Bloomsbury
Review by Brian Tanguay
I appreciate a finely crafted short story and the eleven stories in this collection easily meet that criteria. For a debut collection, Emily Doyle displays unusual and impressive range. In “Thursdays for Haru,” Haru’s husband is abducted by aliens at 3:23 A.M. every Thursday and returned to his bed, still in his striped pajamas, at precisely 6:18 A.M., no worse for wear. This goes on for six years, but rather than terror, Haru is grateful for the solitude as it allows her to grow a secret life of her own. In “Ronald Reagan Is Reborn as a Puppy and Learns to Behave,” the former president is dismayed by his new owner, a rough, ill-mannered girl wearing boys’ sneakers with no socks. He knows her feet smell sour. He wants to get away from her. It won’t be easy for the now four-legged Ronnie.
The women in these stories struggle with ex-husbands, mothers, children and friends. In “The Diver,” the protagonist suffers from depression, a “post-divorce sag brought on by the burden of consciousness.” She’s convinced — and her ex agrees — that she’s an unfit mother. And then on a dive she encounters a young octopus, something she and her son can bond over, which they do. When the octopus sustains an injury, the diver discovers a caring instinct, a sense of hope and perhaps evidence that she’s not a completely deficient mother after all.
“Copernicus Is Dying” introduces readers to another mother suffering from feelings of inadequacy. Copernicus is her son’s lizard and the reptile is unwell because there’s a nationwide shortage of large crickets due to a breeding problem. The woman rushes from one Petco to another in search of crickets, afraid to disappoint her son who nonetheless accuses her of lying about the large cricket shortage; even when she manages to bring home some small crickets, he’s not happy. He darts away when she reaches to comfort him. “For a while I sit alone, staring at Copernicus’s terrarium. I imagine that Noah’s next to me still and that I manage to move and speak in a way that does not repel him.”
The title story — the longest in the collection — brings together Doyle’s eye for the odd and strange. It begins with Sarah crunching along frozen streets, on her way to her college roommate’s apartment. Sarah and Tal shared a brief intimate moment two years before. Their reunion is uncomfortable with things unsaid, but this is only the beginning. Sarah remembers the time she spent at the Valley Gardens Retirement Community, helping a man named Mr. Becket, not so much with tidying up and cooking, errands and the like, but with keeping women away, especially Janice. Women residents visit with baked goods; Janice doesn’t visit as much as she invades, and it’s Sarah’s task to keep her at bay. In the annotated pages of E.M. Forster’s Maurice, Sarah gains insight into Mr. Becket. The story slips into the supernatural, involving candles and ashes and an apparition named Jim, the man Mr. Becket is lost without.
I enjoyed spending time in Emily Doyle’s often strange universe. In each of these stories she conjures a distinct atmosphere. I’m curious to see what she produces next.
