Basso Profundo: short fiction

According to the first-person narrator of “Tsunami,” “But we can’t ever really understand just how dark people’s hearts truly are, how mysterious.” Truer words are never spoken in this stunning and affecting collection of short pieces, which feature betrayal, larceny, abuse, madness, and murder in roughly equal parts.

Bradford Morrow (rhymes with sorrow) makes no attempt to plumb the depths of these characters’ psyches, other than to portray their actions and emotions. There is a sad and frightening logic to the goings-on here. His plots and portraits are so compelling: we understand the young collector in the initial story, “The Hoarder,” when he kills his brother. After all, it’s self-defense, but why must he stalk the girlfriend and photograph her in secret? I was left fearing for the girl’s life at the end. We watch in horror as the psychotically misguided protagonist of “(Mis)Laid” mislays his mind, takes his lover hostage, and just as quickly loses his life to a bullet through the brain from a high-powered rifle. But Mr. Morrow, author of the resplendent “The Diviner’s Tale,” achieves his best effects when transcribing the inner dialogs of some of these truly sick puppies.

We follow and comprehend the twisted mental process of the mother who kills her husband in “Tsunami” – sort of – but the murder of her children in the bathtub is the only thing that fully explains the depth of her madness. In “Ellie’s Idea,” one story I found to be a little more comic, a young woman may have caused her dodgy husband some real difficulties when she calls his boss to apologize for a months-old slight. She certainly doesn’t smooth the waters of her family relationships, either. “The Enigma of Grover’s Mill” tells a marvelous old-fashioned sci-fi story, but has its own murder. Or does it? This one story features a rather upstanding and well-adjusted hero, but we’re given reason to doubt even this young man’s sanity.

Other stories contain other outrages, other macabre goings-on. Mr. Morrow achieves a fugue-like state in which we expect to be wowed by his dark inventiveness, and we are never disappointed. His stories all share a marvelous deadpan delivery of deadly effects – I recommend them very highly.

I made this choice from my good friends at NetGalley, not realizing it was a series of short pieces. However, the collection contains well over its share of striking and memorable characters in the throes of epochal moments. Such is the stuff of fine short fiction.

Ms. Lakoseljac presents in the title piece a man who in the present day lets his jealousy of the relationship between his wife and Vincent van Gogh lead to cruel negligence and disastrous – life and death – consequences. “The Perfect Woman” follows the marriage-ruining self-absorption of a woman who learns through fantasy and brinksmanship that she may not measure up to the perfections of an inflatable doll. Is the doll real? The efficacy of this question leaves us in no doubt of the author’s haunting strength. “Years of Silence” chronicles the sad and, again, self-absorbed, saga of two friends who have been out of touch for years. The stirring and captivating use of the long letter from long ago ranks as one of the finest effects in this collection. In “Heads or Tails” Ms. Lakoseljac reduces the stay-married-or-not issue to the flip of a coin. Very nearly.

Just as certain themes and personality traits dominate the majority of these pieces, I think it no mistake that the author leads off and finishes with uplifting, hopeful stories, and even presents a foreword that establishes the recurring talisman: a park bench in Toronto. We read through a confusing, unsettling fairy tale after the foreword, and it reinforces the writer’s mission, although for me, it isn’t needed. It seems a true, if charming, piece of self-absorption for the author herself. However, “Night Walk” portrays a true-feeling change of heart in a young woman who opts to stay with a position she loves in a children’s library, rather than take the grand opportunity in an adults-only office in another city.

It’s been some years since I devoted any energy to short fiction. These pieces, though, have refreshed me in this area; they are consistently excellent. We witness the doubting, troubled internal dialogues of people at crossroads or crises. Seldom do characters behave in any sympathetic way, and if we’re lucky, we might get a hint of some trouble that led the character to do what he or she does. For those who enjoy short stories, these belong in the very first rank. Trust me.

I was a little befuddled as to how to rate these pieces. On the whole there is somewhat of a sameness to the characters, but individually, the stories shine. They're clear, direct pieces, and very enjoyable.