THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407270426
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GAIL GRIFFIN
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
ALL MY RELATIONS
CHRISTOPHER McILROY
University of Georgia Press. 189 pp. $19.95.
CHRISTOPHER McILROY'S first book of fiction, All My Relations, stakes out the territory where relationships sour, start to break and then disintegrate completely.
McIlroy's eight short stories explore the dissolution of ties that bind husbands and wives, lovers, friends and family members. Sometimes these breakages are the natural result of relationships; more often, they are caused by the characters' profound sense of alienation from both themselves and from others.
All of McIlroy's characters, from disaffected high school students in ``From the Philippines'' to old men waiting out their final years in ``All My Relations,'' are struggling to find their place in the world, and reinventing themselves, not always successfully, in the process.
Their struggles and their ambivalence about what they want make for compelling reading. In ``The March of the Toys,'' one of the best stories in the collection, a friendship between two women self-destructs when they realize they have romantic feelings for each other. In ``The Big Bang and the Good House,'' a former drug dealer yearns both for stability, through marriage and parenthood, and for adventure, finally realizing he cannot have both at the same time.
The stories are starkly but elegantly told, mirroring their Southwestern settings. Often full of anger, they always contain hope and dark comic relief. McIlroy's language, spare but colorful, never gets in the way of his characters, who are the driving force.
Although McIlroy presents characters who find it difficult to express and understand themselves, he sometimes allows them moments of too-witty repartee or too-perfect self-realization. Similarly, he pushes many of these stories toward a kind of epiphany that can feel forced.
The result is that his stories occasionally strain belief, but only in small ways. Mostly, his plots feel real, even though they tend to veer, at some point, into the surreal.
McIlroy, winner of the 1993 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, succeeds at one of the hardest tasks of that genre: creating complexity while maintaining brevity. He blends sharply observed details of everyday life with moments of lyricism and insight, and crafts compelling stories in the process. MEMO: Gail Griffin is a staff editor.
by CNB