Crimes and Misdemeanors: New and Original Stories of Love and Death

Authors: multiple (see below)
Edited by: Elaine Koster and Joseph Pittman
Year: 1998
Genre: Short Stories

Let me just say, this book was not entirely what I expected.  I thought, from the title, that most of these stories would have to do with either love or death, or love and death.  How silly of me.  It turns out, when reading the introduction, that this book is actually a compilation celebrating the 40th year of Signet Books. 

I picked it up at a library sale, mostly because I like reading short stories.  The contributing authors include Stephen King, Sharyn McCrumb, Eileen Goudge, Erica Jong, and other "big names" I've either read and liked, or have heard of and not quite gotten around to reading. So how could I lose?

Overall, the stories were passable.  A few truly stood out.  I was thinking I'd consign this book to the "for sale" heap, but then I read a few stories I really liked, so I will have to ponder the disposition a bit.  

For want of a better way to do this, I'll just review each on its own merits.  None is so outstanding that it deserves its own post. 

• Stormy Weather - Lisa Alther
  Jesse is sunning herself naked by the pool when her ex-husband and his current wife come by to drop off a gift for her 50th birthday party that night.  An OK story, but not particularly engrossing. 
• Headaches and Bad Dreams - Lawrence Block
  A psychic locates the body of a missing boy.  The resulting accolades change her life; she gets recognition and her business booms.  A nice twist at the end. 
• Baby-sitting Ingrid - Larry Collins
  A G-man falls for the woman he's protecting.  She is murdered, and he tried to find justice for her (he knows who killed her but can't pin the guy on charges).  Nothing special.
• Wrong Time, Wrong Place - Jeffery Deaver
  A cop pulls over a couple of thugs in a stolen car, thinking they're the ones responsible for the bank heist earlier that day.  Nice suspense and a good twist to the story.
• Untitled - E.L. Doctorow
  Set in a train on the way to a concentration camp.  I am so totally going to read one of his books, now, as I loved his language.  I think this is the first E.L. Doctorow story that I read: it will not be my last.
• Mother's Day - Joy Fielding
  A mother is waiting for her teenage daughter at an orthodontia office.  Good description of characters; nice slice-of-life plot.  I'd probably pick up a book by her, although I'm not sure I'd go looking for one.
• Paranoia - Stephen Fry
  The OCD wife of a senator-elect has been having bad dreams and consulting psychics.  She is sent to a mental hospital because her paranoia has led to a death.  A great story, with a nice twist at the end (and it shows what an omniscient narrator can do for you, too).  I'd read more by him, that's for sure.
• The Price of Tea in China - Eileen Goudge
  Siblings gather to celebrate their parents' 50th anniversary, knowing that their father has been conducting an affair and their mother would never believe it.  A good, tight story.  Nothing overly dramatic.  I'd also read her again.
• Six Shades of Black - Joan Hess
  A stay-at-home mother takes action.  A great revenge story.  A short great revenge story.  I so want to read more of her writing.
• The Naked Giant - Wendy Hornsby
  A woman planning to celebrate her anniversary discovers her husband cheating on her, and gets a last laugh of sorts.  Very well done. 
• Songs in the Key of I - Erica Jong
  Poems and an essay.  The essay discusses the solitude needed for both readers and writers of poetry, and how suspicious we are of solitude in our modern lives.  My favorite poem was "Waiting for Angels."  Good imagery in all of her poetry. 
• L.T.'s Theory of Pets - Stephen King
  A man shares the story of how his friend L.T's wife left him.  Another demonstration of why Stephen King is so popular - he is a damned good writer and knows how to use telling details.  Also, he manages to convey quite a lot about his characters in the way they speak. 
• Djinn and Tonic - Tabitha King
  A man and a woman find a strange bottle while walking on the beach.  Some good lines: "There was no arguing that men...had a terrible trouble distinguishing a number of things from a vagina."
• Where or When - Ed McBain
  A man is either reliving something terrible he's done - or having premonitions of what he's about to do.  That doesn't matter, really.  I enjoyed this story.  I'm not sure I'd go searching for Ed McBain, but I certainly wouldn't shy away from him, as I have in the past.
• An Autumn Migration - Sharyn McCrumb
  Her father-in-law's ghost inspires a depressed woman.  I loved this story.  It's been a while since I've read McCrumb, but this caused me to remember why I liked her so much.  Will have to make up for lost time.
• Color Blind - Joyce Carol Oates.
  This story had me cringing.  A white woman befriends (or so she thinks) her downstairs neighbor, a black man, only to find months later that she's had his name wrong all this time.  You know, I have yet to read an Oates story that I like.
• A Place for Nathan - Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
  A young woman contemplating abortion meets a man who believes in the transmutation of souls.  A pretty meh story, overall.  Nothing particularly special about it (once you figure out the woman is pregnant - which is dropped out of nowhere - you know how the story is going to end, and pretty much the way the ending will be reached). 
• The Unsung Song of Mary Gallagher - Linda Lay Shuler
  A wallflower comes into her own after being fired from the job she's had for 20 years.  Enjoyable.  I'd probably read Shuler again

Overall, as I've said, most of these stories were unexceptional.  I was surprised at how many dealt with a wronged woman getting revenge.  Some were very clever.  I enjoyed the McBain a lot, which I didn't expect to (I always think of him writing police procedurals, and I just have never been into procedurals).  I really enjoyed the humor and the blackness of Joan Hess's story.  It's one of my favorites out of the whole book, the other being the Sharyn McCrumb story.  Interestingly (or not) both are from rather small places: I think McCrumb lives in Appalachia and Hess in Arkansas.

I'm still not sure about the final disposition of this book.  What might happen is that I'll keep it until I get around to reading some of the authors so I know whom to look up.
 
The stories in this anthology were strong enough that I think an aspiring writer could learn from reading them, and that a reader would enjoy most of them.   
 

The Woman Who Loved the Moon

Author: Elizabeth A. Lynn
Year: 1981
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy

So.  I'm still working on how I want to format my reviews.  Where and how should I indicate what inspired me to read this?  Where I got it?  Why?  And what the final disposition is? In short, will I ever read this book again?  Recommend it to a friend?  Keep it in case I want to refer to a particularly adroit example of storytelling or skill? 

This book brings up all of those questions for me.  I'd never heard of Elizabeth A. Lynn before, nor have I read anything else or seen other books of hers lurking around.  I do remember deciding to buy it, however.  I was in our local book swap shoppe, checking out the fantasy section, and the title interested me.  Apparently the title story won the 1980 World Fantasy Award.  Cool.  That really got my attention: the other deciding factor was a blurb on the inside by Marge Piercy (no, I don't think she's related to the Piercys in The World According to Garp, although I don't otherwise recognize the name): "Her women have dignity and strength!"

OK.  I'd like to read stories where the women are not set pieces.  I wondered what the 80's version of female dignity and strength looked like, so I paid my money and took my chances.  Granted, it's taken me a while to read it - this has been sitting on my TBR pile for years. 

The stories are:

• Wizard's Domain - a sea wizard, with the help of a man who betrayed him, fights a fire wizard. 
• The Gods of Reorth - Jael impersonates a goddess by using the technology from her civilization.
• We All Have To Go - A television show records the last moments of the dying.  Strangely prescient of our current fascination with reality television.  One quibble; you knew more or less what the ending would be, although not quite how it would come about. 
• The Saints of Driman - Explorers are leaving a planet.  One is fascinated with the saints there. 
• I Dream of a Fish, I Dream of a Bird - A mother's discovery saves her injured son.
• The Island - A man sees his dead wife on a mysterious island.
• The Dragon That Lived in the Sea - A dragon unknowingly terrorizes a small fishing village until a child is born who has no fear.
• Mindseye - A retelling of "The Ice Queen" given the setting of planetary exploration.
• The Man Who Was Pregnant - A man becomes pregnant and hangs out in an orange caftan.
• Obsessions - A urban development board burns down old houses.
• The Woman in the Phone Booth - A stranger discovers that a woman sitting in a phone booth is an alien and the booth is her ship.  (Dr. Who, much? Although this alien is apparently taking classes, not fighting Daleks.) 
• Don't Look at Me - A dwarf magician on an interplanetary entertainment circuit solves a murder.
• Jubilee's Story - A group of women deliver a child as they travel through rough territory.
• The Circus That Disappeared - A small circus is hiding a big secret.
• The White King's Dream - A resident in a nursing home lives on despite her wishes. 
• The Woman Who Loved The Moon - One of three sisters fights, then falls in love with, the Moon.

The potential of these stories is enormous, and I felt that Lynn had a good grasp of craft; the stories were taut and the words were well used.  However, they were also curiously empty.  I can't say that I want to read any of these stories again, and only a few stood out.  I read this book over a span of two weeks (I think) and can barely remember what the stories were about. I'm not sure why they don't work for me: there's a definite remove in them - I never sunk fully in the world portrayed.  The characters were mostly interchangeable. 

A lot of the female protagonists end up with other women.  There's really very little said about it, and definitely no reaction from their society.  On one hand, I like the thought that these relationships happen with little to no commentary.  However, we're never really sure what attracts one character to another, and that may be one of the reasons why I find the stories so stale.
 
Much to my amusement, the first story doesn't even have a woman in it (unless you count the girl conjured by one sorcerer).  I thought the title story was OK, but it was nothing that particularly entranced me.  I can't say there was anything new about the women portrayed, or different - but it has been thirty years, after all, since this book came out, and I may be writing this from a vantage point of being exposed to "strong" heroines (although we could always use more).  At least these women didn't sit around and wait for anyone to rescue them. 

The best story by far was "Jubilee's Story."  In it, a group of four women are traveling together.  They are apparently from a society where women have power and control.  During their travels, they are asked to help deliver a baby.  The family they assist is very patriarchal, and opposes what these women represent.  I thought it was so powerful because we are told so much in details - we aren't beat over the head with explanation or back story.  This was probably the most moving story in the entire book as well, mostly because you can deduce what the mother's life has been like, and what horror she endured. 

"The Man Who Was Pregnant" reminded me of a much better pregnant male story: Daniel P. Dern's "Yes Sir That's My," which I read in the anthology Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves.  Dern's story touched more on gender and rights than Lynn's did, which really surprised me.  The anthology was printed in 1991; interesting the difference a decade can make.  Plus, Dern's story was slyly funny. Lynn apparently lacks humor. 

Speaking of changing times and humor: I did get a grin out of "Obsessions" as one character was a smoker, and was furious that he couldn't smoke in someone else's office.  Just you wait, buddy: today you wouldn't even be able to smoke in the building.  

I have a game with myself: which stories would I put in an anthology if someone were ever insane enough to offer me the opportunity?  "Jubilee's Story" might make the cut - nothing else would. 

I can't say I'm inspired to try to find more of Lynn's work.  I do wonder, though, if she has grown as a writer and has managed to connect to her characters. 


This book will go into the resale/give away box, and I'll move on.