Starting Over

October 21, 2013
Home and family loom large in the nine stories collected in Spencer’s (Marilee) sixth collection. In almost every one, the departure or return of a character serves as a catalyst for action. “Sightings” begins with Mason Everett speculating a bit anxiously about a requested meeting with his adult daughter, Tabitha. A recently widowed, long-lost friend appears unexpectedly in “Return Trip.” In “The Boy in the Tree,” Wallace Harkins pays a surprise visit to his mother to try to straighten out the tension between her and his wife Jenny. Spencer has a special gift for the nuances in “ordinary” human relationships; she creates suspense via anticipation more than through interactions themselves. Place also figures prominently, with most stories set explicitly in small towns in the South, including in Spencer’s native Mississippi. She writes in a relaxed and engaged style, with a considerable amount of dialogue and multiple breaks in each story. In the short but affecting “The Everlasting Light,” a father is moved to unexpected but understandable tears by a small moment of communion with his young daughter. Spencer’s strength lies in highlighting human truths in captured moments.

January 1, 2014

Set in the American South, new stories from veteran author Spencer look deeply at family connections and estrangements. For more than 50 years, her fiction, which includes seven story collections and nine novels, has been widely acclaimed and admired by such masters as Eudora Welty and Alice Munro. These nine tales are immediately accessible but carefully layered with tension, mystery, and unanswered questions. Is there really a boy in a tree, or is an old lady delusional? What happened, or did not happen, between a young woman and her (loosely defined) male cousin, who pays an unexpected visit? What possesses another visiting cousin, in town for a family wedding, to help out the morally dubious fiancee? Spencer leaves these questions open, allowing the reader to imagine the emotional deals that are made between husbands, wives, and assorted others as life continues beyond the page. VERDICT Readers who have enjoyed Spencer's earlier work will not be disappointed by the current collection, and new readers will have the pleasure of discovering a large body of work that is bound to satisfy.--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA

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