THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9506300676
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LYNN DEAN HUNTER
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
THE AGE OF MIRACLES
ELLEN GILCHRIST
Little, Brown. 272 pp. $22.95.
ELLEN GILCHRIST'S new collection, The Age of Miracles, is a work of affirmation. In a tone of wonder, these 16 stories portray a tough, tender, often scarred family whose spirited nature is triumphant.
One-legged Dr. Wheeler exercises on the treadmill and recalls Ulysses. A 13-year-old takes advantage of the lax supervision during a funeral to investigate the facts of life. Children kidnap their mother to keep her from having a dangerous facelift. (``We drugged you, Momma. You missed your appointment, by the way.'')
Ellen Gilchrist was born in Mississippi and lives in Fayetteville, Ark., where she leads a reclusive life, working long hours every day. Her devotion to her writing has resulted in crystalline prose and fine story-craft, as well as an impressive publication list: 12 books since 1981, including novels, poetry, journals, a play and several short-story collections, one of which (Victory Over Japan) won the National Book Award in 1984.
Gilchrist's fictive world twines characters and settings from book to book. Like a small town, it has a history and folklore of its own. For longtime Gilchrist fans, a new collection is akin to a neighborhood gathering. We know almost everybody, who is kin to whom, and what their problems - and intimate thoughts - have been. We've become well-acquainted with the Manning, Hand and Weiss families over the years. So, when Rhoda or Crystal or Lydia makes an entrance in The Age of Miracles, her scandalous past trails right behind.
A bold, indignant child, Rhoda first appeared in In the Land of Dreamy Dreams (1981). She was 8 years old then, and her two big problems were her brother Dudley, who was out to ruin her life, and the likelihood of her own mortality. `` `No,' (Rhoda told herself), `she would never die. She was not the type.' ''
In subsequent stories, Rhoda raised hell as she grew up in a proper Southern home; wreaked havoc up and down the Mississippi Delta in her teen years; and suffered divinely through the passions of young womanhood.
In The Age of Miracles, an aging Rhoda writes for Southern Living, works out at the Washington Regional Medical Center for Exercise and watches with wonderment as the next generation falls in love.
``The older you get, the better,'' she informs younger women.
These days, she has no trouble with Dudley. But that old problem of mortality still infuriates her, 50-odd fictive years later. When a character dies in The Age of Miracles, she raises the same objection she had when she was 8: ``He wouldn't die. He's not the type.''
Many selections in The Age of Miracles explore death and aging. How shall we grow old? Is there a dignified way to go out? What shape does romance take in old age? Several stories are set at funerals, wakes and weddings; others at romantic places (Paris, St. Petersburg). Gilchrist has never used a strictly chronological structure in her collections, nor does she here. Some depict childhood homes and happenings, while others take place at the senior citizens' fitness center.
The arrangement of stories in this collection appears, at first, haphazard. The storyteller meanders across time and theme, from light story (lusty Rhoda pushing 60 in ``Statue of Aphrodite'') to dark tale (young Rhoda, divorced mother of four in ``Love of My Life,'' dieting on Dexedrine and gin). Still, this is Gilchrist; surely there is an organizing principle - a structure of independent voices, telling tales of love, loss, humor and sorrow; returning, now and again, to Rhoda, and her sense of wonder.
The Age of Miracles is a carefully planned composition, something like a fugue: polyphonic, a succession of melodies introduced by various instruments, independent yet in harmony with one central theme. The melodies are facets of the human condition: humor, love, sorrow, passion and loss. The central theme is wonder.
- MEMO: Lynn Dean Hunter is a short-story writer and poet and associate fiction
editor of The Crescent Review. She lives in Virginia Beach. by CNB