Nothing Right: Short Stories

Every now and again you stumble upon a great story; in Nothing Right, you've hit the jackpot. This collection contains great stories, honest characters and ironically dark themes. "DWI" is an honest revelation of secrecy and relief. "Or Else" tells the tale of a nostalgic man who still longs to be part of the loving family in which he found solace from his negligent parents during his childhood. In "Party of One" a divorcee meets with her sister's lover to ease the heartache of the sister who at one time carried on an affair with her own husband. Nothing Right is an enjoyable well-written collection of short stories.

Nothing Right: Short Stories is not light and fluffy fair, it's dark with glimpses of light, hard earned by the reader and the characters. It shows the darkness and the resilience of individuals and the human spirit, without resorting to heroics of chicken soup for the character's soul...Gritty and real... Antonya Nelson does not hand us full realized characters at the start of the story. She takes us on a perfectly paced journey of character development. The main character, in the title story "Nothing Right" is revealed in tiny little delicious bites, just as soon as you accept and can begin to relate, a little more is revealed to digest... It an interesting dichotomy - the love/hate relationship of the reader with the character and the ability to relate to them and relate to even their darkest moments that makes the short story work. I think Nelson has a brilliant and strong grasp of developing almost a tidal rhythm of character exposition. It's this balance, and the very real situations these characters find themselves in, that reminds me so much of Raymond Carver. There is a darkness that is given to us by Nelson, but it isn't in the least bit macabre, it is very real and human. It's a pleasure to read short stories with such intensity and characters who breathe and rage and love and hurt themselves right off the page. Nelson's writing style is a comfortable cadence of action, observations, dialog, and internal monologue that gives the reader the feeling of being a voyeur, a psychologist, a social worker, a friend... It also delivers the quirks and the more negative bits about the character in such perfect doses, that we can see ourselves a bit and accept the characters so that we are really on a journey with them. (If you like this, I also recommend Raymond Carver's collection "Where I'm calling from"...)

Antonya Nelson is a remarkable writer. As I read this book I was reminded of Truman Capote, "Other Voices Other Rooms." I was reminded of photographs by Diane Arbus. And Ingmar Bergman films. None of these masterpieces are easy or fun. They were never meant to be fun. But they are fabulous looks at the light within a seemingly unliveable situation. "Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." Diane Arbus As I've read reviews of this book, the critical ones, the ones that claim this is a sad horrible depressing set of stories, that nobody should have to read. I'm reminded of chocolate. There's really two kinds of chocolate, sweet milk chocolate and bittersweet dark chocolate. Those who have critisized this book probably love their chocolate sweet and easy to eat. Chocolate that coats your mouth with sugar, and leaves nothing but a sickly sweet flavor in your mouth. Somebody that enjoys this book must love bitter dark chocolate. The kind that tastes very bitter at first. But after leaving it in your mouth dissovles and leaves wonderful subtle flavors. Flavors that you can remember for a long time, not that overpowering sweetness. Antonya Nelson has a unique writing style. Each short story starts out in a relatively complex way. The main characters are in some situation that you might think is present time. As the story progresses, she weaves in memories or thoughts of things that happened to lead up to that very moment when the story started. She gradually, simply introduces new characters. People that orbit around the main character. It takes about 5 to 10 pages before the reader figures out what is happening in real current time. Once engaged, the story then flies off in sometimes unimaginable directions. Of course the reader has to be tipped off, this is not a fun book - the title is "Nothing Right." With that title there is no way to expect sugar sweet chocolate. No this will be 75% Cocoa dark chocolate. The amazing thing about her stories, they always left a wonderful taste in my mouth. Or a strong memory of how it must have felt to be these characters. The trauma they must feel every day. But yet how they take life in stride and ultimately survive, and find pleasure. There were two stories that baffled me, DWI and Falsetto. After about 10 pages, I still had no idea where the story was headed. The distinction between past time and present time was just not clear enough. The other 9 stories were a bittersweet pleasure to read. If you like your chocolate dark, this is a wonderful read.

This is one of the most talented writers I had an opportunity to read recently. Her latest book "Nothing Right" is a collection of stories that are each compelling in both topic and narrative. Sometimes, when one reads story collections they can be uneven. That is not the case with Ms. Nelson's stories - each one of these is strong and can stand on its own. Stories are about contemporary families, women approaching 40 struggling with their own internal emotional turmoils caused by their families or their inner lives. I have realized that three of the stories int his book I read in the New Yorker Magazine some time ago ("Shauntrelle", "Kansas" and "Or Else") , but I was so glad to read them again. My most favorite ones are the last two in the book - "We and They" and "People People". Both are humorous and sad at the same time but also complicated in the intriguing way. I am definitely Ms. Nelson's fan and I am looking forward to reading her other fiction work.

Although most of these short stories have previously been published in various periodicals, this collection is worth having on the shelf or nightstand for reading and re-reading. Short story writers do not have as great a following as novelists, but Ms. Nelson certainly can attract readers of American fiction with her intense short stories. She has the skill to create a time, place, characters and conflict in a few pages that most novelists need chapters to develop, sort of how an espresso delivers the richness of the same coffee bean you may drink every morning. Your usual drip coffee may be delicious and robust, but the intensity of flavor in that thick liquid hits the senses faster and usually linger longer. Her characters are intensely human with the flaws of humans and the experiences of humans, and they are developed in a few pages so well that I think about them at times in my own daily experiences. American culture is portrayed without the reader realizing that simple and mundane things and events may be really, really important until they are struck with the memory of a story later in the day or the week. I was sold on Ms. Nelson after hearing her discuss the short story on NPR, then listening to her read one of her tales. She obviously is a very astute and observant person, garnering an inventory of true experiences into fictional ideas which she transforms, often metaphorically into her slices of life fiction. Her stories need to be read more than once, which is so easy to do with this genre of literature.