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Stacey
Richter brings a fresh, funny view to the short story genre
in her new collection, Twin Study. Not satisfied with
predictable plots and stereotypical characters, Richter's
stories are populated with characters who are almost like
people we know but have been thrust into highly unusual situations.
She gets deep into their heads, examining their motives, and
she does this with a tenderness that never gets in the way
of the humor. And, despite the humor, the stories here are
awash in melancholy. The protagonists are sometimes grieving
over missed opportunities and wrong choices, and although
they never exactly confront their grief, they look for ways
to make the best of their situations.
Twin
Study focuses on women who are out of place and ill at
ease, though they may not know it. For example, in the titular
story Samantha starts out telling the reader how much she
loves her life with her new house and new husband and his
sullen teenage son. But when she encounters her estranged
twin, Amanda, during a yearly twin study group at a California
university, she starts to reevaluate what makes her who she
is. Amanda's anxiety and discomfort towards seeing her sister
again is intense but covered by flippant humor. When Amanda
gets to the twin study group check in, noting that her sister
hasn't checked in yet, she muses for a second about how Samantha's
participation is always vague, but Amanda knows she will show
up, noting that "[s]he generally needs the money." It's clear
that Amanda's antipathy towards her sister is masking her
concern about her own choices. Realizing that she has spent
her whole life trying to be different from her twin, Amanda
ends up just trying to be her opposite and not her own person
at all.
In another
story, "Christ, Their Lord," a Jewish couple buys an inexpensive
home that is unfortunately situated in a gated community called
Yuletide Village, where neighbors vie for the honor of having
the most elaborate and ostentatious Christmas displays. Discovering
the ridiculousness of the decorations leads the first person
narrator to proclaim "Jesus fucking Christ."
Many
of the people in Twin Study find themselves suddenly
thrust into a world that has gone slightly topsy-turvy, and
the new perspective causes some existential angst. "The Cavemen
in the Hedges" occurs in a reality where Neanderthals, resembling
"feral little girls" who steal toys and shiny baubles, have
taken up residence in a suburban neighborhood. Hiding in bushes
and occasionally getting killed by cars, their mere presence
causes a rift that pits neighbor against neighbor and boyfriend
against girlfriend. The story is narrated by the male of the
couple in question, former punk rockers who now call 911 when
the kids down the street party too loudly. But with the appearance
of the cave people, the formerly depressed and angry Kim,
a girl who spent her teen years gleefully yelling "Anarchy
now!" out of car windows, is suddenly happy: "It's
as though someone has dumped a bottle of pancake syrup over
her head—she has no nastiness left, no edge, no resentment.
Her hair is hanging loose and she has dirty feet and bad breath.
She smiles all the time. This is not the girl I originally
took up with."
Despite
Kim's vocal disdain for the cave people, her boyfriend suspects
she may be hanging out with them. In an effort to win her
back, he starts to clean the house, dress in a more sophisticated
fashion, and cook elaborate dinners. As he makes himself into
the anti-caveman, he is clearly drifting further and further
away from the person he used to be. If his "Fred Astaire/James
Bond hybrid" is the opposite of the caveman, it's also the
antithesis of the punk rocker. By taking up with the cave
people, Kim is firmly rebelling against the suburbs and adulthood.
"Young
People Today," is an epistolary story where an older woman
explains to her friend why she has taken to hanging out with
"college-aged hooligans." It all starts when she begins making
espresso for Andy, her young handy man: "We'd
chat, sometimes for an hour or more. I wasn't used to such
strong coffee then, and I'd find myself rattling on about
abstract art, myth and symbol, the collective unconscious—all
that crazy stuff we used to talk about in the old days before
they tore down the Unitarian church."
In a
switch from the usual format where the young folks learn from
the older generation, the protagonist learns from her youthful
friends how to be young again. She begins going to see Andy's
band, The Rudimentary Organs, and begins learning more about
herself from talking to the "Generation XYZ-ers" who "like
shapeless old housedresses and terrible eyeglasses and the
sickly shade of green our mothers painted their kitchens."
The letter being written is hilarious, which makes the lesson
much sweeter—that we all have something to learn from
one another.
Richter
has certainly matured as a writer since she published My
Date With Satan, her first collection of short stories
in 2000. Satan was populated with pop-culture obsessed
youths busy impressing people with their arcane knowledge
of, say, Hello Kitty. It was as funny as Mark Leyner and Ian
Frazier, but it was clear that Richter was able to do more;
underlying each story was an undercurrent of melancholy that
hinted at the depths of which she was capable. Richter has
spent time exploring that depth, and the resulting stories
in Twin Study are not just funny. They are full of
sadness, longing, and desire.
(July
2008)
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