A new collection of short stories by a master of the form with a
common focus on the turmoils of romantic love
Ready!
Aim!
On command the firing squad aims at the man backed against a full-length
mirror. The mirror once hung in a bedroom, but now it's cracked and
propped against a dumpster in an alley. The condemned man has refused
the customary last cigarette but accepted as a hood the black slip that
was carelessly tossed over a corner of the mirror's frame. The slip
still smells faintly of a familiar fragrance.
So begins Tosca, the first in this vivid collection of Stuart Dybek's
love stories. Operatically dramatic and intimately lyrical, grittily
urban and impressionistically natural, the varied fictions in Paper
Lantern all focus on the turmoil of love as only Dybek can portray it.
An execution triggers the recollection of a theatrical romance; then a
social worker falls for his own client; and lovers part as giddily,
perhaps as hopelessly, as a kid trying to hang on to a boisterous kite.
A flaming laboratory evokes a steamy midnight drive across terrain both
familiar and strange, and an eerily ringing phone becomes the telltale
signature of a dark betrayal. Each story is marked with contagious
desire, spontaneous revelation, and, ultimately, resigned courage. As
one woman whispers when she sets a notebook filled with her sketches
drifting out to sea, Someone will find you.
Some of Dybek's characters recur in these stories, while others appear
only briefly. Throughout, they--and we--are confronted with vaguely
familiar scents and images, reminiscent of love but strangely
disconcerting, so that we might wonder whether we are looking in a
mirror or down the barrel of a gun. After the ragged discharge, Dybek
writes, when the smoke has cleared, who will be left standing and who
will be shattered into shards? Paper Lantern brims with the
intoxicating elixirs known to every love-struck, lovelorn heart, and it
marks the magnificent return of one of America's most important fiction
writers at the height of his powers.
