The vile mother who drove that girl to the grave
Staff Writer | Thursday October 31, 2013 14:05
They first came out in 2001. They were well received, and then forgotten. Orner's Namibian novel, The Second Coming Of Mavala Shikongo (2006) was well received (Mmegi, 27 October 2006). His second novel, Love And Shame And Love (2011) came five years later and was illustrated by his comic-artist brother, Eric Orner.
Peter Orner has also edited two works of non-fiction that have been well received: Underground America (2008) and with co-editor Annie Holmes, Hope Deferred: Narratives Of Zimbabwean Lives (2010). Now Peter Orner has released his second collection of short stories, Last Car Over The Sagamore Bridge (2013).
Over the last dozen years, Orner has not made his living from writing. Instead he is a teacher of creative writing. He takes what he teaches seriously, and applies it to what he creates, whether it be a novel, challenging works of non-fiction, or a collection of short stories. He is a professor at San Francisco and has been visiting professor at Bard College, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Miami University, University of Montana, Warren Wilson College, Washington University and Charles University in Prague. Orner has his own unique approach to writing short stories.
They are very different in many ways than the stories of Alice Munro (Mmegi, 4 October 2013), the Canadian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last week. Orner, though, like Munro, has a strong sense of place and grounds his tales in specific locales, with inviting details. He also explores the ramifications of unique personalities and how events are shaped by them. Like Munro, he reaches into the heart and soul of his characters. There are 34 short stories in Esther Stories. Dozens of them had been previously published in journals like Atlantic Monthly, Denver Quarterly, Oxford Review and Yankee, none in Munro's favourite, The New Yorker magazine. Prior publication of one's short stories in internationally acclaimed quarterlies is a strong quality recommendation.
Esther Stories is the next to last tale in this collection. Aunt Esther, whom the narrator presents to the reader, occupies the last of four parts of the collection, called Waters, and containing nine well-crafted stories. It was '12 years since he last saw Esther, but the wall that time built was hollow'. 'Esther's grave lies next to her daughter's' ... 'she died of breast cancer on 27 October 1988'. Life could be prolonged by the miracle of the waters, the thermal baths at Hot Springs, Arkansas. 'Those were the days their bodies were still young and unravaged'. 'Take a look at Esther. Take a look at her life. Take a look at what she cared about from the day she was born'.
t was Esther's beauty that 'made it easier for everybody, because nobody really had to look at her. It created the distance that nobody really knew until much later ... my father saw something else. The Esther she wanted my grandfather to see from behind his camera. And he hated her ... my father saw only the flawed, scared, restless Esther. The tantrum Esther. The Esther who used to go into fits as late as her 16th birthday' (page 197).
Esther Burman had married Lloyd Kantorowitz in 1963. 'You can't blame Lloyd for falling in love with Esther. Who wouldn't have? Who didn't?' She was a first year student at the University of Illinois when friends arranged for her to meet Lloyd, the doctor-to-be. Lloyd was older, already in his third year at medical school. It was over Thanksgiving break, 1962, at a cocktail party. Lloyd had an accident with his wine glass, and unintentionally made Esther laugh. That was the beginning. Thus began their regular Saturday dates. Now it is Esther's funeral, the extended family has gathered and memories flood back. The third part of this collection is Fall River Marriage. Fall River is a town in eastern Massachusetts. Characters are considered across the generations. Is there a potential for change or do we only have the curse of recapitulating the mistakes of our parents, and grandparents.
Whose marriage will be brief; whose will last? Other cities in New England will feature in these tales. 'Her father retreated, skulked away from living; he didn't flee'.
The first and second parts are called What Remains and The Famous. They open with 'Initials Etched on a Dining-Room Table'. Now what kind of girl at 18 would do that? In New Boston, Illinois, on Lock Dam Road, they found her body 'in a hollowed-out tree'. As a result, 'perfectly innocent places take on meanings they don't deserve'. Janet wants to know why a student killed his female teacher and then mutilated his thumbs. 'She wasn't captive; she said she would never be captive'. 'One night I woke up and found her on the floor of my room, naked, wrapped in my ratty army coat. Her eyes were wide open, but she wasn't looking at anything. She said she was afraid of the fan'. What is left of a person but a pile of clothes? 'Never a louder silence than when you stand in a room, where someone lived for many years alone'.
'Ellen had grown tomatoes and a few cucumbers in the back-yard garden. The tomatoes were the children she always insisted she didn't want, refused to burden the world with-she'd measure the vines as they grew and record the heights in a notebook she kept in the drawer with the car keys and matches. They'd eat them in salads, and sometimes just them, like apples' (page 23).
Thursday Night at the Gopher Hole, April 1992 finds Frank Knipp, Frank Waverly and Candice, and an accident. Frank one has tripped and 'his forehead met the urinal'. This was the beginning of many bizarre doings. Clare, who normally did not look at things, was the one to spot, through a stand of bare poplars a pair of blue-jeaned legs and booted feet hanging out of a bathtub, 'even from that distance she could see was a bathtub'. When they reported to the Sheriff, 'a man called Furf, a man with an aching back and sweaty feet, a man who at first didn't believe her story'. Will you?