Stefanie Freele’s collection, Surrounded by Water, contains stories with strong, often lyrical,
language and believable, down-to-earth characters, each piece, a reading
experience. It’s her women I am drawn
to. They’re tough. In “Over the Rolling Waters Go,” the creeping
reality of a wife and mother is juxtaposed against the peppy gung-ho spirit of
her husband and his idea of family dynamic.
What seems at first blush to be an innocent virtue turns out to be
bullying very quickly. The suspense
builds and…I won’t talk about the ending.
Another mother, in the short but totally satisfying, “If the
Unsuitable Neighbor Smells Snow,” shows her own fierce determination.
“A Bunch of Cash Landed my Way” brings us humorous wishful
thinking and “The Problem of Pillows” illustrates Ms. Freele’s deft touch at
dialogue. For example, when a student runs into professor with the instincts of
a sybil.
“You again,” she [the professor]
says without glancing my way. “You’re
not locked in the Bermuda Triangle.” This is stated like a professorial fact,
one she may test me on next Tuesday.
I check my person and confirm I’m
not locked anywhere; but as always, I’m intrigued by mention of the Bermuda
Triangle, a place you may enter, but gamble on an exit. I respond, “I’m free to come and go.”
The professor predicts the student will need a new pillow
and because the prof has been right in the past, and the old pillow is one of
“procrastination,” the student runs out and buys a new one, “a down one, filled
with pluckings from once-warm bodies.” One
of my favorite lines in the story is “All of my unfinished business lies upon
that pillow, snuggles along its two-hundred thread count loveliness.”
Wonderful combination of image and meaning
and this kind of language can be found throughout.
And then there is “While Surrounded by Water,” for which the
collection has been named. I’m tempted
to call it a “flash novel” because though it is the length of a short story,
the content is as gratifying as a much longer work with characters in crisis
coming to grips with who they are. Once
again there is a strong, tough woman at its center, one who is underappreciated
but full of life and determination. This
seems to be a theme in Ms. Freele’s work.
Quiet triumphs over what life dishes out.
Published by Press 53 out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
with gorgeous cover designed by Kevin Morgan Watson and art by Dariusz
Klimczak, Surrounded by Water is a collection
worthy of a large appreciative audience.
2 comments:
High five for a review of Stefanie Freele's Surrounded by Water collection of flash!As finely crafted as Freele's stories! Can you tell I am as impressed as you are? Thank you!
Darn... I'm having trouble proving I'm not a robot, all in the effort to say 'Thank You.' Your review expresses in ways I envy the high regard in which I hold Stefanie's Freele's collection Surrounded by Water. Her first collection was different and equally well crafted, quirky, utterly unique, excellent spare fiction with characters you can't help but love and yes... the gutsy woman theme holds reign there too. Both collections more than worth a read and re-read! Thank you!
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