The Girl of the Lake

April 24, 2017
The 10 generous, daring short stories in the new collection by the author of Life Among Giants range from tricky romance to dark comedy to breathtaking adventure. Roorbach casts his gaze on characters whose lives are spinning out of control. Sometimes they’re reeling from a loss, like the recent widower in “The Tragedie of King Lear” who loses himself, in more ways than one, in the role of volunteer for a summer stock theater. Other times, they find themselves violently, surprisingly in love, like the jaded narrator of “Some Should,” who posts her photo on “two dating sites, one snuggly, the other filthy” and ends up in a bar listening to the memories of an Episcopalian priest with a startling past. Roorbach can write a story that hones in on a couple of eventful days, like “The Fall,” in which two young lovers, perhaps less compatible than they had originally thought, start a backpacking trek through the Maine woods. He’s also capable, in a way that suggests comparisons with Alice Munro, of contracting the eventful lives of several characters into the space of a short story, and of embedding stories within other stories. Like the magical tales a wealthy immigrant spins for a bored and then enchanted sixth grader in “Harbinger Hall,” Roorbach’s cunningly crafted stories start off ordinary, and then turn magically strange.

Starred review from April 1, 2017
Elegant, assured short stories by Roorbach (Summers with Juliet, 2016, etc.), winner of an O. Henry Prize for a story gathered in an earlier collection.The germs of whole novels, or at least novellas, can easily be found in several of Roorbach's stories. One, "Harbinger Hall," works from a beguiling premise: a young scamp forges a pass to get out of school, permanently, and falls under the aegis of the meaningfully named Mr. D'Arcy, who abets his anarchy while steering him toward a real education, "lessons on the maps; lessons on a polished-brass microscope; lessons in a dozen languages; lessons in business, ethics, economics; lessons in math and mythology; lessons in what the old man called charm." Through those lessons, Bobby becomes Robert, a man of parts. Or so we imagine, since Bobby is still Bobby at the end of the story, still a kid in jeans and sneakers sometime in the 1960s. Roorbach's characters are often intellectuals or at least smart people; one memorable one is a young woman who, the narrator of "Dung Beetle" tells us, was "formidable in her own way, too, don't get me wrong; it's just that for her there were other subjects besides Marxism." Thus the sentimental education of a "callow boy" begins. Roorbach writes in unadorned, vigorous language, occasionally allowing a word such as "chondrichthyan" to slip in, though never without reason; "shark" wouldn't have quite done it, given the elevated machinations that are taking place in "Broadax, Inc.," which moves into the grown-up world, decidedly inferior to the imaginative world of childhood. But even childhood has its fraught moments; says one teenager of a difficult home life, "My phone-in therapist says [my sisters are] damaged from all the moves. Also, my mother has been in a major depression since Judith was born. Also, my father is basically a Nazi." Poor dad doesn't get a chance to defend himself, but given that "Kiva" takes place in Wernher von Braun territory, it just could be.... Readable entertainments that have much to say about the world.

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Starred review from May 1, 2017
Following his novel The Remedy for Love (2014), Flannery O'Connor Prize winner Roorbach returns to short stories, offering another master class in the form as each meticulously chiseled-down and polished tale contains enough plot, character development, and emotion to fill a novel. Most deal uniquely with affairs of the heart. In Kiva, a young man's crush on a classmate is complicated when her two sisters join them on a picnic. Elsewhere, unlikely love is found when a woman farmer and a former priest meet through online dating, and a drunken and adulterous kiss triggers an epic tale of revenge. One of two masterpieces is The Tragedie of King Lear, in which a retired widower becomes heavily involved in the local theater. The story perfectly captures loneliness and then a sense of purpose and belonging that evolve into a drama of Shakespearean proportion. The other future classic is Harbinger Hill, in which a lonely boy bent on misadventure is caught trespassing on a mysterious estate only to be indulged by the elderly, eccentric owner with a predilection for spinning fables. These stories, with their smart and funny dialogue, characters both wise and fallible, are sure to capture the reader's imagination, and heart. For fans of Richard Russo and Russell Banks.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)