Separate Kingdoms

December 20, 2010
The stories in Laken's capable follow-up to Dream House are divided among the experimental and the straightforward, the hopeful and the wistful. Laken visually splits the title story on the page: one side sees a removed narrator recount a man's coming-to-terms with the loss of his thumbs, the result of "a coffee-and-
ephedrine buzz" and the bypassing of safety regulations at his manufacturing job; the other side tells the story from the perspective of the man's 12-year-old son. Other stories, too, focus on divided perceptions, though with less visual flair. In "Before Long," set in the Russian countryside in 1993, Anton, "twelve and blind," longs to feel useful to his older friend, Oleg, and tries to buy a pornographic magazine for Oleg's collection while on an outing with his overbearing mother. In "Family Planning," Josie and her girlfriend, Meg, travel to Moscow to adopt a child, but when they are given a choice of orphans, the women unexpectedly confront their divergent hopes and expectations. If all this sounds bleak, Laken keeps the misery in check, even as she excavates the split between people, cultures, and generations.

January 1, 2011

Loss, temporary and permanent, physical and emotional, is the hard, gleaming thread tying together Laken's (Dream House, 2009) short-story collection.

The book opens with "Before Long," in which a blind Russian teenager's feelings of helplessness and his comprehension of his isolation are reflected by his developing sexual awareness. In "Spectators," Arnie and Marion, a long-married couple, confront Marion's loss of her leg when Arnie encourages a reluctant Marion to participate in a golf tournament for amputees. A forlorn neighborhood in Detroit is the scene of "Scavengers," and a nameless young man, grieving the recent death of his father, finds himself inveigled into renting a bedroom to a troubled young woman who appears on his doorstep. One of the most affecting and powerful narratives is "Family Planning," wherein a childless lesbian couple journeys to Russia (where Laken has lived and worked) to begin an adoption. "God of Fire" finds a woman confronting her relationship with her strong-willed father as he rests sedated in intensive care following surgery for an aneurysm. The title story, concluding the book, is presented in the form of two columns per page. It becomes a double first-person narrative told from the perspective of a father and son, each struggling to cope with an industrial accident that has amputated the father's thumbs.

An absorbing literary exploration of the geography of loss.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

In this second offering (after the well-received Dream House), Laken presents stories set partly in the United States and partly in Russia (where the Pushcart Prize winner has lived and worked). The stories capture ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. A group of American exchange students are trapped in the new Russia as the Soviet Union is crumbling. A lesbian couple visits a Russian "baby home," hoping to adopt a child. A woman who lost a leg in a car crash is pressured by her husband to enter a golf tournament for amputees. Another sits vigil at the hospital bedside of the father with whom she was never close. The title story is told in two voices, presented side by side on the page and occasionally blending into one story for a line or two. The first half is the third-person story of Cole, holed up on a couch in front of the television and dealing with the effects of a devastating industrial accident. The parallel story is the first-person account of his 12-year-old son, Jack, struggling with neighborhood gossip about his father's injury, as if ordinary adolescent angst weren't enough. It's a challenging but rewarding read. VERDICT Vivid and evocative, these stories will appeal to readers of both popular and literary fiction.--Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib., OH

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2011
In eight short stories, Laken (Dream House, 2009) examines what divides us, from solitude to anger, fear, and silence. All her characters are misfits or damaged, cut off in one way or another from their fellow humans. Theres a blind Russian boy, unable to communicate his desire for independence; a recent amputee, whos taken to experimenting with reticence as she withdraws from her devoted husband; a gay couple adopting a Russian baby, who cant agree on a particular child; a man whos lost his thumbs, the very thing that identifies him as a man, not an animal. We are not fine, his son says, which serves as the theme of these finely crafted, fully realized tales. Laken demonstrates that all of us are in some way isolated from others, trapped in our own thoughts, our own hurts, our own bodies. In setting her stories alternately in Russia and the U.S., Laken shows that borders and oceans create less of a gulf than does the tiny space between two people. Bridging that chasm is our greatest challenge.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)