105
‘Decay itself
was the giver
of life, the
secret of the
universe, the
place from
which all stars
collapse’Lidia YuknaviTch, auThor of such
celebrated books as The Book of Joan
and The Small Backs of Children, once
presented a viral TED talk titled “The
Beauty of Being a Misfit.” The char-
acters in Verge, her new collection of
short stories, are misfits too: rejects
and refugees and runaways and an ad-
dict turned yuppie, all of whom are
desperate to make sense of the alien-
ation that separates them from their
families, from society or from their
own bodies.
In “The Organ Run-
ner,” an Eastern European
girl whose hand is medi-
cally reattached after a
combine- harvester acci-
dent becomes a talented
transporter of black-
market human organs,
before exacting a grim
revenge. In “Cosmos,” a
janitor at a planetarium
uses the detritus he finds
discarded under the audi-
torium seats to construct
a fantasy city on his dining-
room table in his off-hours.
“He saw that his superficial
efforts with refuse were the
key,” Yuknavitch writes,
“that decay itself was
the giver of life, the
secret of the uni-
verse, the place
from which
all stars col-
lapse and all
systems tower
and all logic
gets bornand then falls.” And in “Cusp,” a young
woman experiments with her bur-
geoning agency by smuggling drugs to
the men in a nearby prison, where her
brother finds himself incarcerated.
But the collection’s slim masterpiece
is “Beatings,” a short, bodily stunner of
a story about a man with a heart con-
dition who spends his time boxing a
heavy bag and playing the cello. While
he is boxing, “Ideas seize, recede, then
again raise and rise. Fisted speed dug
deep and jab extended until it is shot
strung back to the shoulder.” And while
making music, “His fingers carry the
crouch of a dream in which chaos or-
ders and slows and sings... the notes
rebody a body.” With the
powers of her prose on
full, incandescent display,
6½ pages is all Yuknavitch
needs to illuminate the con-
nections between the body
and the spirit, the fists and
the heart, both beating in
their losing battles.
In these 20 efficient
and affecting stories,
Yuknavitch unveils the hid-
den worlds, layered under
the one we know, that can
be accessed only via trauma,
displacement and pain. There
is a vein of the wisdom of the
grotesque throughout; as one
character reflects after harm-
ing herself, “this was all a
little disgusting, the kind
of story that would
make the listener
lean a little away
from her.” But the
damaged beauty
of these misfits
keeps the reader
leaning in. •SHORT STORIES
Living on the edge
By Nicholas MancusiFlattery’s story “Parrot,” from
Show Them a Good Time, won
the 2019 An Post Irish Book
Awards prize for short story of
the yearswim lands her and her sister
in the hospital. The hallways,
she describes, are “like a
drained pool.”
Flattery’s biting descriptions
of recognizable spaces—
restaurants, college campuses,
offices—help root more
absurdist elements in reality.
She’s not afraid to showcase
her humor, either, even whenthe subject matter dips into
bleaker territory. Show Them a
Good Time is a little uncomfort-
able in this way, shifting tones,
from light to dark, sometimes in
a single sentence.
But that discomfort urges
readers to think about how
women find direction in
chaos, whether it’s brought
on by the end of the world or aboyfriend’s bizarre nighttime
habit. The characters learn
how to be agents of change in
their own lives, which in turn
allows them to move outside
the boxes society has placed
them in: daughter, girlfriend,
sister. In this way, Flattery
leads them to discover their
own voices, no matter how
YUKNAVITCH: WILLIAM ANTHONY strange they might be. ÑA.G.
△
A sophomore novel and a collection of
20 stories are among the most anticipated
books of 2020