

Each story represents the living portrait and the very real pain of a Woman and her unresolved treatment of the circumstance. I highly recommend reading this compilation with the title close at hand. How can we fix it? Will the old junker just need new tires? A fuel injection tune up? Will the bees nests and poison oak in the rocker panels repulse us completely? Or will we haul it off and sell its parts to that nutty guy at the junk yard who makes sculpture from cam shafts?

This is a fine piece of work and, in my estimation, a must read.

Sonya Sisson St. Jacques
CRTT, Richmond, Virginia Branch

There isn't a single story in this book that I didn't enjoy thoroughly. It is mostly about women who find themselves in oppressive situations and their efforts--sometimes successful, sometimes not--to extract themselves. "Wild, Wild Horses" is one of my favorites. Missy is married to an underachiever, has put her plans on hold for the house and the babies, but digs into a reserve of strength she doesn't know she has when faced with an emergency. She will never be the same, the reader feels certain, and nothing is going to get in her way. Kelly in "Model Home," on the other hand, lives in a house of mirrors, like a carnival funhouse, and at the end of that story the future is much less certain. But Eileen in "No Reason Not To," while also facing uncertainty, has decided to be in control of her own destiny.

These women feel real to me, as do their dilemmas. Men in this world don't win any prizes for fatherhood, faithfulness, or devotion, but they feel real, too.

It's an excellent collection that I highly recommend to readers who like short stories.