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Reviewed
by Stevan Allred
The
quintessential character moment in Chris Meeks' collection of stories
occurs in The
Holes In My Door. We meet Frank Philo, an obsessive,
self-involved man who has driven away his first wife with his
"fixations". Frank hears what turns out to be the four shots which have
destroyed the front and rear windshields of his Volvo while it sits
parked in his garage. Unnerved by this, he blows off a real world
second date with a woman he's met online and goes to a gun shop
instead, where the sales man talks him into a shotgun. Frank has
absolutely no experience with guns, so he drives out to the desert to
try out his new toy, and there, while shooting at a sign, he manages to
shoot himself in the foot.
Metaphorically
speaking, nearly all of Meeks' characters have shot themselves in the
foot. His people are average Joes and Janes caught up in relationships
that teeter on the brink of failure. Often they manage to rescue
themselves, but his characters, particularly the men, are blissfully
unaware of their own foibles. This affords the reader the voyeuristic
pleasure of cringing on their behalf. Or, when they are being
particularly obtuse, of wanting to slap them.
Meeks
has a gift for showing how people fail to connect. In Dracula Slinks Into The Night
we watch Hugh drive his wife Kathleen crazy with his inability to
loosen up at a costume party. In the opening passage of The Farm at 93rd and Broadway
a couple of empty nesters try to communicate their love to one another
but end up feeling like they're just not in sync. Meeks illuminates the
particular shape of the space between these couples, and love's
continual urging to bridge those gaps.
In
the title story, Spillman, a movie producer who specializes in films
with mutants and vampires preying upon cheerleaders and "buxom airline
stewardesses", tells us that his life "can't possibly all be
coincidence . . . Something has guided me." Meeks immediately punctures
the self-importance of that observation, coming as it does from a
producer of soft porn. But it's another issue Meeks raises often in his
stories--the question of how much is accidental in our lives, and how
much do we bring upon ourselves.
In
two of the stories an accidental fall is crucial to the plot, and in
three of them, the accidental is represented by a health crisis. These
range from exposure to AIDS to prostate cancer to a congenital heart
problem, and in each case, the story turns in some way on the health
issue. Given that most of the eleven stories in this collection are
relationship stories, Meeks' reliance on accidental threats to the body
as the pivotal plot point feels a bit repetitive. If his characters
were more self-aware in the face of these events, instead of simply
reacting to them, this plot device might have risen to the level of a
theme that helped bind the collection together. Still, each of the
stories works on its own; it's only by comparing them to one another
that we notice his repeated use of the same trick.
The
tone of most of these stories is comic, but Meeks heightens his comedy
with a dash of heartbreak--the closer we are to heartbreak, the harder
we laugh. He's adept at landing his stories on an image that straddles
the comic and the tragic, hitting an emotional note that mingles what
is laughable about the human condition with hope for a better day
tomorrow.
Read an excerpt from one
of the stories
from this collection on Chris
Meek's Red Room Page
Stevan
Allred
lives in rural Oregon, halfway between Fisher's Mill and Viola. He has
recently had poems published in Windfall and Perceptions. He was
nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2007. In his spare time he enjoys
directing plays for his local community theater group.
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Publisher: White Whisker Books
Publication
Date:
2008
Paperback/Hardback?
Paperback
First
collection?: No, second.
Author
bio: Christopher
Meeks describes himself as "a working writer who teaches". He
has published a previous collection of stories entitled The Middle-Aged
Man & The Sea, and he has had three original plays
produced.
Read
an interview
with Christopher Meeks
Buy this book (used or
new) from:
The
Publisher's Website: White Whiskers/Lulu
AbeBooks
Amazon
Powell's
BetterWorldBooks.Com
And...don't
forget your local booksellers and independent book shops! Visit IndieBound.org to find an independent bookstore near
you in the US
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you liked this book you might also like....
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