THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601180575
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
THE TIGER IN THE GRASS
Stories and Other Inventions
HARRIET DOERR
Viking Penguin. 210 pp. $19.95.
Harriet Doerr's autobiographical first novel, Stones for Ibarra, was published in 1983 when she was 73 years old. If that isn't amazing enough, the book received the prestigious American Book Award for a first book of fiction.
Doerr's second novel, Consider This, Senora, was published 10 years later. Although the book did not receive any major awards, it was praised for its rendering of characters and setting. The writing was called exquisitely nuanced.
Doerr's third book, The Tiger in the Grass: Stories and Other Inventions, also contains some exquisite writing. But taken as a whole, this collection disappoints.
The title piece, a memoir, exemplifies what is wrong with the collection. It begins with the startling fact that Doerr's son is dying of brain cancer. It mentions this fact several times, but it does not tell readers how Doerr feels about the catastrophe. Doerr uses this event merely as a springboard to call up interesting facts about her life. Yet a son's death is more than a springboard.
Doerr did have an interesting life. She left college to marry in 1927 and returned to college 50 years later after being widowed for several years. After earning her B.A. in European history, Doerr took graduate classes in creative writing.
In graduate school, Doerr wrote pieces about Mexico, where she, her husband and two children lived for 15 years:
``At first, they were simply pieces,'' she explains. ``They were description and maybe little events. Then, I gradually became brave enough to try to make stories with plots. Then, after about two years, someone noticed they were set in the same place, and the characters were repeated; why didn't I turn them into a novel?''
The Tiger in the Grass seems to be what remained after the other work was turned into novels. It collects descriptions, little events, memoirs and a few longer stories with plots - ``simply pieces.''
The book is divided into five parts, with the first and fourth being memoirs. ``First Work,'' the second part, contains exercises that Doerr wrote in graduate school and is the weakest in the collection.
``Carnations,'' one of the stories here, focuses on a divorce from the wife's point of view. The wife learns of her husband's infidelity, has a car accident and is hospitalized. On seeing the flowers her husband has sent, she remembers a time when they almost bought flowers. Her remembrance of this event should make the story resonate, but it doesn't quite work.
``Mexico,'' the third part, contains stories that either inspired or were inspired by Doerr's two novels. Richard and Sara Everton, characters from Stones for Ibarra, appear here as do Mexican towns, customs and landscapes. There are even phrases such as, ``Consider this, Senora,'' from Doerr's second novel.
``Saint's Day,'' the strongest piece in the book, is in the third section. It's a simple story about two impoverished Mexican children - a boy, 8, and a girl, 11 - who roam the streets. Doerr begins the story almost as if she were painting a water color: ``The sun is scarcely up and coral streaks the sky over El Nopal when three top-heavy trucks lurch into the village square.'' That gentle opening leads to a tale of sexual abuse and ultimately underscores the horror of the story's end.
The book ends with ``Edie: A Life,'' an autobiographical short story about a British governess who resembles Mary Poppins and who raises five half-orphaned children.
Eliza, one of the five children, grows up to be a writer and lives in Mexico for several years: ``On special days, like her birthday and Christmas, Eliza would stand under the thatch of her doorway and stare northwest through the rain and vegetation in the direction of the house where she was born and had first tasted tea.''
Unfortunately, Doerr does not tell us what Eliza thought or felt as she stood there. The story would have been better, the plot and characters more believable, if she had. MEMO: Diane Scharper teaches memoir writing at Towson State University in
Maryland. She is the author of ``The Laughing Ladies,'' a collection of
poems. by CNB