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July 11, 2005

GUEST REVIEW: THE APPLE'S BRUISE

(Long weekend.  We rode too far - 65 miles - and we're in the doghouse with our coach for overdoing it.  We worked on the novel and even explored the long dormant possibility of having a social life.  And we're a bit behind of the LATBR Thumbnail, but we hope to have it posted by lunchtime.  In the meantine, check out Dan Olivas' take on the new short story collection by local legend Lisa Glatt ... )

Glatt The Apple's Bruise: Stories
By Lisa Glatt
Simon & Schuster
194 pp.,
paperback

REVIEWED BY DANIEL OLIVAS

The people who inhabit Lisa Glatt’s perfectly disturbing but often hilarious collection, The Apple’s Bruise, suffer from a common human failing. They lie to themselves (and often others) and, in the process, they tend to lose grasp of their identity sometimes leading to tragic consequences. In the opening story, “Dirty Hannah Gets Hit by a Car,” the young girl of the title is ignored by her bickering parents and has to seek the company of a neighbor, Erika, to accompany her to school though “Erika is two years older than Hannah and only talks to her when no one’s looking.” Hannah still desperately seeks Erika’s company despite what happened a month earlier:

“All afternoon she lay on an old cot while Erika ordered her around and did things to her. She told her to lift up her skirt, and Hannah obeyed. She told her to leave the fabric over her face, and she did it…. She told her to take off her jeans without sitting up, and Hannah wriggled right out of them. She told her to open her legs so she could get to the tender skin inside her thighs.”

And when Erika is sick one school morning, Hannah lies to Erika’s mother and says that she’ll get one of her parents to walk her to school. Hannah doesn’t want to face her arguing parents so she waits until Erika’s mother closes the front door before venturing to school on her own leading to the car accident of the title. Only in surviving does Hannah begin to admit to herself that Erika is not worthy of her company.

Glatt’s adult characters are perfectly capable of lying to themselves, too. In “The Body Shop,” Megan has kicked her husband, Robert, out of the house because he has been frequenting a strip club. Actually, it’s more complicated than that: Robert was arrested at the club for jumping on stage and carrying off one of the performers that he had a crush on; the fact that he had quit his job and was spending Megan’s hard-earned money at the club doesn’t help matters. Nor does the fact that their teenage daughter, Tess, has escaped rehab and is on the run with a man who is old enough to be her grandfather. But the niggling, nagging question Megan has is why did Robert do this? Robert's frustrating answer is simply: “I couldn’t help it.” Megan needs to find the truth so she investigates by visiting the strip club and cross-examining the bouncer, Tweet, a married man. During these conversations, Megan tells so many lies to Tweet that she’s worried she can’t keep track of them. Even when Megan begins sleeping with Tweet, she can’t help but falsely assert that “Robert and I are working things out.” As the story ends, Megan doesn’t see the damage she’s inflicting on herself, her family or Tweet, for that matter, who is quickly falling in love with her.

There’s also Parker, the L.A. Zoo veterinarian in “Animals” who tries to tell his wife that her fourteen-year-old sister is not only a liar but very likely seduced her stepfather. Unfortunately, upstanding Parker can’t believe that he himself is attracted to his wife’s underage sibling. And then there’s Mrs. Dunn, the widowed mother in “Soup” who, in her loneliness, is attracted to one of her son’s friends, Foster. Foster, however, is rumored to have raped and beaten a girl. Mrs. Dunn, in her hunger for male companionship, ignores this possibility and not only learns a horrible lesson in the process, but also discovers the dreadful truth about her son.

The creepiest story is “What Milton Heard” concerning a man who refuses to admit that he heard or saw anything strange about his upstairs neighbor, Duke, who is arrested for a string of child murders. The story is told in the first person; as it progresses, we learn that Milton suffers from a perverse and hateful view of his fellow human beings and that, perhaps, he knows more about Duke than he cares to acknowledge.

Sometimes, when a character desires and obtains the truth, regret is not far behind. Darlene Tate in the story “Ludlow” wants her new husband to make a list of things that “bug” him about her. When kindhearted Jimmy finally relents, the list grows and grows much to Darlene’s consternation. This little act of truth-seeking becomes a catalyst for Darlene’s doubts about her marriage. Some characters avoid this trap as in the unnamed couple in “Grip” who find it easier to argue with about how to make the morning coffee rather than facing that fact that they’re about to abandon their young daughter on the shoulder of the 405 Freeway.

In all, Glatt’s stories are finely-painted little portraits of human frailty. Often with dark humor and always with a sharp eye for detail, Glatt makes us think about the lies we’ve told ourselves and, at the same time, forces us to ponder whether, given the opportunity, we would be strong enough to face the truth.

Daniel Olivas is a writer living in Los Angeles. His most recent book for adults is Devil Talk: Stories (Bilingual Press).

Posted at 12:01 AM |

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Comments

ed

Mark: Post the thumbnail whenever you feel like it. Living and resting is sometimes more important than killing yourself. :)

Posted by: ed | July 11, 2005 at 06:52 AM

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TEV DEFINED


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