The Emerald Light in the Air

Starred review from July 14, 2014
The seven gripping stories gathered in Antrim’s (The Verificationist) long-awaited debut collection showcase the author’s ability to employ surreal and traditional modes to describe the emotional demons plaguing his characters. The opening story, “An Actor Prepares,” is about a dean at a “small liberal-arts institution” who shares his creepy experiences directing a twisted version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The quietly troubling “Pond, With Mud” draws out an awkward chance encounter between a man and his girlfriend’s son’s biological father in a train station. The remaining five stories speak to each other to form a sort of thematic saga, which portrays the nuanced connections between flawed but sympathetic characters. “Solace” highlights the pleasant early stages of a relationship, and follows a couple’s romantic rendezvous in their friends’ New York apartments; more seasoned pairs are entangled and on the brink of collapse, but maneuver around each other to achieve temporary harmony in “Another Manhattan,” “He Knew,” and “Ever Since.” Antrim is well attuned to the idiosyncracies that define the rhythm of a relationship, and is particularly adept at giving shape to the complications that inevitably arise between lovers. A collection of great depth to be read, reread, and above all, relished.

July 15, 2014
Couples unravel and anxieties arerevealed in this batch of urbane, wry and interior stories enlivened byAntrim's talent for gamesmanship with words.Antrim's debut story collection-hisfirst book of fiction since The Verificationist (2000)-sticks to aremarkably narrow set of premises. In "Pond, With Mud," a hard-drinking NewYorker is losing his grip on reality and growing distant from his fiancee andyoung would-be stepson; in "Another Manhattan," a mentally ill New Yorker isfailing at the simple act of buying his wife some flowers before dinner; in"Ever Since," a couple grows strained at a boozy New York literary party. Thisrepetition of setups would be tiring were Antrim not so capable of conjuring avariety of tones and surprising amount of subtlety from these commonpredicaments. In "Another Manhattan," for instance, the man's illness is slowlyand powerfully revealed by his inability to stop the florist from adding moreand more flowers to the bouquet; as the gift absurdly blossoms, his despairfalls into sharp relief. "An Actor Prepares" is a more surrealist look atemotional fissures narrated by a college acting teacher whose guidance to hiscast of A Midsummer Night's Dream reveals both his sexual fixations andromantic failures. And in the closing title story, a man left suicidal by abroken relationship heads back home and, through a series of misadventures, winds up navigating his car through a forest. "The Emerald Light in the Air"refers to the sickly tint in the air before a storm, which captures the overallmood of these stories, where bad news seems to be just about ready to comeraining down. But there's wisdom and humor here, too; Antrim is attuned to theway couples struggle to make themselves heard or obscure their true feelings.A deceptively spiky set ofmeditations on romantic failure.

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August 1, 2014

The stories in Antrim's engaging new collection have been published over the last 15 years in The New Yorker. Many are set in Manhattan, but they are not stereotypically brittle New York stories. Antrim's city dwellers are perpetual renters of fifth-floor walk-ups with careers they cannot sustain as lawyers or painters or actors. They drink more than they should (one story is called "Another Manhattan"), fall easily into infidelities, have a taste for fine clothing they cannot afford, and check themselves in and out of the city's psychiatric wards. At the outset of a story called "He Knew," a husband feels that "he might soon be coming out of the Dread." He leads his chronically panicked wife on their ritual walk along Madison Avenue, stopping first at Bergdorf Goodman and then working their way "north through the East Sixties and Seventies, into the low Eighties, touring the expensive shops." The whole story happens as they walk, worry, and lose each other along the way, and we worry right along with them. VERDICT Master storyteller Antrim has an original voice and an acute sensitivity to the spectrum of human emotion. These are stories this reviewer won't soon forget. [See Prepub Alert, 3/31/14.]--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
If the title of MacArthur fellow Antrim's (The Afterlife, 2006) newest story collection is meant to echo Oz, even faintly, the seven tales within, all of which originally appeared in the New Yorker, do not. Four are set in Manhattan, and all are populated by a bleak species of individuals who drink too much, mix medications, and cheat on their spouses and partners. Many have psychiatric problems; a few are or have been suicidal. This collection anatomizes a peculiar kind of contemporary despair that those enduring it seem almost enchanted withor enchanted by. The lives they look back on are full of regrets, and they seem to live to generate contrition rather than memories. Though many of his protagonists are similar, Antrim is a master of voice and characterization. Especially in An Actor Prepares, the first story in the collection, in which Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is staged at a small college and the students are satisfyingly complex characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)