The Shared Spirit of Storytelling

My reading life follows mysterious weather patterns that are difficult to predict and lack design or internal consistency. Sometimes I want a collection of stories that I can read bit by bit; sometimes I want a short novel I can read through in hardly more than a sitting; usually, I need to have at least one collection of poetry at hand; always, I have fairytales. Still, a theme emerged while compiling this list of recent favorites that I am excited to share: these books are themselves about the act of sharing stories. So, amidst the mysterious weather patterns afflicting the world outside, stay indoors and devour these works that share among them the spirit of storytelling.

The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams: “She wanted to be extraordinary, to possess a savage glitter.” This novel possesses the savage glitter that Alice, one of its teenage girls desires. The girls in this desert novel are motherless, mournful, principled, curious, cruel, self-indulgent, and funny. No plot-summary would give you a sense of what reading the book is like. Just holding this book as I read it felt like holding something electric. (Warning: a dog dies, but there is revenge.)

Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love by Anna Moschovakis: After Eleanor’s laptop is stolen from a Brooklyn café, she receives an email from someone who claims his friend has it and offers to return her data. Eleanor just wants a certain document with certain lost paragraphs in it, but she also comes to imagine what this man she is corresponding with is really like. Wrapped around Eleanor’s story is the story of the novelist writing it and the novelist’s relationship with a critic. The structure is sometimes fluid; sometimes fragmented and episodic; sometimes comic and sometimes sexy; and it all feels precarious like navigating the world with your phone running out of battery life, three books in your bag, and difficult memories in your mind.

Things That Fall From The Sky by Kevin Brockmeier: A marriage ends as a ceiling slowly descends upon a town, until the trees are crushed, until the houses come down, until no one can even walk upright. A boy gets his first kiss on the same day his teacher dies. Rumpelstiltskin’s two halves correspond with one another by mailing Mad Libs. And in my favorite story in the collection, a recently Christianized tribe tells stories of Jesus’ life in every possible way. Brockmeier’s stories are heavy with loneliness and suburban-ness, but rich with wonder and beauty.

A Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the People edited by B. A. Botkin: After borrowing this treasury from the library, and renewing and renewing, I finally just bought it. You never know when you might want to read hopscotch rhymes from Chicago, tall tales of famous wind storms, or episodes from the life of Paul Bunyan. Truly, nothing makes me feel more patriotic than reading an argument in which one man tries to convince another that he is a coyote: “Ain’t I got fleas?... And don’t I howl around all night, like a respectable coyote should do?” Good points.

The Others by Matthew Rohrer: In this Believer Book Award-winning “novel-in-verse,” stories unfold and overlap the narrator reads and listens to characters tell him stories. It’s like a looser version of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, with ghost stories, adventure stories, sci-fi stories, and stories of a publishing office that triggered flashbacks to my stint in the industry.

Corina Bardoff is the Assistant Division Manager of the Info Commons in Brooklyn’s Central Library. Her fiction has appeared in Cream City Review, Phoebe, An Oulipolooza (a publication of Kelly Writers House), and elsewhere. Corina lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their adorable adopted dogs.