The Star Cafe Book

Mary Caponegro's debut collection includes four disparate pieces: 'Tales From the Next Village' is a set of Chinese tales and fables (presumably gathered from the next village); 'The Star Café' is a darkly erotic short story that relates an isolated woman's nightlong experience with the mysterious owner of the café below her apartment; 'Materia Prima' is an inventive novella told in alternating voices that follows the development of a precocious girl into an unwanted adolescence; and 'Sebastian' is a fairly conventional character study of a British man living in America with his artist fiancée.

Caponegro writes in a confident, controlled style. The level of honed talent she displays belies the fact that this is a debut collection. As with any collection I read written in such varying styles, though, not every piece resonated with me. I found 'Materia Prima' to be the strongest: the most unique in its telling and and most riveting to read. The title story was also strong, although I would have preferred a less direct ending, as it too completely cleared the cryptic fog in which the story's compelling premise had been enshrouded. 'Tales From the Next Village' was enjoyable, though I don't think these tales capitalize on Caponegro's strengths as a writer. Finally, the novella 'Sebastian', while a fine writerly portrait, ultimately did not reach far enough beyond ordinary realism in either content or style to hook me. While it did grow a bit stranger toward the end, it didn't go as far as I'd hoped.

Thematically, there are some common threads tying these pieces together. Characters locked into their ways of life, feeling imprisoned, either through their own making or due to the influence of others around them. Isolated, alienated people, the 'other' in society, and the struggles they face. For each there is an arc, though, and the dark places often lead to moments of release, or at least to an opening up to other possibilities.

This being my introduction to Caponegro, I'm sufficiently intrigued to read further. If everything here had been at the level of 'Materia Prima' I would give the collection five stars. Overall it was more like a 3 for me, but I'm weighting 'Materia Prima' heavier. I'm hoping to find more of the spirit and style of that work in her other writing. And should she one day write a novel I have no doubt it will be extraordinary.Our meager human memories and fantasies and hopes weave a web of nostalgia to which we are bound, locked into compulsion through anticipation or dread, through repetition. Single events occur over and over in memory, until it seems that they concretely had repeated. How we cling to our joys and our trials, grow attached, never able to break free of the burdens we believe to be our jewels. But bonds that once seemed more than real, substantial, even immortal, when we finally see through them, become tenuous indeed.