The 11 stories in Emily Doyle's bracing debut collection, Please Don't Touch the Body, vibrate with undercurrents of guilty desire, delicious rage, and the bewildering mysteries of the underworld. Motherhood and its discontents connect the characters across lush villas, stark hospital rooms, an oyster farm, and multiple Petco locations, while Doyle's dark, dazzling humor offsets the absurdity of life.
In "The Diver," a mother shattered by divorce struggles to reconnect with her son, battling the urge to "duck out of sight" when he approaches. A professional diver, she finds that her sadness vanishes only when she is underwater. When she and her son befriend an octopus on a submerged adventure, it unlocks something profound between them. One cannot be certain that their revived bond will endure, but it's clear the episode will be a high point in the young man's life.
Doyle's writing, elegant and mesmerizing, results in a curious, alluring combination of high drama and supernatural mystery. The daughter in "The Only Child" is devoted to caring for her aged parent yet feels as if her existence is a stream running "not alongside her mother's life but underneath it." In "Thursdays for Haru," a husband's abduction by aliens affords his wife the solitude and space to rediscover "that dangerous part" of herself she had subdued in service of domestic harmony. The title story, set in the same retirement home featured in an earlier story, lures readers into a young woman's devastating confrontation with her client's dead lover.
Mothers are present even when they are not part of the action, as in "Thank You No Thank You" wherein two law students are on a day trip to an oyster farm. Jen is afraid of becoming her mother, "not understanding I was her already." On the eve of accepting a prestigious law firm position, she worries she'll sink into a life not in her control. Although she has been liberated from her family's cloistered religious world, is she walking into a future where she must once again pretend to fit in? Convinced she has stomach cancer, Jen is relieved she has to go on pretending only until the disease takes over. One can't help but be fascinated with this woman and her eager embrace of illness as salvation.
Spanning an impressively diverse demographic range, Doyle's characters seek and often find relief from life's demands by turning inward, succumbing to the seductive allure of their own startlingly active imaginations. --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: Motherhood and its discontents loom large in this mesmerizing debut story collection combining high drama with supernatural mystery and characters spanning a diverse demographic range.