Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry: Stories Book

Hmmm. I am tempted to use the gr star rating system because relying on stars helps me avoid writing more meaningful reviews. And I am ambivalent about reviewing this book (with or without stars), partly because I am ambivalent about the book itself. I hesitate to write a critical review. Lately I really want to find the kernel of what people are trying to communicate and to focus on what is unique about a writer's awareness and sensibilities, rather than attending to what does not work for me. That said, I am not, I don't think, a fantastically generous reader. I am trying.

One thing I will say for this book. The title is spectacular. I was a little disappointed by the rest. I think the title led me to believe this collection would have a certain sense of humor or wit. The title is a bit of a misrepresentation, somehow, of the ethos of the book.

The first story is quite good, the best in the collection in many ways. It's a spare, finely crafted little horror story in which violence comes over time in subtle ways -- mainly in the form of emotional withdrawal, withholding of affection and information, and a cold and dangerous unwillingness, of an apparently powerful older man, to end an affair with a younger, more vulnerable female protagonist, who, over time, finds herself attracted to and repulsed by his offers of infrequent and finite sexual contact. They go to hotels, have sex, and he gives her mystifying handfuls of cash. Does he see her as a daughter? a lover? a sex worker? something else? How does her confusion about his intentions and perception of her influence how she sees herself? Their small, dubious intimacies, remain at an unnameable distance from the messy, intimate, imperfections of more engaged love. Lyndsey finds herself at first drawn in by the strange and neat lines of their connection, until these lines blur and blur into something quite sinister. At a certain point she can no longer read the meaning of things at all (his actions, her feelings, what it is that led her down this road, and whether there is an exit on this highway to hell.) Seems like some people see this as a cautionary tale about getting involved with strangers? Something along the lines of, this woman put herself in harms way by having an affair with this man, and the author is holding her accountable for her actions? Eek. I hope to god that this isn't the point or the attitude of this story. I certainly didn't read it that way. I think it has subtler considerations about intimacy, patterns of behavior that create deeper and deeper grooves in the pathways of our lives. There are unspoken, unaddressed things that can turn into dangerous undercurrents because we cannot or will not become adequately conscious of them until the currents are already too strong to break free of.

After the first story, I found the stories less and less compelling. The prose gets messier and the themes and language repetitive. Nevertheless, I appreciate the characters and their attempts to understand their own mysterious relationships to love, sex, affection, connection. These are smart and curious explorations of relationships, mainly romantic ones, in which people's motives are unclear to each other, and even themselves. There is some mystery in each story about the laws or facts or possibilities of attraction.