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Well. Five stories. Not uniformly bleak. Well, actually, yes they are. Don't read these to cheer up.
Read them if you want to see a well-constructed story. "A House on the Plains" begins with a mother and son departing Chicago for a house outside the city (sounds like now it would be around Aurora, in the middle of another city, but anyway...). It's only very slowly that you realize that this happy family is not your and my kind of happy family. At least I hope not!
"Jolene: A Life" is grindingly sad. You can see her life unfolding before you on the first page, at age 15. I kept repeating to myself "It has to get better." And it does. But not really; she ends up reliving the same story over and over, with the dawning awareness that this is her fate and her doom.
I normally don't like Depressing-for-Depressing's-Sake. But Doctorow is a crafty writer--in both senses of that word. These are stories populated with folks who will stay in your memory for a long time.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
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