08 Dec / I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories by Laura Van den Berg [in Booklist]
Measured and controlled, Amy Landon expertly ciphers this 11-story collection with a sense of purposeful detachment, as if these women’s stories are too difficult, too harrowing to risk becoming too involved. Three stories, each highlighting erasure, emerge as standouts: in “Lizards,” an angry Floridian transplant is subdued by an “artisanal” sparkling water her husband hands her every night; in “Karolina,” a Miami-based art restorer traveling to post-earthquake Mexico City encounters her now-homeless ex-sister-in-law, who reveals the ugly truth about her temperamental brother; in “Your Second Wife,” a “grief freelancer” impersonates dead wives.
Death looms in numerous entries: a woman remembers her 17-year-old self who did not die in “Last Night”; a would-be ghost photographer meets her wailing neighbor in “Slumberland”; an academic loses her difficult daughter, who morphs into the paragon of kindness after a fatal diagnosis at 33 in “Hill of Hell”; and a woman travels to Italy with her dying mother in “Cult of Mary.”
The narration streams quickly; what lingers is a haunting sense of loss – of autonomy, determination, power, and even of identity.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, November 13, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2020