I have probably talked about this book more than once. Lorrie Moore is a great short story writer and "How to Talk to Your Mother" from SELF HELP is a poignant one. The blurb states her stories are uncommonly funny. Not this one.
The story moves backwards in time, beginning after her mother is dead (1982) and ending at her own birth (1940). She mixes real life events along with her own experiences. Hers is not a happy life, nor was her mother's. Do sad mothers ever produce happy daughters? Probably not often unless a strong father is a presence and here he is not much of one. The writing is beautiful but the situations are mostly sad. Our narrator seems unable to find love or bear a child. She can't get along with her mother but is stuck taking care of her.
I will look for an amusing story next.
9 comments:
This sounds like an intense story in its way, Patti. I find it interesting, too, that it goes backwards in time. That doesn't happen very often in stories.
No, it was an unusual technique.
Though examples pop up in the literature fairly widely. Even in crime fiction (though if mysteries, they tend to be, though not even there necessarily, "open" mysteries, at least verging on reverse procedurals). Time-backwards stories are most comfortable in fantasy, but can be fun (if trick) in all fiction.
Love Lorrie Moore's writing.
I'm waiting for the fourth Philip K. Dick collection (from 1954-1964) before I read the fifth one (1964 on) that I have on hand. The first three collections were mostly stories from the early 1950s.
Still reading the Gerald Kersh (nearly done). Also reading an interesting book I was gifted by George, John Hayden Howard's REAWAKENED WORLDS Vol. 1. These are mostly (but not all) science fiction stories. Thanks, George!
Jeff, you're welcome! John Hayden Howard is a forgotten writer today, but I enjoyed his stories in SF magazines back in the 1960s.
I've finally read the second of only three stories about a young woman named Arcana that Janet Fox wrote in the '70s, and like Howard, Fox too might be remembered by too few. My post is up now:
https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/posts/8525415828746712027 and with luck this damned laptop won't jump up and erase this post's content again. So far, so good. (Yes, my Apple laptops are giving up the ghost...so two cheap Chromebooks are what you get when you pay for them.)
We'll see (maybe!) how posterity treats Lorrie Moore, whose work I love as well.
This story sounds good, and I like that it goes backward in time. I always like stories about family relationships, and especially mother / daughter relationships. I have only read few stories by Lorrie Moore and mostly I found them to be strange, but I acclimated to them. I want to read more of them.
Not certain if I have ever read Moore's work. I count her as one of those writers who has just seemed to be around. Always working, always selling, but never drew me in.
That one does sound like it needs to be followed up with something humorous or joyful.
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