cover image THE DEEP: And Other Stories

THE DEEP: And Other Stories

Mary Swan, . . Random, $23.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-375-50851-6

Swan's subtle and haunting debut collection of short stories sketches the horrors of war, as well as other, quieter kinds of conflict. The collection is anchored by the O. Henry Award–winning story "The Deep," about eccentric 26-year-old identical twins, Esther and Ruth, who travel from their home in England to the French front in World War I to minister to wounded soldiers. The twins do everything together, have little interaction with the outside world and speak in the first-person plural. Through the testimony of relatives, servants, a headmistress, the twins' father and the twins themselves, Swan spins a narrative of the sisters' childhood, the death of their mother and brother, and the moment in the camps when a chasm finally opens between the two of them. Swan shifts between different narrative voices with remarkable ease, alternating between intimate conversations and documentary-style testimonies. The story "1917" captures both the chaos of the battlefield and the banal intrusion of the censor ("that was one reason our letters home were always cheerful; the censor would return the ones with too much truth in them"). In "Spanish Grammar," a Canadian expatriate living in post-Franco Spain has an affair with a Spanish divorcée who speaks no English; she feels "tangled and lost in the space between words." From the guilt of a widowed kibbutz dweller in "On the Border" to Mary McIntyre of "By the Sea, By the Sea," whose "slightly twisted spine" just might explain everything about her, the tales are united in their emphasis on loss and deterioration. An intense, accomplished first collection. (Apr. 8)