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One of
the better features of short story collections is that there's
usually an escape route. Moving ahead is almost encouraged,
should one story prove too long, languid, or just not what
you were looking for. To that extent, Rebecca Curtis's debut
collection Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love and Money,
fits right in with the norm—there are highs and lows,
but regrettably, no pièce de résistance, no
standout story that fills the void other stories create.
The opening
stories, "Hungry Self" and "Summer, with Twins" are almost
companion pieces, both focusing on a mostly apathetic young
undergrad working a crappy job (a Chinese restaurant in the
former, followed by something akin to surf and turf) and more
or less dealing with follies therein. Other than a brief and
admittedly hilariously awkward moment when the waitress is
assigned to the table of her former psychiatrist, both stories
fall flat and are about nothing in particular. It's not that
Curtis doesn't delve into detail or set up adequate plot action;
it's that it never really evolves.
"Alpine
Slide" features basically the same character, five years younger,
working a summer job at the eponymous struggling summer attraction.
"Our legs became scraped from lifting sleds, and our arms
grew sore and then muscular. Our skin turned gold," Curtis
writes, her talent at creating compelling imagery finally
breaking through. "Our fifteen-minute breaks stretched to
thirty. Instead of half price, our snacks were free, because
the snack-stand crew, a lower echelon of workers who were
trapped in grease and darkness, offered them to us that way."
Though Curtis skirts the same, now almost monotonous social
setting, in "Alpine Slide" readers get the idea that she is
more than a one-trick pony.
It's
in the title story, "Twenty Grand," that Curtis makes her
deepest and most significant mark on the collection. In the
brief narrative, Curtis focuses on a young married couple
and the heartbreaking struggles they must endure to support
their family. It's a subtle exercise in restraint that demonstrates
Curtis's clear ability to create multi-layered, realistic
fiction without overpowering the reader with clever asides.
In the
hodgepodge of stories that follows, Curtis slides from the
surreal into the real and back again. While some readers may
enjoy the quick transition from one semi-extreme to the next,
the work lacks consistency. Stories like "To the Interstate"
and "Monsters" feel disjointed, their pieces barely coming
together to make any sense at all. In the former, a young
girl tries to escape from a bad home situation, possibly foster
care, by repeatedly calling on her older "sister" to take
her as far as the interstate; the plot literally drives around
in circles with small developments but no movement and no
clear resolution. Other stories like "The Near-Son" start
off compelling—a speculative narrative about abortion—only
to fizzle in the end amidst a sea of hands.
Twenty
Grand comes off a little like a collection of fantasy
ideas. It's obvious Curtis has culled a great deal of inspiration
from the New England area, and it seems likely the apathetic
and sly personas of her characters are perhaps reminiscent
of the author, or at the very least, a lighthearted muse.
The desire to skip over, ahead and out of Twenty Grand
is perhaps its greatest downfall. Curtis tends to put a good
deal of emphasis on the surroundings and less into the development
of the characters and the basic story, so that overall, the
stories are just not compelling enough to struggle through.
(March,
2008)
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