cover image Silver Tales

Silver Tales

Marjaree Mayne. Madison Books, $17.95 (264pp) ISBN 978-1-56833-258-1

The misleading subtitle and cover art of this book seem to suggest that the collection will provide readers with feel-good, chicken soup-style tales. Not so. The five short autobiographies--all written under pseudonyms by women in their 50s or 60s--read more like survivors' tales, complete with accounts of beatings, loneliness, affairs and depression. Fifty-eight-year-old""Penelope,"" for example, describes growing up in the 1950s with an abusive, controlling father, escaping home by marrying an abusive, philandering man, and later becoming a philanderer herself before finally filing for divorce.""Gloria,"" on the other hand, married a decent man when she was just out of high school, but was never able to really love him. Though she sacrificed many things to make him happy, she never wanted him in bed. Once her spouse died, she too entered into an affair with a married man, albeit a""paper affair"" via email.""Paula"" suffers depression caused by the memories of her mother's many beatings and insults.""Barbara's"" first husband abandoned her and her children for weeks at a time.""Lauren"" was raped by her brother while she was in grade school. But, despite the dark events recounted here (and despite the uneven quality of the prose itself), the sheer honesty of these women is impressive and compelling, and some do come out of their traumas wiser and stronger. Mayne explains that the authors chose pseudonyms so that they could write about their lives frankly without worrying about the consequences. The result is a book that reads like a senior version of The Bitch in the House: no easy reassurances, but no saccharine illusions either.