Unkempt

July 12, 2004
Thought- rather than plot-driven, this debut short fiction collection vacillates between incisive dark humor and meandering jaunts through the jumbled mess of characters' heads. The title story is a precise, painful exposé of a mother-daughter relationship as mother and daughter bounce off each other with all the grace of bumper cars: " 'There. Is. No. Situation. Do-you
-under-stand
-what-I'm-say
-ing?' she said, mouthing her words like she was speaking to a retard or something." The unparalleled bizarreness of life in New York City is a common theme throughout, delineated especially carefully in "Young Professionals," which rapidly runs through agoraphobia, AIDS, armpit-hair eating cats, obsessive-compulsive disorder and the mysteries of androgyny. The sly "Sharks" plays on the irrational fears people love to discover in others, the narrator vowing to "find weakness, I will, and then I'll go for the kill." Strongest and most entertaining is the novella "The Former World Record Holder Settles Down," in which a porn star who's had sex with 197 men tries to reconcile her past with her current life as a happily married, faithful wife. A few stories are overclever and less absorbing, but most are bitingly insightful, summed up by the porn star's belief: "Everyone has a story; anyone's infinitely capable of fucking up without any good reason other than the fact that they're human." Agent, Nat Sobel.

June 15, 2004
In her debut fiction collection, hip writer Eldridge offers seven short stories and one novella, all guaranteed to sweep readers into her zany fictional world. Eldridge covers the gamut of human experience, from the opening story, "Fits & Starts," a hilarious exploration of the writing process, to the concluding novella, "The Former World Record Holder Settles Down," a melancholy commentary on the devolutionary nature of intimate relationships. Previously published in journals such as McSweeney's, the Mississippi Review, Salt Hill Journal, and Post Road, these stories accentuate Eldridge's ability to create diverse first-person narratives, all perfectly revealing the quirky perspectives of their speakers. Her narrative framework, too, contributes to the stories' movement. Thus, the text of "Thieves" unfolds as a letter from a retail employee to a credit card company. Eldridge's brilliant eye for particulars engenders often surprising conclusions, as things spin out of control or fall apart. In fact, some of the stories mimic the process of therapy, as telling details accumulate and explode into emotional realization. Highly recommended for all public and academic fiction collections.-Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA

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