Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail

June 25, 2001
Over the years, Mason has perfected a writerly version of method acting. As in her novels In Country
and Feather Crowns, and her previous story collection, Shiloh and Other Stories, here again Mason inhabits a cast of characters who at first seem utterly defined by a world that doesn't get any larger than a small orbit of towns and country around Lexington, Ky. In the best of these 11 stories, Mason shows how deep and subtle truths can pop up anywhere and be conveyed in local dialect. Shed of two husbands and four children, the middle-aged female protagonist of "With Jazz" embarks on a casual affair with a married man called Jazz. Musing on the fruits of a long past, she feels "lost somewhere between being nice and being mean." Annie, the protagonist of "Rolling into Atlanta," works as a corporate spy, posing as a waitress, but finds herself growing attached to the headwaiter of the restaurant she's investigating. In "Three Wheeler," a potter is pestered by neighborhood boys until she one-ups them on their own turf. Not every story is so well crafted that its truths feel organic. In "Proper Gypsies," a woman borrows a friend's flat in London to regroup after a split from a lover. When the flat is burgled, the woman's feelings of wonderment and cultural displacement flare, culminating in a picturesque yet slightly contrived montage of cultural change ending with an image of a younger self seeing through a glass darkly. Mason's latest work demonstrates that the finest writers aren't afraid to think small. 11-city author tour.

June 1, 2001
This fine new collection from the Kentucky author of Shiloh and Other Stories as well as novels like In Country reflects the sadder, wiser perspective of midlife. Only the kindest complaint applies: the stories end too soon. In "Tobrah," Jackie attends the funeral of her father, who left the family 35 years earlier, and is surprised to leave with her nearly five-year-old half-sister. She is further surprised when she makes room in her life for the child. In "Three Wheeler," independent potter Mary has moved home to what was once her uncle's house in Kentucky and grudgingly interacts with the struggling neighborhood children. Whether caring for aging parents, facing old age, or returning home, the protagonists in these stories face middle age with poignant resolve. Recommended for most libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/01.] Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2001
Mason follows her acclaimed memoir, " Clear Springs" (1999), with a new short-story collection that veers off in provocatively fresh directions from her last, " Midnight Magic" (1998). Her terrain is still the Kentucky she's famous for writing about, but she has succeeded in making rural America seem exotic, strange, and mysterious, a looking-glass world. This lends a shimmering aura to each expertly rendered, boldly open-ended tale, the zigzagging energy alluded to in her title, which is taken from the book's first story, "With Jazz." Chrissy, the first of Mason's admirably feisty narrators, zigzags between memory and observation as she tells off a stuck-up DJ in a bar and hangs out with her sweet male friend, Jazz, who traffics cheerfully in frilly French lingerie. She's one of a string of intriguing women characters who are deeply skeptical about love. In "Tunica," Liz, who has just had "the sebaceous cysts removed from her head the day before her trip to the casinos," was just as glad when her studly husband got sent to jail and isn't sure what to do with him now that he's out. Mary, a potter, prefers solitude, or so she thinks until a pair of pesky, possibly dangerous young boys remind her of a past infatuation. Mason is wily: stories that threaten to devolve into hokum suddenly slip into an iridescent twilight zone, where reality is much more amazing than gimcrack appearances would seem to indicate, and where unexpected wisdom surfaces quietly as a 44-year-old woman discovers she has a 5-year-old half-sister; a woman returns to Kentucky from Alaska and realizes how little she knows about her undertaker father; and a husband worries about his Gulf War veteran wife.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)