The dozen meticulously crafted short stories in National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender's The Words of Dr. L and Other Stories speculate about the near future, reflect on the recent past, and imagine an alternative present.
Bender (Refund) dives deeply into family dynamics and also extends her exploration outward to the community. Readers may be tempted to connect the title story with the present-day challenges of ending a pregnancy, except for the narrator's mission to connect with Dr. L and learn the top-secret words--rather than a medical solution--that will keep her child-free: the doctor tells her "the exact words, said in the correct way, to create the result needed." Bender balances this futuristic element with the protagonist's memories of her relationship with her own mother, and also with the woman who was once her best friend, now preoccupied with motherhood. "The Hypnotist" mines the dynamics of a father-daughter relationship, and how an aging father makes use of pandemic boundaries in an attempt to conceal from his daughter his own fragility. The erection of 80-foot walls in "Messengers" was supposed to keep a community safe: "After a lifetime of drills, disaster had finally arrived, but not as we predicted, not from outside our walls."
Despite a premonition of disaster in many of Bender's riveting selections, an atmosphere of gentleness envelops her characters. They yearn for connection. In "The Shame Exchange," the government issues a mandate in which citizens "who held too much shame," so that it "interfered with their productivity," would hand off their shame to "a government official who had none." The citizens could now acknowledge that these officials, now burdened with shame, "needed to be treated with a bit of tenderness." The woman in "Helicopter," remembering how she "had stolen a pack of berries from the too-slow grasp of the old man" at the supermarket to make a strawberry birthday cake, later imagines what might have transpired if she'd shared them with him, "in a tender moment of communion." The judge who narrates "The Court of the Invisible" learns that revealing the thing she is most afraid of is also the secret to achieving a sense of belonging.
In Bender's investigation of isolation and community, parents and children, friends and seeming enemies, these 12 stories allow readers a wide lens through which to both contemplate world events and what may lay ahead--and to consider the vital role of compassion when weighing one's choices. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: In these beautifully crafted dozen stories, a National Book Award finalist examines the recent past and near future, and the choices human beings make in order to be in community with one another.