Further Adventures in the Restless Universe Book

When Michael Kimbell said that "nobody is writing sentences" like Dawn Raffel's sentences, he was not exaggerating. Her lines, her stories, are spiky things that don't sit easily in the hand. I felt a peculiar sort of stress as I read Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, newly published by Dzanc Books; I was confronted with how the stories resist simple narrative and scene and dialogue, while at the same time luring me in with their intoxicating mood, the emotive power behind miscommunication, and the uncertain standing her characters--like us readers--have in the world. There is something precise and potent in Raffel's brief tales of family, lovers, and attempts to connect (twenty-one stories are collected in this 100-page book); each tale is a portal to the tender points that serve as a harmonic to our everyday talk and our deep memory.

Raffel focuses especially on speech; there are a lot of verbal exchanges here that are often manifested in one-word banter. In her conversation with Kimball, Raffel said that this minimalist approach to dialogue is intended to convey how most of us only hear a word or two of what others say. What is on the page, then, is what sticks for these characters. For readers navigating the exchanges, we experience both a rawness and mutedness to this filtered kind of conversation: what is heard and, sometimes, meant, is set in high relief, while the lack of contextual words and verbal filler that we are accustomed to in speech gives these exchanges a dream-like, underwater feel.

At the same time, even outside of the speech in Raffel's stories, her writing is patently sonic; it is evident that she hears every syllable of her stories. To read them is to defamiliarize these syllables, to meet them again, anew.

"Visible light covers only about one octave, speaking in musical terms." That's the epigraph for Further Adventures, a translated quote from Max Born's The Restless Universe--which Raffel's father used to read to her when she was young, and of which she understood nearly nothing. Like Born, Raffel's book is interested in alternative octaves; as a reader, the temptation to stick with what is visible, what we are familiar with in traditional storytelling, exacerbates the awe we feel when confronted with ... let us call it the invisible light. What we see there, what rhymes and dissents from what we know in the visible light, feels essential.

This is a collection that operates on its own pitch, its own time, its own light. It is "minimal" storytelling only in it that is says nothing extra; little galaxies are contained in these spare stories.

For an unconventional collection of short stories published by an indie press, it is both surprising and pleasing to see it reviewed in high-profile places; no doubt that this is in part due to Raffel's career as a magazine editor in New York. Among the responses:

* Vanity Fair: "The stories in Dawn Raffel's astonishing Further Adventures in the Restless Universe (Dzanc) as as sharp and bright as stars."
* Time Out New York: "Raffel's work sits comfortably with that of authors like Amy Hempel and Diane Williams: "Her prose is intense enough to make even everyday topics seem fire-hot."
* O, The Oprah Magazine: "Sharp, spare stories about women at, or approaching, the end of their ropes."
* Publisher's Weekly: "Raffel's stripped-to-the-bone prose is a model of economy and grace."
* Booklist: "These reflective, well-tempered fictions are bursting with energy, requiring readers to look more closely at the world around them."
* More: "Highly imaginative stories filled with sly wit..."

To those weighty endorsements, add mine.

(Book Review originally published at www.isak.typepad.com