Bear and His Daughter: Stories

This isn't the most uplifting collection of stories; in fact, it's a bit depressing. Each story seems to remark on the fragility and transience of human life. From the first story, Miserere, centered around aborted fetuses and religion, to the last, Bear & His Daughter, about the renuinion of alcoholic father and daughter, readers will perhaps not see a flicker of optimism in each of Robert Stone's stories. Despite the dark themes in Stone's stories, reader's will notice the beauty of Stone's narratives. He is a master crafter, and his words flow with beautiful consistency and intellect. His sentences were a treat for me to read. All the stories are particulary strong, my favorite being the title story, Bear & His Daughter.

In William Golding's landmark The Lord Of The Flies we weep for "the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart." The heart's blackness is mourned again in two sharply drawn story collections. Despair is their leit motif. Emotionally scarred, the characters in these tales are fragmented by substance abuse, by obdurate personal demons or both. Nonetheless, such unengaging personalities become compelling when presented by a pair of Pulitzer Prize nominees writing at top form. The child of a schizophrenic mother and unknown father, Robert Stone spent three years in an orphanage. Later, as a New Orleans census taker, he walked that city's back streets. With Bear And His Daughter, seven intense tales penned between 1969 and today, he depicts communal deadends and the dissolute souls trapped therein. Begin with "Miserere." A widowed librarian's bitterness becomes a mission to have aborted fetuses receive the church's blessing. Another vignette explores the effects of childhood violence: "The worst of it, Mackay says, was the absence of mercy. Once the punishment began, no amount of crying or pleading would stay the prefect's hand. Each blow followed upon the last, inexorably like the will of God. It was the will of God." The title story sears as it traces the downward spiral of a visit by an alcoholic poet to his drug addicted emotionally deprived daughter. The author's chilling denouement rivals Euripidean tragedies. Robert Stone's writing is edgy, scalpel keen. He probes, cuts, laying back the protective coverings of our human condition. He well knows life's underside.

Stone's short stories don't have much in the way of plot, but they each leave the reader with an unforgettable insight into the way Stone feels the world works. My favorite tale is "Aquarius Obscured," in which a woman gets high and takes her dog to the aquarium, where the woman has a conversation with a fascist dolphin. Each story here deserves careful reading, and readers who comply will not be disappointed.

The themes will be familiar to those who've read Mr. Stone's novels. Alcohol & drug abuse, characters haunted by the past. His characters are on the verge of losing it, and often do. Mr. Stone knows how to build intensity, and his style and structure propel the reader toward the climax, climax being a more apt term than conslusion. Not for the faint of heart or those looking to be uplifted, but a look at life that is real indeed.