This Friday’s book review is of the short-story collection Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers by Mitchell Waldman. On Friday’s CL posts the occasional review of books written by CL contributors and featured on our Book Store page. If you want to write a review or have your book reviewed please email the editor: admin-at-commuterlit-dot-com.
REVIEWED BY FRANK T. SIKORA
Copyright is held by the author.
MITCHELL WALDMAN is not afraid of the dark. It’s where he works. It’s where his characters live, fight, love, toil, and die. In his elegantly crafted short story collection, Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers, Waldman explores many lifetimes’ worth of severed relationships, broken promises, missed opportunities, and uncompromising pain and conflict between fathers and sons, brothers and stepbrothers, husbands and wives, mothers and sons, men and their jobs, and men and themselves.
Waldman’s men are broken not only by external forces but also by their ineptitude, their lack of education, or, worse, their false optimism for an American dream torn and diminished by a society fuelled by hyper-capitalism, systemic poverty, and class cruelty.
Waldman’s gritty realism and relentless drive down these dark passages are both exhilarating and dispiriting. Almost every attempt his characters make at healing past sins and broken relationships ends in bitter frustration or catastrophic failure. While most of Waldman’s characters possess the intelligence and self-awareness to recognize their failings, they lack the necessary skills to repair their relationships or escape their economic plight. It’s a brutal existence.
Waldman’s darkest stories explore the effects of aging and encroaching mortality (“A Life”) and the death of male figures — a father (“The Alignment of Planets”) or a best friend (“Another Summer Day”). Yet, the stories that resonated with me most are those that address loss of employment: “Opportunity Knocks,” “Job Interview,” and the brilliant and satirical “Welcome to the Corporation.” The men in these stories lose not only their means of income but also their faith in themselves.
Waldman’s sharp wit and observant prose offer cathartic relief — like a quick shot of hard liquor. I can easily relate to the characters’ frustrations, their rage, their alienation, and the personal losses that the sons, brothers, and fathers depicted in this volume endure.
My favourite stories struck a fantastical note. Sit down with the ghost of Kurt Cobain (“Coffee at the Nirvana Cafe”). Relay messages from the dead to their heartbroken family members (“Spirits in the Night”). Come to the agonizing conclusion that you were Adolf Hitler in a past life (“The Monster Inside”), or hire Adolf Hitler to fix your plumbing in pre-war Brooklyn (“Twist of Fate”), a clever alternate-history fable.
Yet, even when Waldman’s literary journey turns satirical or humorous, the journey remains bleak. Waldman’s literary ride, rich and complex and brilliant in execution, rarely detours — growing hauntingly oppressive with each tale.
Buy this book, but keep it on the nightstand or coffee table. The stories are short, from one-half page to 17 pages. Many fall into the flash fiction category. Read a few at a time. Contemplate them. Let them sit in the gut. Then, set the volume aside. Take a walk in the sun. Watch a ball game — even the Cubs.
Mitchell Waldman is a writer of considerable talent. I heartily recommend this book. But, beware. All-too-human monsters stalk the men in these tales. To paraphrase a character from a famous television show: The night is dark and full of terrors.
***
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Frank lives in Waterford, Wisconsin with his wife, Holly, an English teacher. His work has been published online and in print in Canada and the U.S. Every once in a while one of his flash fiction pieces will win an award, which his wife will acknowledge with a smile and a comment, such as, “It still needs a middle, sweetheart.”
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