Released in a limited printing last year by the University of Georgia Press and likely eluding the radar of many booksellers and readers, Andrew Porter's Flannery O'Connor Award-winning short story collection now has been published in a paperback edition by Vintage Books. In these 10 stories, most set in suburbia, Porter demonstrates a sure handed grasp of plot and character and a restrained prose style reminiscent of craftsmen like Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff.
All of Porter's stories feature first person narrators, several of whom look back on a striking event of their adolescence with a feeling of wistfulness--suggesting a loss of innocence or the assimilation of adulthood's first, painful lessons. Particularly affecting are "Departure," a Pushcart Prize winner, the tale of a Pennsylvania teenager's hopeless flirtation with an Amish girl, and "Coyote," where a boy watches his father, a failed documentary filmmaker, slip into madness as he loses his tenuous grip on both his marriage and his career.
Porter has a sharp eye for the dance of family life, like the narrator of "Connecticut," reflecting on the autumn he discovers his mother's lesbian relationship with a neighbor: "I studied her as I used to study insects when I was younger, keenly aware of any subtle movement, convinced somehow that there was a hidden mystery that would be revealed if I stared long enough."
"Skin" is a departure from the style of its companions, an intense and chilling piece of flash fiction casting the thoughts of a young husband forward from an afternoon of lovemaking to the discovery of his wife's apparent infidelity and the abortion of "the child we have just signed away."
The opening sentences of "Hole," the grim account of a young adult's guilt over the death of his friend in a bizarre accident, showcase the precision of Porter's prose: "The hole was at the end of Tal Walker's driveway. It's paved over now. But twelve summers ago Tal climbed into it and never came up again."
In the book's title story, the only one featuring a female narrator, Porter introduces Heather, a college student struggling to reconcile her affection for her much older physics professor and her love for her fiancé, a handsome swimmer. Here, as in each of his tales, Porter is adept at plotting the complex geometry of intimate relationships.
On the strength of this impressive collection and with a novel forthcoming, Andrew Porter is a writer whose work seems destined to attract an appreciative following.--Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: A strong debut story collection from a writer who has staked out his turf in America's suburbs and the lives of their inhabitants.