Depending on your perspective, Peter Orner's debut, Esther Stories, is either a story collection, or one-half story collection and two novellas-in-stories. The "novellas" - Fall River Marriage and The Waters - are the strongest part of the book, and especially the former. Fall River Marriage tells, in fifty brisk pages, the story of Walt and Sarah Kaplan and their forty years together, from their quickie out-of-state marriage (with Sarah three months pregnant at the time) to Walt's early death, at 59, from a heart attack. The brief but vivid stories are almost like photographs of their marriage - funny, touching and sometimes sad. A wonderful piece.The Waters tries the same approach but is less successful, primarily because the focus is much broader, spanning multiple generations instead of a single married couple. The story is also told by several narrators, making it sometimes difficult to follow who exactly is speaking. I don't think the multi-generation, multi-narrator structure quite works with the minimalist, fragmentary narrative that Orner seems to prefer. And interestingly enough, the story's Chicago setting didn't grab me nearly as much as that of the first piece (Fall River, Massachusetts). I would have thought a Chicago story would have really hit home.As for the individual stories in the first half of the book, only two really stuck with me - the sad "Cousin Tuck's" (about the doomed relationship of a one-eyed pool shark and a community activist) and the darkly funny "Two Poes" (about a town plagued with two Edgar Allan Poe impersonators, who were hired for tourism promotion and never bothered to leave) - while the others soon faded from memory.In all, Esther Stories was a worthwhile read, though mostly for Fall River Marriage. Orner has recently published his first novel, Love and Shame and Love, which I now definitely have my eye on.
Re-reading ESTHER STORIES (2001) more than a decade after its original publication, I continue to be astonished by the tender worldliness, quiet passion, understated wisdom, and luminous poetry of Orner's first collection. So does Marilynne Robinson, who provides an insightful "Foreword" to the new paperback edition. These 34 precise and economical stories are dense with details (names, places, dates, smells, tastes), scattered with things--especially with books and photographs, with love's debris. The narrator of the title story looks at a photograph of his Aunt Esther, and sees someone who wants to be seen and not just looked at, "someone [he] would have loved had [he] been there." Orner does not just look at his characters, he sees them, sees their souls, lovingly re-imagines their stories and shares his revelations, his characters' simple, aching stories, with us in language we can understand and remember. These are stories about love and remembrance in America, stories about remembering to love and remembering to remember. These are stories that deserve to be taught in schools, next to stories by Poe and Hawthorne and Malamud and Roth to illustrate the art of short American stories. These are stories that should be shared by families who care about loving and remembering and about knowing each other's stories. And of course they should send you back to Orner's last haunting book, LOVE AND SHAME AND LOVE (2012), and forward to his next and most mature collection so far, LAST CAR OVER THE SAGAMORE BRIDGE (August 2013). One or more of these stories is sure to convince you that Orner has been eavesdropping on your family.
Do You like book Esther Stories (2001)?
I bought this book at the 50 cents sale in the library. Of interest, there is an inscription inside: "Brenda & Ken, hope you enjoy these short stories. The author is Ted's step-brother. Always, Anne & Ted. January 6, 2002." January 6th being my birthday and this book being gifted to Brenda & Ken by the wife of Peter Orner's step-brother... well, it's kind of cool! And the fact that I got if for 50 cents :) The point is, they are really short, and addictive! You just want to keep going, from one story to the other! I like him! And honorable mention goes to "Cousin Tuck's" which is reminiscent of "Later, at the Bar." :) The story features a fantastic heroine, a feisty political activist/do-gooder, somewhat homely and kind of lonely, crushing on a one-eyed pool shark guy, prone to punch one-liners like so: "Like you're the bastard that invented loneliness" and "Forty-two years on earth and still dumb enough to be vain." ***So, I did not finish this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the short stories that compose the first half of the book, but then the second half lost me. For one, it's not a short story, but a longer story made up of several short stories about the same family. Coming from the punchy shorts in the first half, the slower pace caught me off guard and I couldn't stay with it... It seems that the second half was not meant to be part of the same collection of stories..
—Anna
The stories are in 4 parts. The first 2 parts were ok for me. I admire Orner's descriptive writing, but didn't totally get what was going on sometimes. Part 3 was a series of stories about a Jewish family from the east coast. Part 4 was a series of stories about a Jewish family in the Chicago area. Those stories were very engaging, humorous at times, tragic at times. Moving portrayals of families, their love for each other and their disfunctional aspects. In the section about the family in Chicago, I enjoyed the references to places I'm familiar with in Chicago. Some of the family go to the U of I in Champaign...and there is a little vignette about a couple going to a cornfield outside of Rantoul to count the stars.
—Kaye
Esther Stories is a poignant book. "Yearning" and "delicate" are key emotions. Orner's characters are often suffering and miserable, but he treats them with sympathy and unflinching honesty. One piece about a woman who returns to her home town after 20 years of marriage but without her husband is particularly powerful. She is the target of gossip, but finds in the town a kind of shelter she never had in marriage.There is a strong sense of place to the stories. Specific streets in cities and towns are often mentioned. The author treats his characters in the Midwest with respect, rather than condescension.Some of the stories stand alone, but others are closely related. I found a series of stories about a couple, the Kaplans, in Massachusetts to be particularly moving. Their marriage due to pregnancy, the ups and downs of a life together and their slow decline were captivating.A group of stories set in Chicago, however, was a bit disappointing. These wander aimlessly. I had hoped for more from this group because I know some of the neighborhoods he writes about.
—Craig Barner
