You Would Have Told Me Not To

May 25, 2020
Across six stories and one novella, Coake (You Came Back) addresses well-worn themes like divorce and death, yet writes with a flair that keeps his narratives engaging. In the title story, Suzanne drives through the night in swirling snow “she could only describe as malevolent” to help care for her estranged son, Sean, after he’s been shot. Once she arrives, she learns he is married; his wife, Abby, is pregnant; and Suzanne’s ex-husband has also been summoned. “Waste,” the best of the bunch, concerns a group of hard-up men hired to illegally remove barrels of toxic waste from an Indianapolis building to make room for a new church (“Harvey follows God’s law, but he’s a little more flexible about man’s”). Mick, the narrator, can’t help wondering if another worker is his son, the result of his sleeping around decades earlier. And in the novella, “Big Guy,” Doug, a divorced, overweight high school English teacher, forces himself to diet. He dates another overweight teacher, and as he loses weight, he desires a skinnier partner. These stories are never dull thanks to rich prose and sharp dialogue. With humor and heft, Coake hammers home the ways the past can boomerang to change the present.