- - - - Copyright 1995-2004 Philadelphia City Paper
- - - - The Middle Stories By Sheila Heti McSweeney's, 144 pp., $15 2 oz. Alice Munro 1 oz. Lydia Davis 1 oz. Aesop jigger David Lynch salt to taste Muddle the stark, beautiful simplicity of Munro and the floating timelessness of Aesop in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. Add Davis' remarkable eye for the absurd. Throw in a dash of Lynch's bitter, out-of-skew logic. Stir with ice. Coat the rim of a rocks glass with coarse salt. Strain into 23 stories resembling the kind that Eastern European authors used to write in coffeehouses and sell to their local, daily newspapers. Garnish with lemon. Though The Middle Stories marks Sheila Heti's literary debut, it would be a mistake to call this young Canadian author promising. She delivers like a motherfucker. These stories fly off the pages, pages that you'll turn fast enough to line your fingers with paper cuts. But a little blood's a small sacrifice in exchange for an hour with this collection. And it won't take you more than an hour. It's a little book -- little enough to fit in your pocket, to read on the bus, the toilet -- but like Chairman Mao's little book, it's packed full of ideas. At her best, in "The Favorite Monkey" and "The Giant" and "What Changed," the language swings between fairy tale and nightmare. Animals talk. With few words, Heti manages to provide the reader, you, with an intuitive understanding about each character. "The Raspberry Bush" opens, "A little old woman who never stopped smiling walked into her kitchen from her garden." Another begins, "Marianne walked to the edge of the pier and looked down and saw her reflection staring back at her. It was an ugly reflection, one she had gotten used to, and it stared up at her dully." There's incredible sophistication lurking in this rhetoric, and an ugly reflection of our world rendered in sweet, sweet harmony. - - - -
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