There was no pattern except accumulated experience and more informed choice and no lessons being taught, just a life being lived. One of them my boyfriend.” Then there is a description of where the encounter took place: “We drank stolen wine coolers in my room.” or “His parents were out of town, so we threw a party at his house.” The sex and its attendant affection, ecstasy, disappointment, mess, betrayal, solace or regret are described with a rhythm that documents the moment neutrally but in a way that is neither sterile nor erotic but deeply human and often sad.Īs the encounters passed I got caught up in trying to understand the pattern they were making, trying to discover the lesson being taught. The next sentence often qualifies the inventory “One boy, one girl.
Each encounter starts with a sentence inventorying who was involved in addition to the narrator: “One girl.” “One boy, one girl”, “Two boys, one girl”. I found the style of the storytelling hypnotic, It is presented as an inventory of encounters with always-nameless lovers: men and woman singly or in combinations. I read it twice, not because I didn’t understand it the first time but because there is so much there that once just wasn’t enough to absorb it. This story has a dense mass to it that lodged in my imagination, demanding attention and thought. “Inventory”, the second story in this collection, is about thirteen pages long and fine example of the fact that short stories, even ones as short as this are not literary snacks that you consume between novels. “Her Body And Other Parties” is such a rich collection that I’m reviewing it one story at a time, mostly to enhance my enjoyment and understanding of these stories.
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