Dreaming in color

A collection of short stories featuring women from all walks of life, including "The Women's Club," "Rules and Secrets," "Across the Bridge," "Friends and Oranges," and more

These 19 fresh, vivid short stories are set in small, declining North Carolina towns. Sharply observant, they ring true with the easy cadences of rural speech. Many of them capture a turning point in the lives of teenaged girls, who, as they cast an uneasy eye on the breakup of marriages, or observe friends with abusive lovers or neighbors with severely restricted lives, make an almost unconscious decision to break away. Rich with gentle humor, in "The Silver Crescent," a fearful and suspicious grandmother makes her first trip to New York, a journey experienced in unexpectedly zestful ways by her 13-year-old granddaughter. Men in these stories fare badly; they are adulterous, disturbed, insensitive or egocentric. A few stories deal with women, who, by virtue of their intellect and determination have escaped their harsh lives. Though limited in scope, the collection is braced by sharp characterizations and a strong evocation of a gritty, working-class milieu.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this uneven collection of 19 stories depicting women in various stages of life, from teenager to housewife to professional to Southern grandmother, Moose uses pseudo-Imagism to show how women view their situations through association. Generally, her tautness works, as in "Rules and Secrets," where a single image hints at why a popular teacher is fired, or in "The Blue Bonnet Bug," where a childhood fear of rats spawns a woman's sudden illness. But a reckless shower of these images, as in "The Women's Club," overwhelms the material. Only the last story, "Friends and Oranges," about two women whose artistic husbands leave them, realizes all the author's devices; and only the misused Impressionism of image-showers denotes the "dreaming" of the title.
- Kenneth Mintz, formerly with Bayonne P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.