|
"When
I
got
dizzy
and
fell.
I
tried
to
stop
my
fall
by
grabbing
a
hand
towel.
It
slowed
me
down
but
then
my
weight
kicked
in
and
the
towel
bar
came
flying
out
of
the
wall.
.
.
When
I
thought,
as
I
was
pulling
myself
up
to
the
seat,
“Why
is
my
life
like
this?"
Reviewed by David Woodruff In the introduction to What Doesn’t Kill You, we learn where editor Murray Dunlap got his idea to start a collection of stories (and some nonfiction pieces) that revolve around despair, struggle, and breaking points. He was a marathon runner before someone ran a red light and pushed him into an oncoming SUV. This tragic incident put him in a wheelchair for the rest of life, something which Dunlap mentions in the introduction, and in his prose poem Times I Nearly Died, that also appears in the book. The collection not only revolves around hard times, those points where it is so easy to fall from the edge, but also delineates the coping mechanisms, the human defenses that one uses to move on. Here and there, we find if not exactly a happy ending, at least a hopeful one. For example, in Jane Bradley’s, Are We Lucky Yet, a young woman is trying to get her life back together after making a long series of mistakes. The protagonist ends up considering love as the cure, fallible to be sure, for this imperfect world. Or in her words: 'We are lucky,' I said and I kissed Lacey Dawn. 'We are lucky.' I said again, and told myself to keep saying those words until I could really feel them to be true. When I was jogging, then hit by a car, and my body flipped up onto the hood. My face pressed to the glass, inches from the driver’s face, when the driver slammed on the brakes, catapulting me off the hood and into the street. I never found my radio. When my brother told me that the name of his little girl, who was in my arms, was Allison. I smiled, and looked up, and said, 'All right, Shane, she is fine. Don’t need to worry about her. Goody Foam Rollers, 10 Large, 50 Cents. There are also moments of dark comedy in the collection. Between the Teeth by David James Poissant is a story told by a man who is married to both a woman and her beagle. It’s almost as if the beagle treats the man like an intruder in his own home. And this is how his faithless wife comes to see him, too. Later, the man runs over the beagle while backing his Jeep out of the driveway. But, without giving away the ending, the dog does not go gentle unto that good night. If pressed to find a nit, I’d say that the writing styles in the anthology are uneven. Yet, all these pieces are told with heart. They grab the imagination. What Doesn’t Kill You might make a reader, if not stronger, very appreciative. |
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Authors Rusty
Barnes, Jane Bradley, Stace Budzko, Laura Dave, Murray Dunlap,
Julie Gard, Josh Goldfaden, Yvette Ward-Horner, Marjorie Hudson,
Michael Knight, Ray Morrison, Jan Parker, David James Poissant,
George Singelton, Curtis Smith, Rhett Iseman Trull. Editor For almost three years, Murray Dunlap faced the biggest challenge of his life - relearning how to function after a near-fatal car crash. Disenchanted with the corporate world he returned to graduate school to focus on creative writing. His work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, Night Train, Silent Voices, The Bark, and many others. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as Best New American Voices, and his first book, Alabama, was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. |