Mother Rocket: Stories

In "The Silent Partner," Baby's chatter and naivete and Tim's dark depressions seem to forecast a grating story, but Ciresi's use of language and plot twists create a story filled with people the reader can laugh and cry with. The story glibly leads the reader into the bizarre relationship between Baby's nonsensical thinking and Tim's postwar trauma, but just when the reader thinks the story can't get any stranger, it does. What Tim and Baby think are their neighbors enjoying each other with meaningful thumps against the wall turns out to be murder. If that isn't enough, the "silent partner" isn't Tim at all but rather the herpes he gives to Baby after a graphically strange encounter with their apartment manager. Although the erotica and violence are enough to shock, Ciresi's use of language gives the story a nursery rhyme effect: "Stuffed to the gills with jabber, she went bibbly babbly all the blessed day." Ciresi obviously writes out of a love for language.

The next two stories delve into a Casablanca-like, black-and-white world. Ciresi paints film-clips framed by "billowing lace panel curtains" and "soft strains of music" floating across the pages. In "Resurrection," Karl falls in love with his piano teacher only to be tormented by his brother Lorenz, who entertains "faceless girls . . . on the front porch swing in warm weather, and in the winter, in the back seat of borrowed cars." Karl flounders in his bewildering feelings for Madame and in his changing feelings for his mother as another woman moves into that place in his heart.

In "Second Coming," Karl's love for his music teacher is surpassed by his brother Lorenz's love of penile prostheses, "miracle workers for the impotent man, godsends to the needy." Lorenz plays with his prosthetic toys and talks of 83-year-old men while Karl tries to come to terms with his upcoming marriage to the younger woman he has gotten pregnant. As in "The Silent Partner," sometimes the honesty of Ciresi's words is shocking; sometimes they are too subtle and must be digested with care before the meaning is clear.

"The End of the Season" and "Dutch Wife" are stories examining love, marriage, and relationships. "The End of the Season" revolves around Janie cleaning out her family home after her father's death. As she cleans she questions her marriage and her motives in marrying her husband. The "Dutch Wife" finds Zogg falling in love with a dead woman brought to life by her niece's stories and the niece falling in love with Zogg. Zogg, like all of Ciresi's characters, slams into his own vision of himself and finds it false. Sometimes the characters continue to deceive themselves, but most of the time they finally see themselves for who they truly are - even if it's too late to make a difference.

MARTY ENNES-MARVIN Southern Arkansas University

COPYRIGHT 1995 Studies in Short Fiction
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning