cover image Grasslands: Stories

Grasslands: Stories

Jonathan Gillman. Rutgers University Press, $34.75 (187pp) ISBN 978-0-8135-1926-5

These haunting but ultimately unsatisfying interlocking stories, the first collection by playwright Gillman, center on a woman named Mavis, and through her they touch on her husband, Nate--a former carnival worker who died in a boating accident--and her daughter, Alice, whom she suspects has left with another carnival many years later. Each story is dated, which is useful since the narratives skip around in time, but their arrangement seems almost indiscriminate, leaving the reader to wonder why Gillman didn't simply present them chronologically. There is a great deal of emotion buried under the surface of these stories, which superficially focus on domestic and farming life in South Dakota. The most authentic pieces deal with Mavis's reaction to Nate's death. She sees visions of him and spends evenings telephoning random numbers and asking for him, once finding someone with his same first and last name. These instances are affecting, but it is never entirely clear what Gillman is trying to convey beyond Mavis's sadness. Forays into the first person have a forced feeling and rarely reveal more than the third-person tales. (Feb.)