Synopsis
"Loeb populates her fiction with interesting and engaging characters who force her narrators to reevaluate their relationships to language, to the self, and to the idea of community and connection."--Choice
Reviews
The finest work in this debut collection are the stories that follow a character named Rachel from girlhood to adulthood in Chicago and later Florida. Unfortunately, because the stories are organized by location, not all the ones about Rachel are grouped together, which can be jarring. Her escapades with a snobby friend named Cynthia, the time she sneaks out at six in the morning to wish an elderly neighbor happy birthday, and in particular her experiences after befriending an overweight, promiscuous girl in high school all provide fertile ground for Loeb's incisive writing. Other stories depict Rachel in Florida, caring for her aging mother, whose health is rapidly deteriorating, and these too have a quiet force. Most of the other work has a flip quality to it, as though Loeb were writing about demographic groups rather than specific characters. Although these stories set up amusing situations--a woman stays with the friend of a friend in New York and finds that he lives in a filthy apartment and practices "back-to-the-womb therapy" in his bathtub; a man becomes obsessed with collecting Hawaiian shirts--they seem all surface and no substance in comparison to the more moving "Rachel" pieces around them.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Fourteen stories, some of which were published in obscure literary mags, make up this grab-bag debut collection. Six pieces set in Chicago are told from a young girl's point of view, with a few of them re-creating her breathless syntax and loose sense of punctuation. Rachel and Miriam, Loeb's alternating fictional protagonists, indulge in much commonplace behavior. In the title story, Rachel joins her friends in their petty cruelty to an unusual girl who also happens to be the best jump-roper around. In ``Madame Alexander,'' Rachel's expensive doll collection drives a wedge between her parents and upsets her jealous best friend. ``Birthday Girl'' wanders over a history of youthful parties, and leads into her parents' divorce. At 15, in ``The Sadie Hawkins Day Dance,'' Rachel befriends an unpopular fat girl, who proves to be quite sexually active, much to Rachel's disgust. The joys and sorrows of a Jewish family gathering provide the texture of ``Family Meetings.'' And Miriam, in her 20s, relives her tortured teenage years through the troubled sister of her boyfriend (``The Koquettes''). As an adult, Rachel lives in Florida, where she and her husband entertain and console a group of local bachelors (``The Bachelors''); and, on two occasions (``The World Traveller'' and ``Safe Passage''), she endures the visits of her mother, whose physical decline results in much guilt. Rachel complains while sorting out her mother's things back in Chicago (``Uncertain Geographers''), while Miriam whines her way through a visit to New York City (``Going Under'') and a one-night stand in San Francisco (``Henry's Africa''). Two uncharacteristic stories are really the most interesting--a meditation on alligators (``Fauna in Florida''), and a tale of one man's obsession with Hawaiian shirts (``Hawaiian Dukes''). Familiar stuff about growing up: competently crafted, but very much a first book. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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