Amazon.com Review
The title of Matthew Sharpe's first collection, Stories from the Tube, is the reader's first hint about what to expect. The short excerpts from commercials prefacing each of the 10 stories that follow act as brief plot synopses. "Tide," for example, begins with a snippet from a laundry detergent ad: "A mother and her small daughter open the trunk of the car to find the daughter's leotard has a red, wet stain on it":
Daughter: And the ballet's tomorrow!Sure enough, the narrative that follows features an identical incident, this time at the heart of a prickly mother-daughter tale involving ballet, menstruation, and that terrifying moment in a parent's life when she realizes her child has a mind of her own. "In the Snowy Kingdom" is prefaced by two lines from a deodorant commercial in which a married couple is dressing for a fundraiser at which the wife will speak. When the man flirtatiously suggests he wouldn't mind if they were the only two people at the event, his wife replies: "Then you better bring your checkbook." The sentiment is later echoed by Tara, whose husband, Dan, becomes seriously, mysteriously paralyzed during her speech at a fundraiser.
Mother: Honey we'll get it out.
Mother, Voice-over: ...So I crossed my fingers and threw it in.
Half the fun in reading Matthew Sharpe's stories is trying to figure out how the advertisement will tie into the story that follows it. The other half, of course, is in following the elusive strands he weaves through these off-kilter tales of single mothers, unhappy lovers, bridesmaids that never get to be maid of honor, and other slightly sad-sack characters who live at the convergence of the surreal and the mundane. --Alix Wilber
From Kirkus Reviews
Debut collection that aims straight at the MTV-generation in its appropriation of television adspeak as a narrative principle. The ten stories here are mostly coming-of-age tales dealing with the difficulties of family relations and personal identity, concentrating especially on misunderstandings between parents and children. ``Tide'' describes a mother's discomfort at her daughter's apparent maturity, a fear symbolized by the mothers concern over the girls first menstruation. ``Rose in the House'' evokes the domestic havoc wrought by a dying woman's decision to move in with her son's family, recounting the bond the women forms with her adolescent grandson (who is as uneasy around his own parents as they are around his grandmother). ``Bridesmaids'' depicts a 25-year-old bridesmaids impending sense of fear over the pace and course of her own life, while ``Doctor Mom'' introduces us to a young physician who practices medicine from her own home. Some more or less surreal entries crop upsuch as ``The Woman Who'' (a woman turns into Marilyn Monroe during a film screening) and ``A Bird Accident'' (the murder of Charlie Parker by a deranged automobile). All the stories open with prologues taken from TV commercials (the detergent commercial for ``Tide,'' for example) intended apparently to set the tone of the action and reflect on its significance. Unremarkable Mommy-and-me pieces, tarted up with postmodern pretensions. Too clever by half. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
