The Store of a Million Items

In one of these stories, Cliff identifies the tellers of oral stories in Jamaica as her first writing instructors. This observation, although in a piece of fiction, is substantiated by the sense of plot in these stories. While the grammar and syntax of the stories is literary, the plot is that of sharing over a cup of coffee. Within this context, the stories are excellent.Transactions tells of a salesman who wants children while his wife does not. He buys a small child he found in the roadway. His ruminations on how to get his wife to accept the child and his care for the child's need explore marital expections and prejudices based on gradations of skin color.Monster tells of the narrator's relationship with her father and grandmother (his mother-in-law) in the context of movies, especially in the showing of Frankenstein in grandmother's house.Rubicon is the story of regulars at a bar, especially a young girl waiting while her mother carries on an affiar.A Public Woman is a reflection on the death of a prostitute in the "Wild West".The stories geographical cover a wide area - Jamaica, France, New York, California. In each case, it is the gap between the community ideal of perfection vs. reality that propells the story forward. In Art History, the instability of the boss with regards to her son; in Wartime, the gap between hero and drunk combining with the new - a military surgeon with dark skin ...There are a few times when the author expects detailed knowledge of her time period that the reader may not share. Outside this minor flaw, the stories succeed in showing the clash between cultures - economic elitism, racism, diverse interpretations of similar events, etc.

In this spare, lean collection of stories Michelle Cliff says more than books three times the size of The Store of a Million Items. Fans of Cliff from novels like Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven will not be disappointed. Especially haunting is Cliff's use of the recurring theme of Emmett Till's murder, which has reverberations not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, impacting even those stories of Cliff's that take place in remote third world areas. Despite the harshness and violence in some of these stories, The Store of a Million Items is a book of great beauty.