Referred Pain

January 19, 2004
In the unsettling title novella of Schwartz's latest collection of stories, the deluded son of Holocaust survivors feels that he can finally understand the anguish his parents have experienced when he undergoes a series of difficult dental procedures. As the title implies, his pain is experienced indirectly, and Schwartz's metaphor emerges periodically in these 12 stories about vulnerable characters in uneasy situations. Schwartz (Disturbances in the Field
; Leaving Brooklyn
; etc.), has an uncanny ear for dialogue and a lucid prose style that is by turns comic, surreal and biting, but difficult to categorize. In the clever but not sterile postmodern "Intrusions," she tells of a woman's encounter with an intruder in her apartment building, only to deconstruct the narrative and retell it in a different way. The least rewarding works in the collection are "The Stone Master" and "Deadly Nightshade," which read like contrived, overextended fables. Schwartz's talents are better displayed in stories that bravely mine difficult truths: in "Francesca," a professor finds himself attracted to a student who turns out to be his long-lost daughter, and in "Hostages to Fortune," a middle-aged couple bicker over their two grown children's fates in increasingly abstract terms as the story builds to a startling, ambiguous conclusion. In "Sightings of Loretta," a widower comes to the crushing realization that he never paid enough attention to his wife: "He sat on the bed with horror seeping through him. He was ready to pay attention now. There were questions he needed to ask." With precise economy, Schwartz makes her characters' pain both familiar and felt. 3-city author tour.