Most striking are her piquant descriptions of the dozens of minor characters she creates. Packer’s prose is clear and clean amid her themes of ambiguity. Packer addresses the uncomfortable realities that sometimes come up in contemporary multicultural society, bringing them organically into character development and using them to support the tension within the stories. The clearest group division in the stories is racial nearly all the major characters are African American, and their movement within both black and white spheres is uneasy. When she moves in with a roomful of them, she finds herself effectively cut off from the reason she came to Japan. In “Geese,” Dina moves to Japan because of her love for all things Japanese, but can’t get a job anywhere except with other foreigners. Social and societal lines shift, whirl, and sometimes wrap around characters’ legs. Packer’s frustrated characters hover on the edges of groups, unsure whether they’re fully in or fully out. Spurge, a good student who doesn’t like his father, the March, or the birds, must decide where his allegiances are and why. In “The Ant of the Self,” Spurgeon’s father convinces him to ditch school and take his mother’s car to drive them both to Washington, DC, for the Million Man March, where they will sell exotic birds. Alternately, some characters are pushed into a group they do not see themselves as part of. Like Tia, many characters in the collection feel alienated within the circle that encloses them. Tia lives under the umbrella of her aunt and their very strict church in Tia’s flight to find her mother, she both doubts the religion and needs the faith. In “Speaking in Tongues,” when 14-year-old Tia is asked if she’s a runaway, she quips, “More like a run-a-to.” Protagonists flee via bus, plane, borrowed car, and foot, running away from one group of people in the hopes of making a connection with others elsewhere. The desire for escape floods ZZ Packer’s debut collection of stories, carrying the narrative and seeping into the characters. ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhereby Victoria Ludwin Tempting: Jenny Toomey Sings the Songs of Franklin Brunoby David KrasnowĬarlo Rotella's Good with Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Beltby Lawrence ChuaĮdward Carey's Alva & Irva: The Twins who Saved a Cityby Patrick McGrath Meshell Ndegeocelloby Marc Anthony Thompsonĭiana Cooperby Shirley Kaneda & Saul OstrowĪki Kaurismäki's Man Without a Past (Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä)by Nell McClister
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