Other People We Married

December 19, 2011
Though fresh and satisfying insights can surface in even the most common terrain, this debut story collection, from the daughter of horror heavyweight Peter Straub, offers little originality or wit. Despite the stories taking place in different locations, what the characters encounter along the way remains provincial, the circumstantial and geographic territory covered ringing all too familiar. Set in the Midwest, “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” presents a young female professor with a crush on one of her students. In “Rosemary,” set in Brooklyn, a new mother’s beloved cat flees after the baby is born. In the title story, Franny’s best friend is a gay man who awkwardly accompanies her and her husband on a Martha’s Vineyard vacation. “Puttanesca,” by contrast, is a delight: Stephen and Laura met through their bereavement counselor, having each lost a significant other when young. Despite a trip to Italy, Laura in particular remains in the shadow of her dead husband, and in this there is tenderness and intrigue. “Orient Point” follows an unlikely couple and their baby to Long Island. Though it’s the shortest of the collection, it’s also the strongest, nailing both a humor and an inevitable loss that is never quite realized in the other stories. Agent: Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Brick House.

January 1, 2012
Psychologically acute, often very funny and only occasionally glib, these stories show great promise, though a few of the dozen in this debut collection are almost as slight as the best are compelling. Straub writes predominantly from the perspective of a youngish woman in New York (where she lives and works as a bookseller) and often in the first person, though these narratives seem to transcend the thinly disguised memoir of so much fledgling fiction. Certain motifs seem signature. Many of the stories have a coming-of-age quality to them, though the "girls" who are experiencing these rites of passage might be well into their 20s or 30s, and some are even mothers. Like Franny, the unhappily married (or at least unfulfilled, for happiness may be beyond the emotional range of so many of Straub's characters) protagonist of three of these stories: "She still thought she was a cow with her leftover baby weight and yet insisted on wearing those stupid pigtails all young mothers seem to think it's their right to wear, as if they were all waiting, gasping, praying for someone to say, Oh, you! You can't be the mother of this child! You couldn't possibly be old enough!" In addition to arrested development, or a post-adolescence that extends into what was once considered middle age, a surprising number of these stories find two (or more) characters on vacation, or in a state of dislocation, a place where either the relationship changes or they (or at least one of them) discovers what has been wrong all along. They must, as Franny discovers in the pre-marriage "Pearls," where her friendship with her very different roommate briefly turns romantic. In the first-person opening story, "Some People Must Really Fall in Love," a young teacher in the grip of what she considers an inappropriate infatuation with a student tells her freshman class that "stories didn't have to have morals at the end." And many of these stories are left comparatively open-ended, rich in interpretive possibility. A fresh voice from a writer who deserves discovery.

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February 15, 2012

Straub's stories go down easy, like a remembered conversation with a wise and witty friend. In her debut collection, she establishes characters and situations that feel immediately familiar and draw one in from the start. Many of her first sentences read like overheard dialog from the couple at the next table at the local bistro, but in this case one gets the chance to learn the delicious context. A story called "Rosemary" begins, "Claire didn't want to tell her husband that she'd called a pet psychic." Another, titled "A Map of Modern Palm Springs," features two sisters with a difficult history trying out a vacation together and begins, "The Palm Springs airport was more outside than inside, all sun-soaked breezeways and squinting white people in gold shirts." VERDICT These stories of love in its various permutations, gone wrong and right, are told with a captivating wryness, reminiscent of the early Ann Beattie, that readers will find tremendously appealing.--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2012
Straub's collection of short stories is a resplendent debut, arriving in a whirl of buzz, thanks to her appearances in Tin House, the Paris Review, and Slate. Heir to Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, Straub evinces marvelous literary confidence in her deadpan hilarity, eye for redolent details, and acute psychological insights. She also excels at the art of sudden reversals as she takes measure of the unbridgeable gaps that divide us and the leaps that save us. The deeply involving title story is one of several featuring magnetic Franny Gold, whose entanglements cause equal degrees of bliss and anguish. Elsewhere, three young college English professors share a tiny office, and two very different sisters make the mistake of vacationing together. In the standout, Abraham's Enchanted Forest, a teenage daughter assesses her life with her hippie parents, who run a funky roadside attraction. In the wistful, funny, and unnerving Fly-Over State, a New Yorker comes undone in Wisconsin. Straub's stories glow and pulse and, like sea anemones, are far more complex and dangerous than their bright and beckoning appearances suggest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)