Mendocino and Other Stories
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
With humor, wisdom and tenderness, Ann Packer offers ten short stories about women and men--wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, friends, and lovers--who discover that life's greatest surprises may be found in that which is most familiar.
In the title story, on the anniversary of their father's suicide a young woman discovers that her brother may have found a "reason for living" in the love of a good woman. In "Nerves," a young man realizes that the wife he is separated from no longer loves him but that it is his own life he misses, not her. The narrator of "My Mother's Yellow Dress" is a gay man remembering his deceased mother and their vital and troubling intimacy. In "Babies"--which was included in the prestigious O. Henry anthology series --a single woman in her mid-thirties finds that everyone, including her best friend at work, is pregnant, and that their joy can only be observed, not shared. In these and six other stories, Ann Packer exhibits an unerring eye for the small ways in which people reveal themselves and for the moments in which lives may be transformed.
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Packer's stories feature 30-something men and women who wake up one morning to find their lives have taken quite unexpected, and not really desirable, turns. In ``Babies,'' unmarried Virginia pines away on the sidelines as her co-workers blossom into long-awaited pregnancies. Finally, when her good friend Sam gives birth, Virginia visits the new mother and baby and must face her deep longing for a child: ``A real baby. I touch her cheek; it's so incredibly soft and pink and warm . . . I can feel the warmth of her body . . . all the way to my breast . . . there are tears rolling down my face.'' Packer draws the reader into the frustrating stalemates that engulf her characters, but she is not afraid to inject a bit of gentle humor along the way. Hypochrondriac Charlie (``Nerves''), who can't seem to develop any enthusiasm for living, is losing his wife little by little. Perhaps her friend Kiro is the reason. ``This is all about Kiro? Jesus, Linda--too bad I'm not some fastidious little Japanese architect, is that it? He probably doesn't even have any hair on his chest.'' The stories are rich in detail and concentrate on the unexpressed emotions festering under the surface of each character's thin skin. Mendocino is a find, and Packer gives voice to the angst of the '90s.
