Monday's Reviews Today: Short Stories and Post Menopausal Dating
-- Publishers Weekly, 10/10/2008 7:47:00 AM
In Jon Raymond's new collection, Livability, the author offers up "nine gorgeous stories" set in the Pacific Northwest about people "testing the moral perimeters of their decent lives." (And one of the stories, "Train Choir," has been adapted into the recent New York Film Festival selection, directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy.) From Jurdith Sills is Getting Naked Again, a practical and honest guide for "women of a certain age" who are getting back onto the dating scene.
Livability
Jon Raymond. Bloomsbury, $15 paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-59691-655-5
These nine gorgeous stories from novelist and screenwriter Raymond find pallid Northwesterners testing the moral perimeters of their decent lives. In “The Suckling Pig,” set around the preparations for a dinner party, the divorced middle-aged host hires two Mexican men for some yard work at his suburban house, then adds them to the guest list to spur on what turns out to be a transformative and class-blurring evening. The wayward protagonist of “Train Choir” hopes to make it to Alaska and find work with the fisheries, but she gets caught stealing food for her dog, setting off a chain of mishaps that sinks her deeper into a perverse, solitary rut. In “Young Bodies,” 17-year-old Russian émigré Kendra sneaks into the store where she works to return the money she’d stolen, only to get locked in the mall for the night with an increasingly unsympathetic co-worker. A sense of fragility pervades these characters’ lives, and as the upsets that threaten each of them simmer, Raymond reveals how close failure (and worse) lingers. (Jan.)
Getting Naked Again: Dating, Romance, Sex, and Love When You’ve Been Divorced, Widowed, Dumped, or Distracted
Judith Sills. Springboard, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-446-58249-0
Known for her psychologically perceptive relationship books, Sills (Excess Baggage) turns her attention to dating for women of a certain age, particularly those recently out of long marriages. The author advises older women how to get back “out there” and how to contend with the anxiety that can ensue after a long period of celibacy. While Sills addresses the ugly truths that older women have to work harder than men to find eligible partners, she argues that courtship, companionship and sex are all available, especially if women remain “open to a wide variety of partners who are not necessarily prospects for love. They are practice, stimulation, and possibly even pleasant company.” Sills’s clinical psychology background comes to the fore when she dissects the scenario of a suddenly single woman who has been used to socializing with a group of couples but now may be perceived as a threat by other women, or an opportunity by the men, suggesting behavioral strategies for keeping boundaries clear. Sills also addresses transitional relationships, the heartbreak of rejection or of premature attachment to a new partner and includes welcome male perspectives. (Feb.)
