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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A master in the wings, July 10, 1999
An elderly Wasp stroke victim listens in as his speech turns to a dissonant, Steinian kind of music. A heartfelt letter to a pregnant daughter becomes a sort of Bartok concerto in words, and even a simple physical act, like licking the envelope, "requires analytical thought." "The Mail Lady," the climactic story in David Gates' collection, might have you leaning forward in awe and excitement: Gates works toward a parable of faith that might do a master like Flannery O'Connor proud. He starts with a surge, he seems to fumble in rendering the protagonist's devoutness, then startles with the revelation of an unprepared-for cruelty toward his daughter, and takes flight in the final passages. "The Mail Lady" fairly sings with mastery. I'd say it's the kind of story that could be taught as an example of the form at its perfectest, but that doesn't do the story justice; it has more unpredictability and ungoverned life than that. It leaves Cheever-Updike territory and finally rises to an altitude of grace comparable to a harrowing Bach cantata of fear and faith."Saturn," the penultimate story, is another stunner--a picture of a half-whipsmart, half-unformed woman's grope for happiness in a materially content but smothering marriage to a monomaniac. The subject matter seems twice-ironed, but the observation is crisp, newborn. It seems so honestly arrived-at all quibbles disappear.Elsewhere, there's a noticeable paucity of language that can make a story feel more like an outline or a vivid character sketch than an organic creature. Gates writes for Newsweek, and the accessible, cut-to-the-chase prose of magazine writing seems deeply ingrained. And there are moments that suggest an inaccurate, less acute David Leavitt--especially in a story about an aging gay academic who discovers a secret about his younger beloved that gives the word contrived a fresh coat of paint.Gates may be the reigning grandmaster at the depiction of women's dissatisfaction with malfunctioning, attention-crazed men--stories operating under that premise tend to land right on target. But if only for the last two stories alone, Gates deserves mention as a future giant of his trade--and an unusually noble reminder of the moral fundament of writing and reading fiction.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
MIXING AND RIFFING ON..., January 21, 2000
By A Customer
ADULTERY, ALCOHOL and other drugs, MUSIC, LITERATURE, DOMESTIC ISOLATION, IN ISOLATED RURAL AREAS (usually NY - NE area) FAILED WRITERS OR OTHER ARTISTS (okay, and academics), and let's not forget SICKNESS-- Every story in this book has these in common -- overly-analytical people, unhappy and internal, trapped in their heads and the domestic situation that they pretend to have chosen. Sound boring? Could have been and might still be to you, but this Gates feller riffs with so many personas, each dealing with these same issues in similar ways, people going out of control and trying to stay in control, it's a testament to his skill has a writer that Gates keeps us engaged. Reminded me of a jazz musician riffing on a standard (a metaphor that would not be out of place in one of these stories, i'm just warning you) if you could argue that the standard was written by john cheever (please don't say updike). The slow build, the welter of observational detail that pulls you into these seemingly restrained parlor dramas that are suddenly upset by the tinest details, the capturing of the circular internal dialogues -- all make a captivating read. The old cliche about not being able to put it down--it's true of this book. While the first story sets the tone adequately enough, my favorite stories were Star Baby, Vigil, the Intruder, and Saturn. These felt finished and therefore induced some relief -- the ones that ended ambigously merely felt unfinished, but still left this reader with that sense of unease, claustrophobia, underlying lusts, passions and secrets that haunt the NPR cohort. So did the finished ones, now that I think of it... My only reservation is less about the book but about the world that Gates has captured: has the intellegentsia in this country all become bergmanites, or is it just that Gates's abilites as a writer allow the uselessly educated, neurotic class in the usa a sheen of sexy tragedy?
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Writing's good, stories too self-indulgent..., September 3, 2000
This review is from: The Wonders of the Invisible World (Paperback)
David Gates is a staff writer for Newsweek and the author of a couple of best selling novels. He puts together in this collection a series of stories that reflect the kinds of conversations that go on in people's heads when they are at the end of a personally, emotionally somewhat traumatic life experience. We read the pains of women coming to grips with being trapped in bad marriages, men dealing with unfaithful wives, a gay man who is taking care of his addict sister's boy, and in one story at the end, an elderly man who has experienced a stroke and is so alive and coherent internally but not externally. None of these stories is nice, none has a happy ending, there are no characters with whom one identifies - or better put, with whom one might empathize or sympathize. I had the overwhelming feeling that every single one of these protagonists sort of deserved what they had.... or had the means to escape their situation but were trapped by their OWN psychological ropes. It was a collection of stories that I couldn't stop reading, but that each left me unhappy, disconcerted, with sort of a low grade dull headache about the quality of human beings in the country I call home. The characters were, by and large, well-educated, intellectuals, worldly, and living in and around New York (so assumedly they had some greater vision of the world than what might come from less urban parts of the country). I guess the bottom line for me was that the slight depression I felt after finishing this collection did not encouraged me to read either of Gates' novels.
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