Deep down, beneath the lurid sex and freakish characters, this collection of short stories, We So Seldom Look on Love -- a gorgeous title borrowed from a poem by Frank O'Hara --, has a gooey, warm heart.I think, this book is absolutely divisive. Some people will see Barbara Gowdy's stories as exploitative and desperate in the way of many modern writers trying to seem transgressive. But others will see these stories for what they are: each offers a nuanced and daring exploration of loneliness and isolation from extreme perspectives.And the saving grace of it all really is the compassion and empathy infused in Gowdy's writing For instance, the story that is the most obviously outrageous is the eponymous story, which is the confession of a self-diagnosed "necrophile." She has sex with the corpses she encounters in her place of employment, a mortuary. But it's really a love story, in a way. The empty love affair she has with a medical student culminates in his suicide, since he knows she could only ever love his corpse. As morbid and disturbing as that is, it is also a very refreshing and compelling way of looking at love and obsession and life and death.These really are just classic short stories gussied up with modern sensibilities. And they are wonderfully provocative. They beg for contemplation and they offer the reader no simple answers. This is a book that rewards your thought. If there is anything that detracts from this book, it is that slightly obnoxious need to be transgressive. It works, most of the time. But there are instances - as with the mentally challenged little girl in "Body and Soul" drilling a hole into her own forehead -- where the transgression seems slightly off. The symbolism, even when it's cringe-worthy, is always new, though, to Gowdy's credit.Her concision -- this is a thin volume -- means that she doesn't retread material. (At least, not deeply or troublingly. Two stories feature the overall concept of conjoined twins, but differ greatly in style, content, and tone. And "Lizards" and "Flesh of My Flesh" tell the disparate stories of two friends.)This is such a neat little book. There isn't much dead air, in that the stories are all of a consistently high quality. And I think, in the tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Edgar Allan Poe and James Purdy, the stories of the outsiders, of the grotesque, even though they can be the most troubling, are the most mundane, almost. They hit upon a very basic fear or insecurity that exists in everyone, I think, and they exploit that feeling in all of us and ask us to wonder what it is and why it's there. They blow things up so that we can better see the details in the darkness. And really, if books like this weren't out there, how would some of us ever encounter the people on the fringes? The corpse-fuckers and the bored exhibitionists and the conjoined twins and the God-fearing girls who can levitate, where would they be without writers like Barbara Gowdy?4 Hard-to-Reach Dildos out of 5
If you are looking for a smart, intelligent human sexual drama in ordinary realms with a satisfactory conclusion – this book is not for you. On the other hand if you are willing to face up to possible inner demons revolving around sex and love cravings in Alice Munro’s style of intelligent enigmas in short stories, challenging repressed feelings and imaginations, here are eight short jewels.Body and Soul, Challenges the sanity of an elderly grandmother (Aunt Bea) in foster home for young girls; we meet Julie (epileptic seizure; waiting for mommy in jail) as a companion to Terry (Penny) who is bald, blind and has a damaging birthmark and later Angela (missing both arms : “winglike arms flapping”) to the real angel!Sylvie, is gifted with memory retention but burdened with a Siamese twin, Sue, from belly down; goes through her own adventure growing up, encounters love and a twin sexual encounter, is to loose Sue - on which she is conflicted.Presbyterian Crosswalk, Beth can float above ground, lives with father and caretaker father’s mother who has lost her voice (successful singer); since her mother had run away with another man but wishes to return while Beth’s friend Helen has water in her brain and is to die soon has come across a boy critically injured in an accident needing liver transplant and how about angel?Ninety-three Million Miles Away, is the story of Ali who has quit a boring job and is looking for affirmation of self-desirability, worth, beauty through her own sex in the presence of a silent witness, Claude, the cosmetic surgeon. I liked this story the most (what could have been just pornography is but a desperate cry) & the axiom: “..everything hinged on where you happened to be standing at a given moment...”The Two-Headed Man, is another extreme twin story of Samuel (paranoid of Simon) and the twin head Simon (lewd) with a crisis developing centered on a girl (fiancé), Karen in Love’s desperation.Lizards, craving sex for hunger is distinguished from craving companionship in the form of a true Love.We So Seldom Look on Love, another challenging tale involving sexuality of a bizarre nature is where the love underlies a total, really a total, submission. (Namesake title of the book highlights the extremes in what love can entail)Flesh of My flesh, seeking love in a young, successful man Marion is betrayed to seek a not so much of a male in her love’s calling!
Do You like book We So Seldom Look On Love (1998)?
I thoroughly enjoyed this one.Gowdy has a beautiful writing style. Not all these stories are about love but they all display unusual human relationships with some "unusual" people. There's a story about a woman learning that her husband was actually born a woman, a story about a man with two heads who tries to murder his other head,another about a female exhibitionist, and another about a girl who has toddler-sized legs on her torso (her Siamese twin). I thoroughly enjoyed reading these short stories. They were very quirky with some humour thrown in.I should add: the title story, We Seldom Look on Love, deals with necrophilia. It was a very shocking and explicit story, though written very well.
—Rowena
Gorgeous, disturbing short stories by a writer I had never heard of. One or two missed the mark, and a few have weak endings, but in general a very impressive collection. I'm partial to short fiction anyway, but these were just stunning: Wildly imaginative, richly characterised, and so thoroughly engaging I avoided anything that might disturb me mid-story, to the point of being somewhat rude to the people around me. Many of Gowdy's characters would be considered oddities -- the eccentric extras played for "a bit of colour" (even by authors I love like Anais Nin) -- but in these stories they're neither peripheral and decorative, nor simply ordinary humans in peculiar circumstances, but complex, intriguing characters, that both make sense and stay strange. And they're Gowdy's own: I don't at all presume to know now what life might be like for a necrophiliac, or a man whose cojoined brother has sole control over their shared body. These are stories. If they're true for anyone who's ever lived, that's an accident. But the truth they've invented is bizarre, brilliant, and easy to believe.
—Lia
Most common word in other people's review of this book of sort stories: disturbing. Second most common word: touching. That about sums it up.I was reminded a lot of Katherine Dunn's "Geek Love." This is also the story of freaks, and how they find ways to live and love despite being at the fringes of society: a girl with four legs, a blind girl with a disfiguring birthmark and a crack-baby little sister, an exhibitionist, a nymphomaniac, a necrophile. All very interesting. This book will stick with you.
—Matt Musselman
