The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space Book

This was a very strong collection of stories. I'm surprised that there has been not a major work from this writer because there seems to be a great talent.

Stories are " The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space " which tells the story of a Russian immigrant college professor, widowed, that is suffering from some sort of brain degeneration. She believes she has come across an idea of understanding time and space, ( multiverse, EVERYTHING, is the multiverse ) but at the same time her mental degeneration is increasing. At the same time she has become infatuated with a student secretary in the department with enormous, perfect breasts. Trust me it all comes together more than you think it would.

" Girls I Know " is an excerpt from an actual novel. As a brief glimpse it does not offer enough to work. Our narrator is an unnamed Doctoral student in Boston, his dissertation has all but fallen by the wayside. He has something going on with Ginger a woman at least a decade younger, she is wealthy and brilliant and, in fact, is working on a novel which is the title of this story, but our narrator can never be comfortable with her feelings for him because of their age and socioeconomic differences. I believe if I read the novel there would be a much clearer picture of the relationship.

Labor Day, Hurricane, 1935: Interesting for what it is. Told as the memories of a boy who lived through the Key West hurricane of 1935. At the same time we get a glimpse of his family dynamic, especially that between his Father and his beloved Uncle Archibald.

Copley Square : A strong story with a character that we hope is redeemable. Our narrator has moved to Boston from Lowell but has not met much success. He is a futon salesman. Overtime he meets a young woman in the Copley market. She speaks little English but they do communicate and soon develop a strong attachment. At the same time he is foundering. He becomes violent, accidentally ( really ) injuring her. Eventually he goes to AA and an older man becomes his sponsor. This relationship between the two is critical and shows how much one person can make a difference in another persons life. Later, as part of his recovery, he goes to Andrea and apologizes to her. She is a strong Christian and embraces him and accepts it. There is no movie ending however, at least not that we see

The Surprising Weight of the Body's Organs: Sharon is an organ deliverer. She and her husband Stew run a business which transports critical organs around the country for transplants. Their marriage is not strong. It is, in fact, crumbling. Eventually we learn their own son died of kidney failure a few years ago and broke them. This business came out of that. When they show up to win award for their work Sharon's speech is confrontational to the extreme, advising everybody in the audience that if they have two kidneys they are being selfish. A story that shows the constant pain of the loss of a child.

Haircuts : A man recounts his teenage years in Denver. The summer of his junior year he became unfaithful to his regular barber George. Staid, haranguing, old, he is not the barber he wants. A barber named Juma moves into the neighborhood, as all his friends go there he decides to as well. Juma is fun, he has dirty magazines, he, also, cannot cut hair. Later we discover that George and Juma are brothers and George is very angry at his brother. Later the boys ask Juma to help them buy marijuana and after much pleading he helps them out. When one of them is busted Juma is given up. When our narrator goes back to George he is shocked that George is so enraged at him and his friends for their betrayal of his brother.

The River : Not a strong story. Set in Paris? Our narrator meets a young woman along the waterfront where he jogs everyday. She is not impressed by him, his jogging, his Americanness, she is a student. Eventually they meet daily watching the river rise and sink during the rainy season, eventually spending an afternoon of love together before she tells him she is leaving

Saint Francis in Flint : The story which first showed me this writer, I saw it in an old issue of Granta. Edwin is in his thirties, overweight, sees a shrink twice a week and goes to a support group for people who have lost loved ones in plane crashes. That, right there, is a great deal to think about. On top of that his Mother, who he still lives with, has short and mid term memory failure from back in the seventies when she was caught under a pesticide spraying plane. We follow Edwin on his days as he struggles to live and write the great A erican novel.

Fellowship of the Bereaved : Horribly, intense story, also dealing with death and loss. Jared a Doctoral student in Boston for the last half decade has returned home three times in the last two months, this being the last for Christmas. His sister Ann has died. His parents are wrecked. He is as well, especially when he is there. We watch him interact with his friends. His family, his Father has been a drinker, now he has a real problem. He returns in the spring and goes with his parents to see a tree dedicated to Ann's memory in the Botanical gardens. There is no resolution in the story, how can there be when your child dies. Your sister dies. There is a wretched, heartbreaking last paragraph that says it all :

" whenever he went back to Denver, Jared thought of himself and his sister as little children.Ann was in these memories too, but not in the foreground, it saturated the memories but it was not itself remembered. He thought of them holding hands as they crossed sixth Avenue, or riding their bikes on 4 July, streamers tied to their seats, sparklers held in their hands. He thought of the small moments in the summers when they would have all the time in the world to them selves: time to finger paint and play board games and snooze on the couch in the living room and pretend their parents bed was a ship in rough seas in the basement laundry room was a dungeon. Time to feel joyous and irritable and bored. He remembered the two of them performing the complicated math required to calculate how old they would be in the year 2000, the year 2020, the year 2030. Their grandmother was already in her late 70s by then, surely they would both live just as long, get married, have children, grandchildren, they're very own dogs. They did their cold, assured calculations in tandem, adding years to their lives as if they were jellybeans to be piled up indiscriminately and devoured at will. Outside, the Elms green leaves he in the breeze while other children played in the shade and pets slept on porches. All around him was life, lazy and language: to be taken for granted and held loosely in their small hands."