 |
  |
|
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
Flights
and Paths VOODOO HEART, stories by Scott Snyder. Dial Press, 2006. Hardcover, $24.
With evocative descriptions and a palpable sense of uncertainty, Scott Snyder's first collection of short stories, Voodoo Heart, works a sort of magic. Snyder's characters are oddballs: One is chasing a blimp across the country, certain his fiancée is aboard. Another guards a Dumpster with a speargun. A third escapes his wealthy family for a life on the run. The reality inhabited by these characters is perhaps bound a little less tightly to natural laws than ours. Snyder steps toward but never quite crosses into the more enchanted worlds of Aimee Bender and Kelly Link; his tales are more grounded, less metaphorical but still entrancing. They're often concerned with flying, following maps, watching others or simply noticing what's outside one's immediate sphere. In "Wreck," a treasure-hunting loner observes children at a weight loss camp, fascinated by the way they seem to leave part of themselves behind when they leave at the end of summer. The title story finds a young couple in a sprawling house in Florida, a "camp" for female criminals just a telescope-assisted glance away. Jacob, who's afraid of the moment he knows is coming, the point at which he drives away his beloved Laura, watches the incarcerated women to the point of distraction. Jacob is not the only character whose fate is uncertain at the end of his tale, but the ambiguity is done with precision; there are no easy outs in Snyder's dusty Midwest or damp Florida (his stories span the country as well as the skies). Endings are endings; people leave, people change, and all is captured in lovely prose that reveals just as much as it should. "She smiled, but there was something very sad tucked into the corners of her mouth," thinks the narrator of "Dumpster Tuesday." There's something likewise very sad tucked into the stories in Voodoo Heart, but it's tucked there with such grace, the sadness feels warmly familiar, like a favorite melancholy song you lose yourself in on a bad day. – Molly Templeton Scott Snyder reads at 7:30 pm Tuesday, Aug. 15 at Powell's on Burnside, Portland.
BOOK NOTES: Poets Michael McGriff (Choke) & George Hitchcock read, 7:30 pm 8/10, Tsunami Books. Jana McBurney-Lin reads from My Half of the Sky, 4:30 pm 8/12, Books Without Borders. All Oregon Slam featuring the Eugene, Corvallis & Bend Slam Teams, 8 pm 8/12, World Café. $5. Poet JoAn Osborne and Jana McBurney-Lin read, 2pm 8/13, Mother Kali's. Translator Amalia Gladhart reads from The Potbellied Virgin, 4 pm 8/13, Tsunami Books. Haiku Showdown and victory performance by the All Oregon Slam winner, 9 pm 8/13, Sam Bond's Garage. 21+. $5. Scott Snyder reads, 7:30 pm 8/15, Powell's on Burnside, Portland.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
