Love Like That

Starred review from January 25, 2021
Duffy-Comparone gives voice to a wide range of women and girls leading hardscrabble lives in her bold debut collection. In “The Zen Thing,” Anita, 23, endures her family’s eccentricities during an annual beach vacation with her older art professor turned boyfriend in tow. Here, as in all the stories, the prose packs a punch: “The narrative of an affair much more reasonable than the living of it, which is, when you get right down to it, a clusterfuck,” Anita reflects. “Marvel Sands” is an exquisite story of 15-year-old Ann’s sexual awakening after she takes a job to escape living in the cramped apartment of her mom’s boyfriend, Ronny, “one side of a defeated-looking duplex.” In “The Package Deal,” the author blazes through the labyrinthine terrain of step-motherhood as a woman develops a relationship with a divorced man and his difficult eight-year-old son. In the marvelous title story, a woman upends her life to care for her hapless brother. Duffy-Comparone nails her characters in a mere few words (when Anita’s mother gets hot flashes, she yanks her bra from her sleeve “like a rabbit from a hat”), often placing them in a realistically oppressive atmosphere (Ronny, according to Ann, wears “hostile cologne” along with his netted sports jerseys). Heartrending prose and a sprinkling of humor make this one a winner.

January 15, 2021
Young women glimpse men's baffling behavior and discover their own. In this debut collection, which includes two Pushcart Prize-winning stories, Duffy-Comparone's female protagonists are betwixt and between. They're teenage girls not yet experienced enough to know the difference between abuse and affection, girls who unwittingly thrill to lecherous male attention. They're young women dating dramatically older men who like the idea better than the reality. They're childless women moving in with men who are fathers and finding themselves jealous of their boyfriends' offspring. The world is bewildering, in part because of the mysterious nature of love. That's the case for Anita in "The Zen Thing," who is having an affair with a man her parents' age and trying to reconcile two very different feelings: that she has totally ruined her life and that she loves a multitude of things about her boyfriend, not least of which is that "he looks good in everything." Elsewhere, it's the inexplicable nature of physical desire. In "Marvel Sands," the 15-year-old narrator thinks she wants her 60-year-old boss to "touch [her]" even though he repeatedly invades her personal space and insults her intelligence. There are allusions to other iconic short stories here--Lorrie Moore's "Terrific Mother" and Raymond Carver's "Why Don't You Dance?" come to mind, and Duffy-Comparone's characters are the offspring of both: emotionally flattened while also capable of sharp, witty thoughts. (Braces, one character observes, "made a wet, tragic thing of consonants.") This combination is devastating in "The Offering," the collection's standout story, about a little girl trying to navigate her parents' separation and her mother's emotional abuse. You'll want to cry at the end when you learn what the girl sacrifices to try to control a situation that is completely out of her hands. Well-crafted, emotionally stirring work.

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March 1, 2021
Duffy's unforgettable debut is an intense, emotional exploration of the unconventional relationships various women and girls experience. In "Zen," Anita spends the day at the beach with her family reflecting on the hardships and disappointments she quietly endures in her seemingly fairytale relationship with her former professor. In "Marvel Sands," 15-year-old Ann and her mother find themselves at the mercy of men who seem entitled to invade their personal space. In "Sure, Fine," an indecisive woman moves back home after a breakup and becomes reacquainted with an older love interest from her teenage years. In "The Package Deal," the narrator discovers the difficulties of living with her boyfriend and his child. She is forced to tolerate "the Kid," but soon finds herself forming a unique kinship with him. This collection of dark, tender, and enthralling short stories is captivating. Duffy is a masterful storyteller and uses vivid imagery to showcase the pivotal moments in the lives of these broken but resilient female characters as they go through loss, love, hurt, and healing.

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