Perfect Lives

March 7, 2011
The perfect lives of Samson's characters living in an English seaside town tarnish under closer scrutiny. In her finely-wrought collection of 11 closely-linked stories, Samson (Lying in Bed) plumbs the depths of the human psyche, revealing insecurities, infidelities, and an enduring tenacious spirit. A thoughtless comment at a 40th birthday party and a broken egg in the letterbox on Father's Day shatter a seemingly idyllic marriage. Seeing a girl he likes with a classmate prior to his major recital so demoralized a gifted young pianist that he has turned his significant talents to piano tuning. When years later, the lives of these people briefly intersect, one wonders who has earned the richest life. Samson also examines a little boy's first bittersweet whispers of love for the baby sitter he believes to be a trapeze artist, and a woman's all-consuming love affair with her camera; it causes her to forget her husband's birthday, but also saves the day. Samson's deft touch balances pathos, love, and humor, providing an absorbing look into very real contemporary lives.

January 15, 2016
A cycle of intersecting stories describes the lives that make up an English seaside community--their joys, regrets, and various embarrassments. Samson is gifted in her understanding of and patience for the variety of human experience. In these stories, a piano tuner regrets his untapped talent as a musician; a mother worries that she doesn't love her baby as she should; a young girl tries to get to know her long-lost father and finds herself saddened and exasperated by him at the same time that she's eager for his attention. These characters are all loosely connected to each other. The young mother has a sister who later becomes the piano tuner's lover. The piano tuner's former teacher is the mother of the fatherless girl. This strategy allows Samson to draw for her readers the outline of an entire community. We see how each character affects the others, for good and for bad. Though these characters are stationed in a small seaside town, they aren't trapped there, and the scope of the book widens to encompass mainland Europe. A concert pianist considers her Jewish grandmother's flight from Hamburg as she herself leaves the city after a performance. Another story describes the struggle by inhabitants of Soviet-occupied Poland to build a church. Samson's prose, whatever her topic, is elegant and warm. She has a lyrical touch and a fine eye for detail. Unfortunately, she also has a penchant for preciousness which, when indulged, can be cloying. In her final story, a woman converses with her beloved cat, and the cat, in complete sentences and formal syntax, converses back. Other stories, too, border on cute in their overly tidy resolutions. Samson's benevolence, though, and the good-heartedness of her observations, makes up for those too-sweet moments.Samson's new stories are warm and engaging, but some falter on their own affected charm.

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March 15, 2016
Samson's short story collection, Perfect Lives, illustrates just those: lives that seem perfect on the surface but hide astonishing depths of anger, uncertainty, and complacency. Her characters are people that you know, or think you do: parents, children, friends, and neighbors. Centered on a seaside community in England, characters from one story slip into others, recast as strangers, neighbors, and lovers. The stories stand alone as individual vignettes but are much more satisfying as a well-paced and intertwined set. Samson gives equal weight to the voices of children, teenagers, and adults, never resorting to gimmickry with her youngest characters. Ivan Knows is a stellar example of Samson's ability to write children, specifically one little boy who observes so much that he is only beginning to comprehend. At Arka Pana features Claudine, a witty and sarcastic teenager unsure how to act as the traveling companion to a father she barely knows. Fans of Lauren Acampora's The Wonder Garden (2015) will enjoy Samson's stories of inner resolve, outward deceit, and the risks and rewards of authenticity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)