But,
when you work in publishing, there comes a point when you are no
longer permitted to publish reviews. The possibility of a conflict of
interest becomes too great, and, whether you like it or not, that
particular door is closed for you. That door closed for me much
earlier than I would have liked, not because I wish I could still
publish reviews, but because I miss the level of engagement reviewing
forces on the reviewer. In the years since, I've found that my
appreciation of what I read has changed. There's a very helpful
distillation of content that takes place when you write about what
you've read. The books I feel most connected to, and the ones that I
have the most visceral memories of, are the ones that I've written
about.
I've recently been digging in to Whirl Away, a collection that has recently garnered so many award nominations and accolades I felt almost silly adding my two cents to the mix. Wangersky deserves all the acclaim he's received. The writing is damn good. You know, I know it.
The
thing that's compelled me most about this collection is the fact that
many of the stories are able to make small that which is massive. I
tend to dislike reading about “big” events. I glaze over when I
read jacket copy about startling family crises, tragic, untimely
deaths, the crushing reality of war. I've slowly developed much more
of an interested in the minute and the intimate than the large and
the public. It's a personal preference that I've never really tried
to unpack. I've just accepted it.
Wangersky
walks the fence between these two worlds. “Open Arms” is the
deftly drawn first-person narrative of a middle-aged woman trying not
to reveal her desperation, and her deep-seated guilt, as she leaves
messages for a boyfriend on a bender. It's one of several stories
that crests and falls with the internal struggle of a singular main
character. But Wangersky peppers the collection with stories like
“911,” about a paramedic who essentially steals an ambulance and
accidentally kills a would-be patient in an effort to be a hero, and
“Sharp Corner” about a couple who live at the apex of a turn in a
road so deadly their front yard becomes a regular scene of carnage.
The
beauty of these stories is their restraint. What might be dealt with
melodramatically is treated with the same character-driven
specificity as the more intimate stories. “Sharp Corner”
especially is so rooted in the husband's (often creepy) obsession
with the death in his front yard that I found myself anticipating
another horribly grisly incident solely to see how it would
build/destroy/contort his character and the marriage at the heart of
the story.
Many writers try to make this big-events-in-service-of-intimate-details
balance work, I myself have attempted it to such terrible results
that the stories have never been seen by eyes other than my own. But
Wangersky weights the conflict exactly right, a rare and very much
appreciated gift.