Family Attractions by Judith Freeman

Abstract

Reviews 375 Dusk. By James Salter. (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988. 157 pages, $14.95.) Thrown from her horse and badly crushed, a lone rider remembers her past lovers. Bored by success, two American lawyers try to expunge their world­ weariness on their tour of Italy by picking up a schoolgirl. A well-off divorcée learns to her sadness that a lover has betrayed her. Such are the pangs in James Salter’s first collection of short stories. People fixate on love as life’s antidote, only to end up rejected or victorious in the wrong bed. It’s not only that the characters keep “looking for love in in all the wrong places.” What troubles here is the steady diet of self-absorption. One feels a bit awkward trying to believe that a lady just crushed by a horse would have little else on her mind than lost love. We may grant two lawyers their fling, but isn’t there anything else in Italy to interest them beyond an easy pickup? Can’t the divorcée find other matters to dwell on than one more affair gone awry? If not, we are dealing with personalities trivialized into bathos. One could simply dismiss the book on that basis. One cannot dismiss, how­ ever, the technical excellence of the way Salter captures a city in sunset or a day in approaching Fall, or the way he maneuvers a character from one deli­ cate scene to the next. Such abilities make the heart leap. But abilities to what end? The author weds his good writing to hackneyed and unrevealing situa­ tions. Mulling over Salter’snovels, critics applaud a “pointillist style” unworthy of the choice of protagonists and bemoan Salter’s “unearned lyricism that envelops . . . like Muzak.” One sees with a disappointed twinge that the flaw has carried over into this latest work. PETER WILD University of Arizona FamilyAttractions. ByJudith Freeman. (New York: Viking, 1988. 227 pages, $16.95.) Is there something about growing up Mormon that predisposes a person to write shortstories? Or have the great Mormon-experience novels escaped my attention, or my memory? No matter, provided the stories continue to hone that rough edge between personal values and day-to-day experience. Like Levi Peterson’s The Canyons of Grace, Freeman’s stories are about how lives are shaped by values—whether struggling to live up to them, or live them down. Nearly all the stories are set or rooted in the West, with family ties (usually to Utah or California) affecting the characters’ goals and expecta­ tions. The stories are tightly told, solidly grounded in the present place and time, with a strong sense of each main character’spersonal history. The most memorable is “The Death of a Mormon Elder,” in which a Mexican couple have found prosperityin Utah after converting to Mormonism, 376 Western American Literature though the wife clings to her Catholic “superstitions.” Events around the hus­ band’s illness, however, provide a charming avenue for a role reversal. “What Is This Movie?” looks at the current love-lives of three genera­ tions of women; it is the mother (to the granddaughter’s delight) who lets the air out of the tires of her daughter’s faithless lover’s car. This, and “Pretend We’re French,” are the most high-spirited of the stories. The others, despite fast pace and brisk dialogue, share a vague sense ofdoom. Most include a death or a major illness. Though each story comes to some small but positive turn for the better, a melancholy mood prevails. Nevertheless,Freeman captures the intricacies offamilylife—singleparent households, new love, marriages in trouble or working things out, and the tension (and bonds) between parent and child. Her stories are good reading and indicate that, despite the trouble, families—in whatever form—are worth having. JANET L. JACOBSEN Scottsdale, Arizona A Thief of Time. By Tony Hillerman. (New York: Harper & Row, 1988. 209 pages, $15.95.) Kokopelli the Flute Player, symbolic protagonist of this absorbing mystery, pervades its pages as he does Indian myth. The humpbacked bearer of seeds usually journeys through Indian America’s rock art as a petroglyph repre­ senting fertility. In Hillerman...