The title of Rebecca Curtis's debut collection of short stories is "Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money." This heading suggests glamour, but the women in "Twenty Grand" know better.
These are women who are stranded. There is a startling feeling of isolation that surrounds them even amongst their families, in a crowded restaurant or in the arms of their lovers.
Many of them are mired in unhappiness, and as a result, it seems as if there is a force field around them that is in place for their protection. At times this distance from the world tastes like bitterness and smacks of angst.
But by the end of this troublingly perceptive collection of short stories, it is evident that the distance is not so much deliberate as inevitable. Curtis's narrators are vibrantly aware, necessitating this disconnect from the world, as the sorrows of other people are too visible to them, and the weight of their own is enough.
What saves these stories from being utterly depressing is the author's voice. In fact, the candid delivery humorously colors much of the material.
Her characters are not self-pitying. They watch the world closely, and they dryly voice what they see. Their observations are not always nice, but they are true. The honesty of their statements reveals as much about the observed as about the observers. Such access to a character's life is compelling; it gives the reader a sense of learning something about the character that she herself does not yet know.
There is something a little wonderful about a collection of stories that is written by a woman about women. Alice Munro, an acclaimed author of short-stories, does this especially well. In her collections, there is never a repetition of voice; the women are strikingly unique, and each story seems to rescue one more woman from anonymity. Curtis's technique is different, but she possesses the same ability to bring certain kinds of life into focus.
The most successful stories in this collection have similar backdrops. Curtis often revisits the summer jobs and part-time occupations of her characters. The women are in limbo, on the verge of going somewhere and being someone else. The drama is rarely drastic in the restaurant, on the lake or alone in California. There are undercurrents of disaster, but for the most part they experience the pulsating highs and lows of a regular day. Curtis captures the daily range of sensations without weighing in too heavily on the need for perspective. The beauty of many of her stories comes from her ability to imbue each moment with the appropriate amount of tension.
Yet, the collection also contains stories written in a different key. They are rapid, and the voice is disjunctured, even confused. Bizarre things take place, like a family feeding its least favorite daughter to monsters. The stories are strange, and they are over almost before they have begun. However, the peculiar details don't disguise the universality of the sentiments they are meant to convey.
There is a profound range of subtlety in Curtis's work. Her women are never hopelessly lonely or desperate. They seem to own their sadness in a way that is enviable. Misery is an unloved human condition. Part of a story's impact lies in conclusion, and Curtis knows exactly when to stop her narratives. While the reader may be left with nothing quite as obvious as hope, there is a sense that soon something might shift.