Criminals

November 23, 2015
In 15 tales of varying stature, PEN/Faulkner Award–finalist Trueblood (Search Party) depicts characters wrestling with love, betrayal, and corruption. “Astride,” concerning extramarital affairs and disappearances in Washington, D.C., during the 1960s, sets the tone for the remainder of the collection. In “You Would Be Good,” a distraught thief breaks into a home where his ex-girlfriend is supposed to be housesitting, hoping to make amends and unaware that she is lying in the ER after a horrendous car crash. “The War Poem” is about a writer who copes with having his poem pilfered and published by another colleague. Years later, the two reconnect and their past comes to a head. Perhaps the best story is “Aiken,” in which a woman, Bridget, visits her aging parents, who have recently taken in a homeless man as a tenant. As Bridget tries to determine this new resident’s agenda, Trueblood deftly examines a family’s idiosyncrasies and the difficulties associated with letting one’s guard down to accept happiness. Though the collection is uneven and frequently leans on similar themes, particularly infidelity, the stories that work are very satisfying.

October 1, 2015
Intense, complicated short stories about intense, complicated people. There are no criminals here]only ordinary people who have to live with their own mistakes, which range from schadenfreude to infidelity to burglary to accidental patricide. Each story in Trueblood's (Search Party, 2013, etc.) collection feels like a condensed version of a novel, dense with incident and crowded with fully realized characters. They unfold quickly, with frequent flashbacks and sidelong observations so insightful they are almost distracting. You have to read them carefully, or read them twice, to get the full effect. In "Skylab," a young nurse with a fine husband has an abortion so she can run off with a much older doctor, a respected man with a family of his own. They move to Malaysia to do medical relief and wind up living among tedious expats, people with native servants and a Quran study group. As the story opens, the usual plagues of heat and insects are compounded by the news that the Skylab satellite is about to fall on Asia. All this in 26 pages]and even the dogs are beautifully characterized: "She was starting to miss dogs, the easygoing, confident dogs of home. In contrast to the thin and craven animals here, they seemed, those golden retrievers with waving tails, to have been the kindly guard of everything untroubled and ordinary"; "Dogs here were like endless rings of a telephone you could not answer. The first day one had trotted past her, a female, nude and measled]wearing that beady female look of having something to do." In another favorite, "Sleepover," a grandmother and a Cambodian housekeeper are left to mind a 14th birthday party in an ultramodern lakeside palazzo in Oregon. They have help from one guest's bodyguard, who gets involved when the girls bring out the boys, booze, and pills in the wee hours. This grandmother, who channels Katharine Hepburn when the police arrive, is a terrific character]the widow of a semifamous folksinger, she's no longer close to her daughter and has recently been ditched by her beau for a younger friend. Like so many of Trueblood's characters, she rolls with the punches, which turns out to be a true form of grace. A seasoned, deeply knowing writer with riches to share.

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December 15, 2015
Trueblood's (Search Party, 2013) latest short story collection features various characters confronting the reality and wreckage of their everyday lives and relationships. Skylab follows Amy, a nurse who has abruptly relocated to Malaysia with her older lover, a doctor, to provide medical aid. A satellite's imminent fall to earth has signaled widespread apprehension, and Amy struggles to navigate a new, unfamiliar landscape alongside fellow expats and amid whispers of her past. In The War Poem, the reunion of former co-workers exposes one man's long-held contempt due to a misappropriated writing credit. In the tense Da Capo, a night out at a Schubert concert provides the backdrop for flashbacks into one couple's strained marriagetested first by the husband's affair with a workplace counselor and the wife's subsequent meeting with her husband's now-former lover. The gut-punching You Would Be Good follows a burglar's misguided attempts to win back an ex-girlfriend. Trueblood's 15 rich tales, varied in length, offer both wide-ranging observation and detailed precision, particularly when it comes to characters' inner negotiations, struggles, and regrets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)