Gorgeous Desperation
New collection captures the beauty and sadness of ordinary life
Apart from an occasional heavyweight like Raymond Carver or John Cheever, writers of short stories don't often hit the best-seller lists, especially as debut authors. Let's hope Catherine Tudish is the exception. Her first collection, Tenney's Landing (Scribner, 271 pp., $24), is a resounding success.
Tudish sets her finely balanced stories in a small Pennsylvania river town and populates them with characters who confront the intolerable pressures of an ordinary life: a sick child, an opportunity missed, a marriage slipping imperceptibly toward disintegration. The stories are marked with low-key anxiety and the soft insistence of grief, flowing in Tudish's almost respiratory prose toward an uncertain end.
In "The Infusion Suite," for example, a mother deals with her young daughter's leukemia and chemotherapy. The daughter's situation is tragic, but Tudish's story is not. It traces the tangle of conflicting emotions the mother faces as she realizes the unbridgeable distance between herself and her daughter, between health and suffering. The mother's sadness and pity slip inexorably into anger and blame, not only of herself and her husband but even of her daughter. At the same time, she realizes that her life continues in its normal way, forgetful of her daughter's pain, when she experiences the thrill of sexual temptation. The mother's guilt is palpable in Tudish's understated language, and the descriptions of the hospital's "infusion suite" and the almost religious ritual of treatment suggest firsthand familiarity with chemotherapy. The story is deeply touching, and it is characteristic of the rest of the collection.
Curiously, Tudish, now in her 50s, has not published before except in journals (albeit in highly respected ones like Prairie Schooner). She taught writing for a number of years at Harvard and shows a sure command of both language and the map of human experience, so it is fair to ask: where has she been all these years? In a world filled with postmodern acrobatics and meta-fiction, Tudish offers unself-conscious tenderness in what she writes. These are serious and ambitious stories, and one can only wish that more will come.
—Wayne Christeson
