A Dream of Old Leaves

Bret Lott's first book of short fiction, the 1989 collection "A Dream of Old Leaves," is one of best volumes of literary stories I've read in some time. The book is small, 138 pages--and all the 14 stories brief. With a a couple of exceptions, the stories focus on the daily life of the nuclear family, viewing this basic building block of society by way of unexpected, but affectionate, angles. The title story is one of the best (though there are no bad stories here) and also one of the collection's three Paul and Kate stories--each one centering around this same, young family and its children. In this one, Paul and Kate's small son David endures terrible nightmares until Paul discovers the rather ordinary source of the sound of "old leaves" plaguing his son, and Paul has a small epiphany about the milestone growing-up moments that test a child's courage. In another, "What Our Life Is Like," a husband and wife are facing the dreaded atrophy brought on by routine when, one day, the washing machine breaks down and the wife meets a sort of ballerina at the local Laundromat. Life momentarily expands for the couple in a way they never could have foreseen. In "Garage Sale," a family is challenged to either move away from its home of many years or stay and face untold harm. The ensuing moving sale suddenly becomes a how-low-can-you-go bidding war for their communal identity. Lott draws his characters with such insight, brevity, and expert technique that they all come to life in a way that many authors find difficult to accomplish in an entire novel. Furthermore, these people are not the typical freaks and counter-culture misanthropes that populate so much of today's literary fiction. These are ordinary folks: a little crazy, yes, but no more than you or I when seen in our worst (or sometimes, best) moments.