LITERATURE: A Perfect Stranger – Story

There is a style that shows in Roxana Robinson’s stories that produces a defined reality that holds them together.

My mother was a librarian at my elementary school, and my father was a doctor.  We lived in an old stone farmhouse, rather dark inside, with small windows.  I was an only child.  Every night the three of us sat down to dinner at the wooden table in the kitchen.  We bowed our heads, and then my mother said grace over the food.  Afterward we raised our heads, and it was my job to pour each of us a glass of water.  The water pitcher was made of dark blue china.  My father spoke very little at meals, and inside our house it was quiet.  Outside the house there were smooth rolling fields.  At night I could feel the three of us in our small lighted house, alone in all that empty land, set among the dark fields.  (The Face Lift, p. 26)

The above is employed as one instance of tracing a pattern of differences between the first person narrator and her friend, the exotic Cristina.  The details are more fully given in her description of herself versus her roomate:

Cristina says everything rapidly, she moves quickly and talks fast.  She is quite beautiful, with thick black-brown hair and large, bright dark eyes.  She has a round face and a short straight nose.  Her eyelids are slightly droopy, which gives her a drowsy, aristocratic look. (p. 26)

I don’t look wonderful, I know that.  I’m plain, with pale freckled skin.  I’ve put on a middle, and I wear my skirts below the knee.  My hair is just as it was at boarding school, shoulder length, and held back from my face with a tortoiseshell band.  (p. 31)

Via imagery, or what I would call detailed description, not only do we get a picture of the players, but by tone and choice of words (being written in the first person pov) we can see the frustration and resentment towards this friend whom she loves and yet envies.  There is an aching for the other’s lifestyle, and even more so for the flamboyance that she understands she will never be able to carry off.  She is plain in personality as well as in appearance.

In Assistance, Robinson gives us a protagonist who returns to her family home to care temporarily for her parents and the tone is given in detailed conversation that is immediately recognizable as "married banter" between her mother and father, and the frustration of the protagonist to live within the sometimes aggravating world that has escalated since she’s grown and left.  The returning to a world in which we were raised, yet escaped, is often seen as alien to us.  Again here, Robinson gives a highly detailed image that rises in arc as a conflict over a refrigerator that needs repair becomes more highly involved and needs to be handled by the protagonist in a reversal of parent/child roles.

Choosing Sides is written in the third person pov, and is a simple story of a woman’s acceptance of her grandchild while her son and his girlfriend have separated.  One look at the baby, of course, is the turning point, but the conflict arises between the woman and her husband, her friend, her son, his girlfriend, the girl’s mother, and most importantly, within herself as she seeks the "proper" resolution.  But it is tied together beyond the main theme of love and relationships by description:

In their room, Nina took off her sandals.  The sisel rug was scratchy against her bare feet.  She put her peach on the desk by the window and folded her arms on her chest.  She was tall, almost as tall as her husband, and lanky, with knobby knees and elbows.  She had been blonde as a child, but her hair was now fading to an indeterminante gray.  (p.  61)

This inclusion of detail in description certainly adds to the setting and to the characters in this stories to produce a grounding in story.  The mention of the protagonist as "been blonde as a child, but her hair was now fading to an indeterminante gray" seems to point to theme, that the new baby will grow to be an adult and the circumstances of birth is unimportant in the overall picture; things change, we become who we are by experience and time rather than birth, "blonde to indeterminate gray." 

My only negative reaction to the precise detailing of characters and setting is based on the fact of this anthology of short stories being from one author so the style is set.  I feel I am given too much description.  There are too many characters and settings that we become comfortable with in a very short time, and then must abandon them to move on to the next story where we have to get used to a whole new set of characters.

But then again, this element having been provided clearly by Robinson may in fact give us less to deal with in producing our own images that indeed, usually stay with us longer as time is invested in their creation within our own mind. 

In At the Beach, the first person narrator is at the beach with his wife and daughter, and pondering his moves to resolve an ongoing argument he has had with his wife.  She is cool and distant.  He is anxious to break down the wall between them, but unwilling to always be the first to make the move. 

Nice introduction of a second story into this that ties in and provides resolution:  They watch as a desperate mother searches the beach for her missing child.  The onlookers become involved in this drama, and each family clings a little tighter to their own children.  When the child is found safe, the narrator and his wife have established a closeness and truce by realizing what is important in life.  And a nice twist:  Only then do we find that the argument was about having more children. 

Robinson’s stories are very carefully planned out.  They rise slow and steady in pace, and leave one satisfied with the denouement.

My thought here after having read just these few stories, is that with the amount of planning on narrative structure (The Face Lift in particular tosses us back and forth in time), description, tone, story, etc., that Robinson’s writing is particularly suited for novel-length fiction.  The involvement she asks of the reader would, I’m sure, be time well spent.