Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

June 22, 2009
In this debut collection of eight esoteric stories—three of them prize winners—Peelle’s characters negotiate tumultuous relationships and buried memories. This nimbly crafted group of lonely souls range from a one-legged taxidermist, who happens to be the only person in town who does not believe a hungry panther is on the loose, to a winter-bound woman, tormented by her ex-husband but saved by the most unlikely of creatures. In “This Is Not a Love Story,” a mother comes across a box of old photographs, which remind her of a summer she spent trying to turn a hobby into a career and a lush into a husband. In “Sweethearts of the Rodeo,” the narrator reminisces about working at a stable with her best friend, tormenting their handsome boss and the rich women who board their horses there. Yet another, “The Still Point,” follows a man traveling with a carnival, trying to outrun the loss of his twin brother and family home. Peelle writes her meaty characters with vigor and packs each tale with descriptions so subtly vibrant that they warrant multiple visits.

Starred review from June 1, 2009
Experts can talk about environmental devastation until they grow hoarse and still make little impression. Put a gifted storyteller on the case, however, one who articulates the psychological and spiritual wounds we sustain as nature is decimated, and our attention is seized. This is what Peelle does with stunning clarity and candor. These tales of sex, death, tattered nature, and battered people and animals do not prettify. No, this is nature raw and maggoty as Peelle inhabits the minds of loners, burnouts, and losers in dire, absurd, or tragic predicaments. In Phantom Pain, a searing story about a taxidermist who has lost a leg to diabetes, she tells us that whats missinga limb, forests, wildlife, quiethurts like hell. In the haunting title story, a gentle, solitary woman crushed by the desecration of the living world wonders, What is there to hope for? But then, as many of Peelles brokenhearted characters do, she experiences an epiphanic vision oflifes indomitable force. Rock-solid prose, surprising connections, and resounding transformations add up to powerful and significant stories of improvised life in a consumed world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)